Erwin Hiebert
Erwin Nick Hiebert (born May 27, 1919 in Waldheim (Saskatchewan) , † November 28, 2012 in Waltham (Massachusetts) ) was a Canadian-American historian of science.
Life
Hiebert came from a large Mennonite family, his father was a missionary of the Mennonite Church, his mother came from a Mennonite family in Oklahoma. He attended school in Winnipeg and studied chemistry and mathematics at Mennonite colleges in Hillsboro (Tabor College) and North Newton (Bethel College) in Kansas. He received his bachelor's degree in 1941 and continued his studies at the University of Kansas at Lawrence with a master's degree in physics and chemistry in 1943. In the same year he married Elfrieda Franz, a pianist , and moved to Whiting, Indiana, where he Became a research chemist at Standard Oil of Indiana. There one worked on the Manhattan Project (Metallurgical Laboratories of the University of Chicago). In 1946/47 he was in Washington in the scientific department of the War Department (as assistant to its director) and then at the Institute for Metals Research at the University of Chicago. In 1949 he received a master's degree in physical chemistry there. Inspired by lectures by Alexandre Koyré , he turned to the history of science and began his doctoral thesis at the University of Chicago in the history of chemistry. While working on the dissertation, he became Assistant Professor of Chemistry at San Francisco State College in 1952 . He received his doctorate in 1954 and was a Fulbright Lecturer at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Göttingen in 1954/55 (where his wife was also a Fulbright scholar in music history). From 1955 to 1957 he was an instructor in the history of science at Harvard University . He then taught at the University of Wisconsin , first from 1957 as an assistant professor and later as a professor. From 1970 he was a professor at Harvard, where he was chairman of the history of science department from 1977 to 1984. In 1989 he retired.
In 1961 he was a visiting scholar (American Scholar) in Kabul, 1961/62 and 1968/69 at the Institute for Advanced Study , 1964/65 visiting professor at the University of Tübingen and 1965 visiting professor at Harvard. In 1978/79 he was visiting professor in Bielefeld, 1973 and 1981 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in the 1980s several times at Churchill College of Cambridge University (1984/85 as a fellow), 1985 in Beijing and 1987/88, 1998, 2002 and 2007 in Berlin and 1991/92 in Göttingen.
He dealt with Walther Nernst , Ludwig Boltzmann , Hermann von Helmholtz , Ernst Mach , Max Planck and Wilhelm Ostwald , among others . He made contributions to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, for example on Mach. In 1961 he published a book in a Mennonite publishing house on the history of the peaceful and military use of nuclear energy and its moral aspects (reactions from church representatives, scientists and politicians to their control).
In 1975 he became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1973/74 he was President of the History of Science Society. He was also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was head of its section on the history and philosophy of science from 1982 to 1986. From 1982 to 1985 he was President of the History of Science Department of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science. Since 1988 he has been a member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig and the Académie internationale d'histoire des sciences .
He was a US citizen.
Fonts
- The Impact of Atomic Energy, Faith and Life Press, Newton / Kansas 1961
- Historical Roots of the Principle of Conservation of Energy, State Historical Society of Wisconsin for the Department of History, University of Wisconsin 1962
- The Conception of Thermodynamics in the Scientific Thought of Mach and Planck, Ernst Mach Institut, Freiburg 1968
literature
- Mary Jo Nye , Joan L Richards, Roger H. Stuewer (Eds.), The Invention of Physical Science. Essays in Honor of Erwin N. Hiebert, Kluwer 1992
Web links
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Erwin Hiebert. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
- Erwin N. Hiebert , Department of History of Science, Harvard University
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hiebert, Erwin |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hiebert, Erwin Nick |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian-American historian of science |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 27, 1919 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Waldheim (Saskachevan) |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 28, 2012 |
| Place of death | Waltham, Massachusetts |