Ronald L. Numbers

Position title: Emeritus Professor

Biography

Ron Numbers, Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine, recently completed his thirty-eighth year in the department and anticipates retiring at the end of the calendar year. He continues to edit, with David Lindberg, the eight-volume Cambridge History of Science (2003- .), five volumes of which have appeared and a sixth is in press. His Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (Harvard University Press, 2009), has already been translated into Korean, Polish, Spanish, and Portuguese, and is forthcoming in Chinese and Greek. He has recently finished co-editing Gods in America: Religious Pluralism in the United States (Oxford University Press, in press), with Charles Cohen; and Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet (under review at Oxford University Press), edited with Terrie Aamodt and Gary Land. In retirement he plans to complete Science and the Americans: A History (for Basic Books), a biography of John Harvey Kellogg (for Harvard University Press), and three other unfinished books. During the 2012-13 academic year he will be traveling to Brazil, Greece, and Abu Dahbi, while continuing to serve as past president on the executive committee of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science/Division of History of Science and Technology.

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, History (History of Science), 1969
M.A., Florida State University, History, 1965
B.A., Southern Missionary College, Mathematics and Physics, 1963

Books

Ronald L. Numbers (Co-editor), and Kostas Kampourakis (Co-editor). Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science. Harvard University Press, 2015.
Terri Dopp Aamodt (Co-editor), Gary Land (Co-editor), and Ronald L. Numbers (Co-editor). Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Charles L. Cohen (Co-editor), and Ronald L. Numbers (Co-editor). Gods in America: Religious Pluralism in the United States. Oxford University Press, 2013.
Peter Harrison (Co-editor), Ronald L. Numbers (Co-editor), and Michael H. Shank (Co-editor). Wrestling With Nature: From Omens to Science. University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Ronald L. Numbers (Editor). Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. Harvard University Press, 2009.
Ronald L. Numbers. The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (Expanded Edition). Harvard University Press, 2008.
Ronald L. Numbers. Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008.
David C. Lindberg (Co-editor), and Ronald L. Numbers (Co-editor). When Science and Christianity Meet. University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Ronald L. Numbers. Darwinism Comes to America. Harvard University Press, 1998.
Judith W. Leavitt (Co-editor), and Ronald L. Numbers (Co-editor). Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health. Vol. Third Edition, Revised, University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.

Courses Taught

MHB 331-Science, Religion and Medicine
MHB 394-Science in America
MHB 504: Society and Health Care in American History (Syllabus)
MHB 575-Clinical Medicine Since 1750
MHB 720: Historical Perspectives in Medicine
MHB 901: Graduate Studies in Medical History
MHB 915: Science in America
MHB 919: Readings in American Medicine and Public Health
MHB 921: Science in International and National Context
History of Science 720: Historiography and Methods