Lynn K. Nyhart

Lynn K. Nyhart is an American historian of science. She holds the named chair the Vilas-Bablitch-Kelch Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She served as president of the History of Science Society from 2012 to 2013. Her main areas of interest are the history of biology, relations between elite and popular science, and theories of individuality, parts, and wholes. Her book Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany received the Susan E. Abrams Prize in 2009, and she was awarded the 2026 George Sarton Medal for lifetime achievement in the history of science.

Early life and education Nyhart received her A.B. from Princeton University in 1979, her M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982, and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986.

Career Nyhart taught at the Lyman Briggs School and Department of History at Michigan State University (1986–87) and was a visiting faculty member at Princeton University before joining the Department of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has risen from assistant professor (1988–95), to associate professor (1995–2006), and to full professor (2006–present). She has served as chair of the Department of the History of Science, and has been involved in the Women's Studies Program. In 2012 she became the Vilas-Bablitch-Kelch Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of the History of Science. Two evolutionary morphologist who she discusses in detail are Carl Gegenbaur and Ernst Haeckel. This has been applauded as "a very ambitious book that tries to do many things and does most of them quite well."

Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany (2009) examines the transition from a natural science of collecting and taxonomic classification to a dynamic examination of the interactions of organisms, with each other and within their environments. She looks at the transfer of ideas in museums and educational institutions, focusing on figures such as Philipp Leopold Martin, Friedrich Junge, and Karl August Möbius to understand the modernization of ideas. Described as "an exemplary book of historical scholarship", it received the Susan E. Abrams Prize in 2009.

She served as president of the History of Science Society from 2012 to 2013. She was awarded the Society's George Sarton Medal in 2026.

Works Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany (University of Chicago Press, 2009) Des sciences citoyennes? La question de l’amateur dans les sciences naturalistes (Citizen sciences? The question of the amateur in the natural-history sciences). La Tour d’Aigues (France): Editions de l’Aube, 2007. Co-editor, with Florian Charvolin and André Micoud. Science and Civil Society Co-editor, with Thomas Broman, Osiris, Volume 17. (University of Chicago Press, 2002). Biology Takes Form: Animal Morphology and the German Universities, 1800–1900 (University of Chicago Press, 1994).

Awards 2026, George Sarton Medal 2011–16: Kellett Mid-Career Award, UW-Madison (5-year award) 2009, Susan E. Abrams Prize in History of Science for Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany