Listing of Sessions and Abstracts of Papers - History of Science ...

claims was hard won. I want to use this paper to explore the particular problems posed by the transatlantic
context of early American natural history in which European-authored texts were the main source
of knowledge about American natural productions. I will draw upon two episodes in an important
international and European-dominated controversy in natural history over the reality of extinction in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The two episodes, which involve the statesman Thomas
Jefferson and the naturalist Benjamin Smith Barton, respectively, illustrate different dimensions the
problem of authority posed in a transatlantic context.
Mueller-Wille, Staffan
E-mail Address: smuewi@gmx.net
'Sandstone can as well hold gold' - Classifying Non-Living Nature, 1730-1770
In 1758, A. F. Cronstedt proposed a classification of minerals that deviated considerably from previous
classifications, notably that in Linnaeus' Systema naturae. The paper will analyse the two classifications
and the arguments raised in their favour. It will show that these classifications, though incommensurable,
could coexist as their differences were the result of different, yet equally valid approaches:
Linnaeus' classification took individual rocks as its object, and rested on collection and comparison as a
differentiating operation, while Cronstedt's classification took the "pure" mineral components of rocks as
its object and rested on blowpipe analysis as its differentiating operation. Thus, while Linnaeus remained
within the well-established, disciplinary confines of natural history, Cronstedt transcended these
on the basis of a new technology. The historical impulse for this departure will be located in a heated
debate between Swedish and German metallurgists concerning the reality of "new" metals like nickel,
whose discovery was announced by Cronstedt in 1751.
Murray, Margaret
E-mail Address: murray@math.vt.edu
Women Mathematicians in America: The Doctoral Classes of 1940-1959
In this paper, I discuss the approximately 200 women who earned Ph.D.s in mathematics from
American colleges and universities during the years 1940-1959. During this period, American mathematics
experienced an unprecedented growth in power, prestige, and Federal support; at the same time,
the presence of women in mathematics at the doctoral level plunged to an all-time low. I examine some
of the factors which brought about the reduced visibility of women in American mathematics during this
period. I also describe the general characteristics of this generation of American women in mathematics,
including: socioeconomic backgrounds; undergraduate origins; doctoral institutions; employment
patterns; scholarly productivity; and experiences of discrimination. I discuss the impact of Title IX
upon these women at mid-career and after. This research is based in part upon oral history interviews
conducted with 36 of the 200 women who earned doctorates in mathematics during this period, as
discussed in my recent book, Women Becoming Mathematicians: Creating a Professional Identity in
Post-World War II America (MIT Press, 2000).
Nappi, Carla
E-mail Address: cmakler@princeton.edu
The Name of the Rose: Naming and the classification of nature in the Bencao gangmu
Language plays an integral part in determining and shaping the categories that we use to understand
the natural world. The naming of natural objects allows one to categorize and objectify nature, subsuming
the natural world into an ordered system that is (claimed to be) easier to understand, to control, and
to use. This paper will explore the connection between naming and taxonomy in natural history by
examining Li Shizhen's Bencao gangmu, a sixteenth-century Chinese compendium of materia medica