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I. Bernard Cohen

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I. Bernard Cohen
Born1 March 1914
Far Rockaway, New York City, New York, US
Died20 June 2003(2003-06-20) (aged 89)
Waltham, Massachusetts, US
OccupationHistorian of science
TitleVictor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Science
Academic background
EducationHarvard University (AB 1937, PhD 1947)
ThesisBenjamin Franklin’s Experiments
Doctoral advisorGeorge Sarton
Academic work
DisciplineHistory of science
InstitutionsHarvard University (1942–2002)
Notable students

I. Bernard Cohen[1] (1 March 1914 – 20 June 2003) was an American historian of science. He taught at Harvard University for 60 years, 1942–2002, mentoring notable students including George Basalla, Lorraine Daston, and Allen G. Debus. He was the author of many books on the history of science and, in particular, Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and Howard H. Aiken. He made a full English translation of Newton's Principia Mathematica and was the second chief editor of the history of science journal Isis.

Early life and education

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I. Bernard Cohen was born 1 March 1914 in Far Rockaway, New York City, New York, US to parents Isadore and Blanche Cohen; he had one older sister, Harriet.[2] His father died just before Cohen's bar mitzvah at age 12, and became unmotivated and spent the next years performing unremarkably in schools and early jobs; he attended Columbia Grammar School through 1929 and then spent one semester at New York University before transferring to Farmingdale Agricultural Institute on Long Island for veterinary medicine.[3] This also did not work out; he returned to New York University but then dropped out and became a Prohibition rum runner while living with relatives in Connecticut.[3] After nearly being shot while unloading rum, he enrolled in Valley Forge Military Academy and began to take his studies more seriously; there, he graduated top of his class in 1933.[3]

Cohen next attended Harvard University, where he intended to become a theoretical or mathematical chemical physicist and became a protege of George D. Birkhoff.[3] He graduated in 1937 with a BSc in mathematics and honors in history, with an undergraduate thesis "The Billiard Ball Problem and the Recurrence Property of Dynamical Systems" advised by Birkhoff.[4] He moved directly into Harvard's new PhD program in the history of science, the first in the US,[4] and became the first American to receive a PhD in the history of science in 1947.[5]

In this time, Cohen worked closely with historian of science George Sarton, founder of the History of Science Society and founder of the journal Isis,[6] becoming his personal assistant 1938–1941.[7] In 1941, petitioning Harvard president James B. Conant to support Cohen in a teaching position,[4] Sarton wrote Cohen was "the best disciple I have had thus far out of a selected group of about a thousand men. He is also the only one whom I could train completely, and his preparation for work in my field is as good as could be from every point of view, scientific, philosophic, historical, and linguistic."[8] Teaching duties beginning 1942 and secret work for the US in World War II 1942–1943 took his attention off his dissertation research for years, and in the end his final thesis in 1947 was his already-published 1941 edited volume Benjamin Franklin’s Experiments: A New Edition of Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Edited, with a Critical and Historical Introduction.[5]

Career

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Cohen taught at Harvard from 1942 until his hospitalization for terminal illness in 2002.[9] He started as a teaching fellow and next an instructor in physics, while still a graduate student.[10] During his tenure, he developed Harvard's program in the history of science. He succeeded Sarton as editor of Isis[11] (1952–1958) and, later, served as president of the History of Science Society (1961–1962).[12][13] Cohen was also a president of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science 1968–1971.[14][15] In 1977 he was appointed Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Science at Harvard.[16]

Cohen was an internationally recognized Isaac Newton scholar; his interests ranged from science and public policy to the history of computers, with several decades as a special consultant for history of computing with IBM.[17] Among his hundreds of publications were the books Franklin and Newton (1956), The Birth of a New Physics (1959), The Newtonian Revolution (1980), Revolution in Science (1985), Science and the Founding Fathers (1995), Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer (1999), and his last book, The Triumph of Numbers (2005), as well as the two jointly authored contributions of a variorum edition and a 1999 English translation of Newton's Principia.[2] Many, including Cohen,[16] consider this last to be Cohen's most important work: the 1999 translation of Newton's Principia, made in collaboration with the Latinist Anne Whitman until her death in 1984. This 974-page work took Cohen over 15 years to fully translate.[18]

Cohen's April 1955 interview with Albert Einstein was the last Einstein gave before his death, in that same month.[19] It was published that July in Scientific American, which also later published Cohen's 1984 essay on Florence Nightingale.

In 1973 he gave three lectures for the A.S.W. Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography.[20] In 1974, he was awarded the Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society.[14][21] He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[22] and the American Philosophical Society.[23]

Cohen supervised the doctoral dissertations of Lorraine Daston, Allen G. Debus,[24] Judith Grabiner, Kenneth Manning, Uta Merzbach, Duane H. D. Roller, and Joan L. Richards.[25] Among Cohen's other students and protégés were the Islamic philosopher Seyyed Hosein Nasr;[26] Tufts University professor George E. Smith; Bucknell University professor Martha Verbrugge; and Jeremy Bernstein.

