Most readers regard histories of science as dry, encyclopedic catalogs of equations, illustrated with portraits of severe-looking Europeans. And in fact, until about twenty years ago, this picture was generally correct: histories of science tended to be exhaustive recitals of the accomplishments of the icons, with no mention of their failures, accompanied by sanitized, sidebar biographies. However a new trend is afoot in the study of the history of science. Many recent authors have opted to use analogy and example to explain technical concepts and to delve more deeply into the human side of the heroes and heroines of science. Dr. Cathy Cobb, writer and research scientist, has written two works of this new genre-Creations of Fire: The Lively History of Chemistry from Alchemy to the Atomic Age (Plenum, 1995) and Magick, Mayhem, and Mavericks: The Spirited History of Physical Chemistry (Prometheus, 2002). In her presentation, she compares the two approaches using readings from representative works. She shares some interesting and heretofore largely neglected anecdotes from the lives of our scientific ancestors and uses these to illustrate what she believes to be the value of this new approach to the history of science.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Cathy Cobb received her PhD (1987) and her Masters (1985) in chemistry from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She received a Bachelors from Reed College, Portland, Oregon (1981). In addition to industrial experience with Westinghouse Savannah River, she has taught chemistry at California State University at Los Angeles and Augusta State University, where she received the Louis Bell Research Award. Dr. Cobb is currently adjunct Professor of Chemistry at the University of South Carolina at Aiken and physics and calculus instructor at Aiken Preparatory School.

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         Dr. Andrew U. Meyer at meyer@njit.edu

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