Introduction to the History of Science: Volume 1

George Sarton

Jan 1927 · Carnegie Institution of Washington

About the author

George Sarton is generally considered the founder of the history of science as a scholarly discipline. He studied chemistry, celestial mechanics, and mathematics at the University of Ghent, where he earned a Ph.D. in mathematics (1911). In 1912, while still a resident of his native Belgium, he founded Isis, a "review dedicated to the history of science." Sarton immigrated to the United States in 1915, assuming a research position in the Widener Library at Harvard University in 1916. He remained at Harvard for the rest of his life, becoming a lecturer in 1920 and founding the History of Science Society in 1924. In 1940 Sarton was appointed professor of the history of science. Sarton also established the new discipline by example, writing more than 300 books, articles, and essays on ancient and medieval science; on early historians of the exact sciences, such as Jean Etienne Montucla (1725--99); and on the development of physics in the twentieth century. He nurtured his encyclopedic approach to the history of science, which he coupled to a broad vision of its potential contribution to what he called the "New Humanism," by editing Isis for almost four decades and compiling nearly 80 critical bibliographies. In published lectures and guides to the history of science, such as his Study of the History of Science (1936) and Guide to the History of Science (1952), as well as the editorial work for Isis, Sarton defined this emerging discipline while actively promoting teaching and research.