Personal life

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Cohen married Frances Parsons Davis in 1944 and they remained married until her death in 1982.[27] They had a daughter, Frances Bernard Cohen, who became a New York psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.[28] He remarried in 1984 with the social worker Susan T. Johnson, gaining two stepsons.[29] He died of the bone marrow disorder myelodysplasia in 2003.[16][30][31]

Publications

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  • 1948 – Science, Servant of Man: A Layman's Primer for the Age of Science (Little, Brown, LCCN 49-27692)
  • 1953 – Benjamin Franklin: His Contribution to the American Tradition (Makers of the American Tradition series, Bobbs-Merrill, LCCN 53-9874)
  • 1956 – Franklin and Newton: An Inquiry into Speculative Newtonian Experimental Science and Franklin's Work in Electricity as an Example Thereof (American Philosophical Society, LCCN 56-13224)
  • 1960 – The Birth of a New Physics (Science Study Series S10, Anchor Books, Doubleday, LCCN 84-25582; W. W. Norton 1985 revised ed., ISBN 0-393-01994-2)
  • 1971 – Introduction to Newton's Principia (Harvard University Press 1st ed., LCCN 78-28770; iUniverse 1999 ed., ISBN 1-58348-601-1)
  • 1980 – The Newtonian Revolution: With Illustrations of the Transformation of Scientific Ideas (Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-22964-2)
  • 1981 – edited, Studies on William Harvey (Arno Press, ISBN 0-405-13866-0)
  • 1984 – Cohen, I. Bernard (1984). "Florence Nightingale". Scientific American. 250 (3): 128–37. Bibcode:1984SciAm.250c.128C. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0384-128. PMID 6367033. (alternative pagination depending on country of sale: 98–107)
  • 1985 – Revolution in Science (Belknap Press, ISBN 0-674-76777-2)
  • 1985 – Album of Science: From Leonardo to Lavoisier, 1450–1800 (Scribner, ISBN 0-684-15377-7)
  • 1990 – Benjamin Franklin's Science (Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-06658-8)
  • 1994 – Interactions: Some Contacts between the Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences (MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-03223-6)
  • 1995 – Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Madison (W.W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-03501-8)
  • 1996 – edited, with Richard S. Westfall, Newton: Texts, Backgrounds, Commentaries (Norton Critical Editions, W.W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-95902-3)
  • 1999 – Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer (History of Computing, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-03262-7)
  • 1999 – edited, with Gregory W. Welch, Makin' Numbers: Howard Aiken and the Computer (MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-03263-5)
  • 1999 – translated, with Anne Whitman, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-08816-6)
  • 2000 – edited, with Jed Z. Buchwald, Isaac Newton's Natural Philosophy (MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-02477-2)
  • 2002 – edited, with George E. Smith, The Cambridge Companion to Newton (Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-65177-8)
  • 2005 – The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life (W.W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-05769-0)

References

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  1. ^ "'my correct and full legal name is (and always has been) and is listed as, I. Bernard Cohen, which is the name recorded on my birth certificate, my passport, my FBI clearance, every copyright for some thirty or more books, and other official records': I. Bernard Cohen, letter dated 9 Mar. 1992", from Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), p. 5
  2. ^ a b Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), p. 4
  3. ^ a b c d Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), p. 5
  4. ^ a b c Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), p. 6
  5. ^ a b Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), p. 11
  6. ^ Holton (2009), pp. 79–80, 82
  7. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), pp. 4–7, 11–16
  8. ^ Harvey (2009), p. S277
  9. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), pp. 6, 34
  10. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), p. 8
  11. ^ Holton (2009), p. 84
  12. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), p. 18
  13. ^ "Past Presidents". History of Science Society. Retrieved 9 November 2024.
  14. ^ a b Hiebert (1975), pp. 478–481
  15. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), pp. 4, 24
  16. ^ a b c Poitier (2003)
  17. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), pp. 4, 25–27
  18. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), pp. 21–23, 30–31
  19. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), p. 32
  20. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), p. 24
  21. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), pp. 15–16
  22. ^ "I. Bernard Cohen". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  23. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  24. ^ Hankins (1999), pp. 789
  25. ^ I. Bernard Cohen at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  26. ^ Dastagir (2018), p. 619
  27. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), pp. 10–11, 28
  28. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), p. 11
  29. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), pp. 28, 34
  30. ^ Dauben, Gleason & Smith (2009), p. 34
  31. ^ Saxon (2003)

Bibliography

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