Richard Westfall

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Richard Samuel "Sam" Westfall (born April 22, 1924 in Fort Collins , Colorado , † August 21, 1996 in Bloomington , Indiana ) was an American historian of science, best known for his biography of Isaac Newton .

life and work

Westfall was the son of a professor of English literature and studied at Yale University from 1942 , interrupted by two years of military service in World War II. In 1948 he made his bachelor's degree . He received his doctorate in 1955 from Yale ("Christianity and the Virtuosi", the work flowed into his book "Science and Religion in 17. Century England" from 1958). 1952/53 he taught at Caltech , 1953 to 1957 at Iowa State University and then until 1963 at Grinnell College in Iowa . From 1963 he was at Indiana University as a professor of history and the history of science. In 1989 he retired . He died of a heart attack.

Westfall dealt with the history of science in the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1971 he won the Pfizer Prize for Force in Newton's Physics: the Science of Dynamics in the Seventeenth Century . He is the author of one of the most authoritative Newton biographies to this day. He had worked on the biography for 20 years; for this he received the Leo Gershoy Award in 1982 and the Pfizer Prize again in 1983 . Although he also highlighted the partly neurotic features of Newton's personality, he focused his presentation on the scientist Newton, whom he considered the most important personality of Western European civilization.

As part of a research project on the social connections of scientists in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe, he compiled a collection of biographies of 631 scientists, which are accessible online at the Galileo Project.

He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Literature . 1977/78 he was President of the History of Science Society . In 1985 he received the George Sarton Medal and in 1987 the Derek Price for his article: Science and Patronage: Galileo and the Telescope .

He was married and had a son and two daughters.

Fonts (selection)

  • Science and Patronage: Galileo and the Telescope , Isis, Vol. 76, 1985, pp. 11-30

Literature (selection)

by Richard Westfall

  • Science and religion in seventeenth-century England , 1958, Archon Books 1973, ISBN 0-208-008-438
  • Force in Newton's Physics: the Science of Dynamics in the Seventeenth Century , MACDONALD LONDON & ELSEVIER, 1971, ISBN 0-356-022-617
  • The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanism and Mechanics , John Wiley, 1971, Cambridge University Press 1978, ISBN 978-0-521-29295-5
  • Never at Rest: a biography of Isaac Newton , Cambridge University Press 1980, revised version Cambridge University Press 1983, ISBN 0-521-274-354
  • Essays on the Trial of Galileo (Vatican Observatory publications) , University of Notre Dame Press 1990, ISBN 0-268-009-236

via Richard Westfall

  • Margaret J. Osler, Paul Lawrence Farber (Eds.): Religion, Science, and Worldview: Essays in Honor of Richard S. Westfall , Cambridge University Press 1985, ISBN 0-521-30452-0

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Obituary for Westfall in the New York Times on September 1, 1996, with interview quotes from I. Bernhard Cohen and others
personal data
SURNAME Westfall, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Westfall, Richard Samuel (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian of science
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Fort Collins , Colorado , United States
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 1996
Place of death Bloomington , Indiana , United States