Thursday, July 24, 2008
Sic transit gloria mundi
This morning I received an e-mail that one of my professors had died. An expert in the history of early modern mathematics and the origins of the modern software industry, he had a heart attack last week while swimming and never recovered. The department is in a state of shock. I ran into one of my professors earlier today and she commented on how sudden it was. He had apparently just submitted an article for publication and was making plans to spend the next week visiting family in Cape Cod. And then, this happened.
We received daily updates via e-mail from the department's secretary, and at first it seemed like things might be improving. He apparently opened his eyes and there was hoping of moving him out of intensive care, but it was not to be.
He was one of the most brilliant scholars I have ever met and his death is a severe loss for the department, not to mention his family and the many community organizations with which he was involved. He was one of the first graduates of Old Ivy's history of science program and had been teaching here for nearly 40 years. His lecture course on the Scientific Revolution and his seminar on material epistemology have profoundly affected how I approach the history of science and I will miss his rambling anecdotes, his surprising awareness of popular culture (every so often during our conversations, he'd whip out a reference to Men in Black or The Matrix), and even his occasionally confrontational questioning style.
He was my general field examiner in the history of technology, and he never let up on me during that process. His questions were always pointed and sharp and he tolerated no evasion. Even if you didn't know what he was looking for in an answer, he would pin you down and force you to lay out an argument.
The university has not posted anything official about his passing yet, and a memorial service is slated in the fall during what would have been his final academic year before retirement. On that occasion, there will likely be a lot of people who knew him better than I ever did giving speeches and reflecting on how he changed their lives.
If I were asked to speak, however, I would mention the following anecdote to demonstrate his humility and his good humor with regard to his chosen profession. During his Scientific Revolution course in the Spring of 2007, he was talking about the use of the word "revolution" to describe the changing approaches towards natural philosophy which occurred between the 15th and 17th centuries. To what extent was it seen as a revolution at the time? Was it really as abrupt a change as the term "revolution" implies? Questions of that sort. And somewhere along the line he mentions Thomas Kuhn, his advisor and the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, arguably the most well-known history of science text published in the past fifty years. (You can thank him for coining the term "paradigm shift.")
As I recall, he started talking about Kuhn and paradigms and crisis points and so forth, but then he paused for a moment and looked out into the crowd of undergraduates and asked: "Before I go on any further, how many of you have heard of Thomas Kuhn?" The graduate students in the room, myself included, raised their hands, but aside from our little section in the front of the room, not a single hand was raised.
And my professor turns to all of us, the graduate students, and said: "You see that? That is what you have to look forward to in this profession!"
And he was totally right. Very few academics ever gain notoriety outside of their particular field of interest, and my professor knew it. But he still loved his subject and went on to become one of the leading experts in his field. I regret that I only had the opportunity to work with him for two years, but by the same token, I am also thankful that I had the chance to know him for that long. I will definitely miss his perspective on what this business of academia is really all about.
This morning I received an e-mail that one of my professors had died. An expert in the history of early modern mathematics and the origins of the modern software industry, he had a heart attack last week while swimming and never recovered. The department is in a state of shock. I ran into one of my professors earlier today and she commented on how sudden it was. He had apparently just submitted an article for publication and was making plans to spend the next week visiting family in Cape Cod. And then, this happened.
We received daily updates via e-mail from the department's secretary, and at first it seemed like things might be improving. He apparently opened his eyes and there was hoping of moving him out of intensive care, but it was not to be.
He was one of the most brilliant scholars I have ever met and his death is a severe loss for the department, not to mention his family and the many community organizations with which he was involved. He was one of the first graduates of Old Ivy's history of science program and had been teaching here for nearly 40 years. His lecture course on the Scientific Revolution and his seminar on material epistemology have profoundly affected how I approach the history of science and I will miss his rambling anecdotes, his surprising awareness of popular culture (every so often during our conversations, he'd whip out a reference to Men in Black or The Matrix), and even his occasionally confrontational questioning style.
He was my general field examiner in the history of technology, and he never let up on me during that process. His questions were always pointed and sharp and he tolerated no evasion. Even if you didn't know what he was looking for in an answer, he would pin you down and force you to lay out an argument.
The university has not posted anything official about his passing yet, and a memorial service is slated in the fall during what would have been his final academic year before retirement. On that occasion, there will likely be a lot of people who knew him better than I ever did giving speeches and reflecting on how he changed their lives.
If I were asked to speak, however, I would mention the following anecdote to demonstrate his humility and his good humor with regard to his chosen profession. During his Scientific Revolution course in the Spring of 2007, he was talking about the use of the word "revolution" to describe the changing approaches towards natural philosophy which occurred between the 15th and 17th centuries. To what extent was it seen as a revolution at the time? Was it really as abrupt a change as the term "revolution" implies? Questions of that sort. And somewhere along the line he mentions Thomas Kuhn, his advisor and the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, arguably the most well-known history of science text published in the past fifty years. (You can thank him for coining the term "paradigm shift.")
As I recall, he started talking about Kuhn and paradigms and crisis points and so forth, but then he paused for a moment and looked out into the crowd of undergraduates and asked: "Before I go on any further, how many of you have heard of Thomas Kuhn?" The graduate students in the room, myself included, raised their hands, but aside from our little section in the front of the room, not a single hand was raised.
And my professor turns to all of us, the graduate students, and said: "You see that? That is what you have to look forward to in this profession!"
And he was totally right. Very few academics ever gain notoriety outside of their particular field of interest, and my professor knew it. But he still loved his subject and went on to become one of the leading experts in his field. I regret that I only had the opportunity to work with him for two years, but by the same token, I am also thankful that I had the chance to know him for that long. I will definitely miss his perspective on what this business of academia is really all about.
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