Michael H. Shank

Position title: Emeritus Professor

Email: mhshank@wisc.edu

Address:
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

Michael H. Shank

Biography

Broad interests in the physical sciences (and  their analogues and contexts) before 1700. Primary research interests focus on late medieval natural philosophy and astronomy, with special attention to the Viennese tradition and most specifically, of late, the work of Johannes Regiomontanus.  Additional related interests: science and the  medieval university, science and early printing, and Piero della Francesca.

Education

Ph.D., Harvard University, History of Science, 1983
A.M., Harvard University, History of Science, 1978
M.A., University of Notre Dame, History and Philosophy of Science, 1975
B.A., Goshen College, Physics, 1971

Books

Selected Publications

  • “Regiomontanus and Astronomical Controversy in the Background of Copernicus,” in Rivka Feldhay and Jamil Ragep, eds., Before Copernicus: The Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), pp. 79-109, 232-43.
  • “The Almagest, Politics, and Apocalypticism in the Conflict between George of Trebizond and Cardinal Bessarion,” Almagest 8.2 (2017), pp. 49-83.
  • “Naturalist Tendencies in Late-Medieval Science,” in Peter Harrison and Jon H. Roberts, eds., Science without God? Rethinking the History of Scientific Naturalism [Ian Ramsey Centre Studies in Science and Religion] (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 37-57.
  • “Regiomontanus versus George of Trebizond on Planetary Order, Distances, and Orbs (Almagest 9.1)” in David Juste, Benno van Dalen, and Dag Nikolaus Hasse, and Charles Burnett, eds., Ptolemy’s Science of the Stars in the Middle Ages (Turnhout:  Brepols, 2020), pp. 345-426.