Marie Boas Hall

Marie Boas Hall (October 18, 1919 – February 23, 2009) was an American historian of science and is considered one of the postwar period pioneers of the study of the Scientific Revolution during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Early life and education Boas was born Marie Boas in Springfield, Massachusetts, on October 18, 1919. Her parents, Ralph Boas and Louise Schulz, were English teachers at Wheaton college in Norton . Her older brother was mathematician Ralph P. Boas Jr. and her uncle was historian of ideas George Boas.

She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1955. She won the George Sarton Medal, the most prestigious award of the History of Science Society, together with her husband Alfred Rupert Hall in 1981.

Works

Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958. The Scientific Renaissance, 1450-1630. New York: Harper, 1962. Robert Boyle on Natural Philosophy: An Essay, with Selections from His Writings. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965. Nature and Nature's Laws. Documents of the Scientific Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1970. The Mechanical Philosophy. New York: Arno Press, 1981. All Scientists Now: The Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Promoting Experimental Learning: Experiment and the Royal Society, 1660-1727. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Henry Oldenburg: Shaping the Royal Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.