Public Memory
Commemorative Practices in Science
Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Collective Memory
Abir-Am, Pnina G. and Clark A. Elliot, editors Osiris, Volume 14: Commemorative Practices in Science. Distributed for University of Chicago Press Journals. 1999 Series: (OSR) Osiris. Reviewed in BJHS
, Isis.
Cloth ISBN 0-226-00092-3
Paper ISBN 0-226-00093-1
270 pp.
This volume breaks new ground in the study of how national culture, disciplinary tradition, epistemological choice, and political expediency affect the construction of collective memory and, then, how historians work with—and sometimes against—those constructions. Essays focus on a variety of commemorative rites, ranging from the quincentennial of Copernicus to the centennials of Pasteur, Darwin, and Planck; from the tercentenary of Harvard to the half centennial of Los Alamos; from the centennial of evolutionary theory to anniversaries of research schools in molecular biology.
Contributors include Clark A. Elliott, Owen Gingerich, Dieter Hoffmann, Dominque Pestre, Robert W. Seidel, and V. Betty Smocovitis.