Admission

Alumni Author Highlight

Steven Shapin

In 1966, Steven Shapin emerged from Reed College with a degree in biology but, after a year doing graduate work in genetics, he decided that a life in the laboratory was not for him. He then spent a little over a year working in Washington, D.C., on questions of science policy and the direction of scientific research, and was advised that, if he wanted to go on in this line of work, it “might be a clever idea” to get a Ph.D.-even though the subject of the Ph.D. didn't seem to matter much to people in the field. Shapin considered various sociology, public administration, government, and other types of departments, and finally came across the University of Pennsylvania's History of Science program. He'd been interested in the history of government policy toward science and thought the program might be a good match for him. At the time, history of science programs were relatively new; they'd emerged after World War I and several were in existence by the 1950s. Harvard, where Shapin now works, established the first history of science program in the U.S.

Shapin completed his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, writing his dissertation on science in the Scottish Enlightenment. His dissertation work led him to the University of Edinburgh, where he taught from 1972-1989 in a small Science Studies Unit. Shapin thoroughly enjoyed his time in Britain and appreciated his students and colleagues there, but returned to the U.S. to help build an interdisciplinary science studies program at the University of California, San Diego, where he was fortunate to work with a “remarkable” group of graduate students. He arrived at Harvard in late 2003 and has been appointed to the Franklin L. Ford Professorship in the History of Science. Shapin has also earned the J. D. Bernal Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science (for career contributions to the field), the Ludwik Fleck Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science, and the Robert K. Merton Prize of the American Sociological Association (for A Social History of Truth), the Herbert Dingle Prize of the British Society for the History of Science (for The Scientific Revolution), a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Most recently, Shapin received the Erasmus Prize from the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation for his work in the history of science in relationship to culture and society. The foundation notes that this prize was awarded to Shapin and to Simon Schaffer (who cowrote Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life with Shapin) for "having given a new turn to the study of science by approaching science as a practical, socio-cultural and historically anchored activity." The prize will be to Shapin by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in November 2005.

While Shapin's main focus in the history of science has been the seventeenth century Scientific Revolution, he has recently become more interested in contemporary topics, including the changing relations between science and industry and the emergence of entrepreneurial science. This shift in focus has occurred in part because of the truly vital importance of science in today's culture and in part because Shapin gets “bored” with himself if he does the same thing for too long. Shapin is currently finishing a book on the role of science in culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and looks forward to further exploring science in contemporary culture. According to Shapin, the first World War began to give rise to a perception that science held “the key to power and wealth,” a concept that radically changed our society and made science more central to it. Today, Shapin feels that science is “right at the center” of cultural, economic, and political concerns in our society. His new book examines what it means to be a scientist today. Among Shapin's previous books are Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton University Press, 1985; with Simon Schaffer), A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (University of Chicago Press, 1994), and The Scientific Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 1996). In addition to publishing his own work, Shapin is also the series editor for the University of Chicago's science*culture publication.

Shapin's Reed experience was a positive one; he enjoyed intense studying as well as the occasional party. One of the more important aspects of Reed for Shapin was the weekly film series, wherein pictures were shown on Friday and Saturday nights in the chapel. Although this was an entirely extracurricular and student-run group, the pictures shown essentially constituted an education in classic European and American film. “Everybody” went to see the movies, which were discussed in depth outside of the showings and provided a “common aesthetic and historical experience” for students. Shapin was also at Reed during an era dominated by the distinctive style of Lloyd Reynolds and his calligraphy. Shapin describes Reynolds' influence as “diffuse but strong” throughout the college.

The skills Shapin acquired at Reed and at other points in his education have brought him to a place he's happy to be, and he's pleased to be teaching bright students a topic he loves.

Kerry Skemp '05 wrote about Reed authors while an intern in the admission office. An English major from Wisconsin, Kerry is also student body treasurer and has enjoyed her own experiences with writing at Reed, in creative writing classes as well as in her contributions to Reed's student-published Creative Review.