Stillman Drake

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stillman Drake ( December 24, 1910 - October 6, 1993 ) was a Canadian historian of science, best known as a researcher on Galileo Galilei . He has published a total of 131 books, articles and book chapters about him and also reissued works by Galileo.

In 1967 he became a professor at the University of Toronto , where he remained for the remainder of his career as a science historian. Before that he was not at the university, but a financial advisor, but during this time he had already published translations of Galileo's works.

As a Galileo researcher, he is best known for finding Galileo's test protocols and reconstructing his experiments. In doing so, he refuted the prevailing views at the time, such as those of the well-known science historian Alexandre Koyré , that Galileo had proceeded predominantly theoretically, i.e. the experiments mentioned by Galileo in his books were predominantly thought experiments.

In 1981 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1988 he was awarded the George Sarton Medal .

His collection of Galileana is in the Thomas J. Fischer Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto.

Fonts (selection)

  • as translator and editor: Galilei: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic & Copernican. Foreword by Albert Einstein. University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 1953.
  • as translator and editor: Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo. Doubleday & Company, New York NY 1957 (selection from Galileo's writings).
  • as editor with Charles D. O'Malley: The Controversy on the Comets of 1618. Galileo Galilei, Horatio Grassi, Mario Guiducci, Johann Kepler. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia PA 1960.
  • as translator: Galileo: The Assayer. In: Stillman Drake, Charles D. O'Malley (eds.): The Controversy on the Comets of 1618. Galileo Galilei, Horatio Grassi, Mario Guiducci, Johann Kepler. Introduction, Translations, and Notes by. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia PA 1960, pp. 151-336.
  • as translator and editor with Israel E. Drabkin: Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy. Selections from Tartaglia , Benedetti , Guido Ubaldo , and Galileo (= Publications in Medieval Science. Vol. 13). University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI et al. 1969, ISBN 0-299-05100-5 .
  • Galileo's Discovery of the Laws of Free Fall. In: Scientific American. Vol. 228, No. 5, May 1973, pp. 84-92, doi : 10.1038 / scientificamerican0573-84 .
  • as translator and editor: Galilei: Two New Sciences. Including Centers of Gravity & Force of Percussion. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison WI 1974, ISBN 0-299-06404-2 .
  • with James MacLachlan: Galileo's Discovery of the Parabolic Trajectory. In: Scientific American. Vol. 232, No. 3, March 1975, pp. 102-110, doi : 10.1038 / scientificamerican0375-102 .
  • Galileo At Work. His Scientific Biography. University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL et al. 1978, ISBN 0-226-16226-5 .
  • Newton's Apple and Galileo's Dialogue. In: Scientific American. Vol. 243, No. 2, August 1980, pp. 150-156, doi : 10.1038 / scientificamerican0880-150 .
  • with Charles Thomas Kowal : Galileo's Sighting of Neptune. In: Scientific American. Vol. 243, No. 6, December 1980, pp. 74-81, doi : 10.1038 / scientificamerican1280-74 .
  • Galileo. Pioneer Scientist . University of Toronto Press, Toronto et al. 1990, ISBN 0-8020-2725-3 .
  • Galilei (in the Meisterdenker series), Freiburg: Herder 1999, Wiesbaden, Panorama Verlag 2004
  • Galilei - a very short introduction , Oxford University Press 2001

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Drake, Stillman
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian historian of science and Galileo Galilei researcher
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1910
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1993