I. Bernard Cohen (1 March 1914 – 20 June 2003) was an American historian of science. He taught at Harvard University for 60 years, 1942–2002, becoming the first chair of its Department of the History of Science when it was established in 1966. He mentored notable students including George Basalla, Lorraine Daston, Joan L. Richards and Allen G. Debus. He was the author of many books on the history of science and, in particular, on 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

I. Bernard Cohen was born 1 March 1914 in Far Rockaway, New York City, to Isadore and Blanche Cohen; he had one older sister, Harriet. His father died just before Cohen's bar mitzvah at age 12, and Cohen 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. This also did not work out, so he returned to New York University but then dropped out and became a Prohibition rum runner while living with relatives in Connecticut. He moved directly into Harvard's new PhD program in the history of science, the first in the US,

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, becoming his personal assistant 1938–1941. In 1941, petitioning Harvard president James B. Conant to support Cohen in a teaching position, 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. He was the first chairman of Harvard's Department of the History of Science and he rose to the position of Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Science at Harvard in 1977. During his tenure, he developed Harvard's general education program and its program in the history of science. (1952–1958) and later served as president of the History of Science Society (1961–1962). Cohen was also a president of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science 1968–1971. In 1973 he gave three lectures for the A.S.W. Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography. In 1974, he was awarded the Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society. He was awarded the 1986 Pfizer Award for his book Revolutions in Science. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1952 and of the American Philosophical Society in 1995.

Cohen's scholarship ranged from science and public policy to the history of computers, with particular concentrations in the study of Isaac Newton and early American science and several decades as a special consultant for history of computing with IBM. He published over 150 articles and over twenty books. He received tenure in 1953 and became the first chairman of Harvard's Department of the History of Science when it was established in 1966. For a time in the 1940s, Cohen said he was "in charge of all elementary laboratory work at Harvard — civilians, army ASTP, and Navy V-12—1600 students at the peak." During this time, he prepared a book on the applications of science for laymen titled Science, Servant of Man, published 1948.

Cohen's early teaching work developed the undergraduate General Education program at Harvard. He served as a research assistant to Conant on Conant's own work on general education, for instance Conant's Terry Lectures at Yale University, which Conant adapted into a General Education course of his own, "On Understanding Science," then into the short book On Understanding Science: an Historical Approach (1947) and then the longer Science and Common Sense (1951). Cohen also served as a consultant to the faculty committee that established General Education at Harvard

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

While teaching for Harvard, Cohen adapted his teaching materials for larger audiences. Cohen wrote thirteen general-interest essays published in Scientific American between 1948 and 1992. Cohen's April 1955 interview with Albert Einstein for the July 1955 Scientific American was the last Einstein gave before his death. In March 1984, Scientific American published an essay by Cohen on Florence Nightingale and her contributions to social statistics. In the 1970s, Cohen became general editor of a five volume series to provide albums of educational illustrations for classes in the history of science, a project inspired and led by Charles Scribner, Jr., and he contributed a volume to the series himself: From Leonardo to Lavoisier, 1450–1800 (1980). His professional work on Newton began via his dissertation work on Benjamin Franklin, particularly the influence of Newton's Opticks on Franklin. His first published work on Newton was "Newton and the Modern World” in The American Scholar in 1942. They had also planned a joint commentary, but it was never begun.

During the preparation of this variorum edition, he also produced his Introduction to Newton's Principia (1971) and a substantial biographical entry on Newton for the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1974). After completing the variorum edition, Cohen's work on Newton focused on an interpretive work, The Newtonian Revolution: With Illustrations of the Transformation of Scientific Ideas (1980), which he had begun by presenting the Wiles Lectures at the University of Belfast in 1966.

After Whitman's death, Cohen halted work on the new translation of Newton's Principia out of grief. It was the first new English translation of Newton's complete “Principia” since 1729, 270 years before. Reviewers in Science and The English Historical Review praised both the introduction and the arrangement of material.

Between the publication of Benjamin Franklin’s Experiments and Franklin and Newton, Cohen also contributed to the establishment of Harvard's Collection of Historic Scientific Instruments, focusing on instruments of the 18th century, and he prepared the book Some Early Tools of American Science (1950). the general interest of many rich anecdotes of 18th century intellectual history and spent several decades as a special consultant for history of computing with IBM.

Personal life

Cohen married Frances Parsons Davis in 1944 and they remained married until her death in 1982. They had a daughter, Frances Bernard Cohen, who became a New York psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He died of the bone marrow disorder myelodysplasia in 2003.

Selected publications

General

  • 1948 – Science, Servant of Man: A Layman's Primer for the Age of Science (Little, Brown, )
  • 1954 – The Nature and Growth of the Physical Sciences (Wiley, )
  • 1955 –
  • 1960 – The Birth of a New Physics (Science Study Series S10, Anchor Books, Doubleday, ; W. W. Norton 1985 revised ed., )
  • 1984 – (alternative pagination depending on country of sale: 98–107)
  • 1985 – Revolution in Science (Belknap Press, )
  • 1985 – Album of Science: From Leonardo to Lavoisier, 1450–1800 (Scribner, )
  • 1994 – Interactions: Some Contacts between the Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences (MIT Press, )
  • 2005 – The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life (W.W. Norton, )

Isaac Newton

  • 1942 –
  • 1958 – edited, Isaac Newton’s Papers and Letters in Natural Philosophy (2nd edition Harvard University Press 1978, )
  • 1971 – Introduction to Newton's Principia (Harvard University Press 1st ed., ; iUniverse 1999 ed., )
  • 1972 – edited, with Alexandre Koyré and Anne Whitman, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Vol. I & II, Third Edition (1726) with Variant Readings (Harvard University Press, )
  • 1980 – The Newtonian Revolution: With Illustrations of the Transformation of Scientific Ideas (Cambridge University Press, )
  • 1996 – edited, with Richard S. Westfall, Newton: Texts, Backgrounds, Commentaries (Norton Critical Editions, W.W. Norton, )
  • 1999 – translated, with Anne Whitman, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (University of California Press, )
  • 2000 – edited, with Jed Z. Buchwald, Isaac Newton's Natural Philosophy (MIT Press, )
  • 2002 – edited, with George E. Smith, The Cambridge Companion to Newton (Cambridge University Press, )

Early American science

  • 1941 – edited, Benjamin Franklin’s Experiments: A New Edition of Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Edited, with a Critical and Historical Introduction (Harvard University Press)
  • 1950 – Some Early Tools of American Science: An Account of the Early Scientific Instruments and Mineralogical And Biological Collections in Harvard University (Harvard University Press; 2014 reprint ed. )
  • 1953 – Benjamin Franklin: His Contribution to the American Tradition (Makers of the American Tradition series, Bobbs-Merrill, )
  • 1956 – Franklin and Newton: An Inquiry into Speculative Newtonian Experimental Science and Franklin's Work in Electricity as an Example Thereof (American Philosophical Society, )
  • 1961 – Science and American Society in the First Century of the Republic (Ohio State University)
  • 1976 –
  • 1990 – Benjamin Franklin's Science (Harvard University Press, )
  • 1995 – Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Madison (W.W. Norton, )

Computing

  • 1990 –
  • 1999 – Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer (History of Computing, MIT Press, )
  • 1999 – edited, with Gregory W. Welch, Makin' Numbers: Howard Aiken and the Computer (MIT Press, )

References

Bibliography