Marshall Clagett

Marshall Clagett (January 23, 1916 – October 21, 2005) was an American historian of science who specialized first in medieval science and later in Ancient Egyptian science. John Murdoch described him as "a distinguished medievalist" who was "the last member of a triumvirate [with Henry Guerlac and I. Bernard Cohen, who] … established the history of science as a recognized discipline within American universities."

Early life and education Clagett was born January 23, 1916 in Washington, D.C. In 1935, he transferred to George Washington University, completing his BA and MA in 1937. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946.

Career After one year at Columbia University as an instructor in history and the history of science, in Columbia's Program in Contemporary Civilization, and he edited the resulting seminal volume of papers, published 1959. Among his notable students at Wisconsin were the historians of medieval science John E. Murdoch and Edward Grant,

Clagett held two visiting appointments (1958–59 and 1963) at the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and in 1964 he was appointed permanently to the faculty of the School of Historical Studies. Clagett became professor emeritus in 1986 and continued research and writing.

During his time at the Institute for Advanced Study, Clagett particularly focused on the history of mathematics in medieval science. He published the first volume of a major five-volume work on the history of medieval influence of the Greek mathematician Archimedes, Archimedes in the Middle Ages, in 1964 and a study on the medieval French philosopher and mathematician Nicole Oresme, Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and Motions, in 1968. He continued to publish new volumes of his work on Archimedes to 1984. Clagett also developed a professional interest in Ancient Egyptian science circa 1977, when he began to study Egyptian hieroglyphs, and this interest developed into his next major series Ancient Egyptian Science. The first volume was published in 1988, and he completed three of four planned volumes before his death.

Over the full course of his career, he wrote more than a dozen volumes on the history of science, many of them focusing on the role of mathematics in natural philosophy and on pure mathematics.

Death and family Clagett died on October 21, 2005 in a hospital in Princeton, New Jersey. 1969, the Charles Homer Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy of America; 1981, the John Frederick Lewis Award of the American Philosophical Society, and the Koyré Medal of the International Academy of the History of Science;

Selected publications

1948 – “Some General Aspects of Medieval Physics,” Isis 39: 29–44. 1952 – (ed.) The Medieval Science of Weights (Scienta De Ponderibus): Treatises Acribed to Euclid, Archimedes, Thabit Ibn Qurra, Jordanus De Nemore and Blasius of Parma. University of Wisconsin Press. 1953 – "Medieval Latin Translations from the Arabic of the Elements of Euclid, with Special Emphasis on the Versions of Adelard of Bath," Isis 44: 16–42. 1955 – Greek Science in Antiquity. Abelard-Schuman, 1955, Revised edition, Collier Books, 1963. 1959 – The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages. University of Wisconsin Press. 1959 – (ed.) Critical Problems in the History of Science. University of Wisconsin Press. 1959 – "The Impact of Archimedes on Medieval Science," Isis 50: 419–429. Reprinted in The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Michael H. Shank, University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 337–347. 1961 – (ed. with Gaines Post and Robert Reynolds) Twelfth-Century Europe and the Foundations of Modern Society. University of Wisconsin Press. 1964–84 – Archimedes in the Middle Ages, 5 vols in 10 tomes. University of Wisconsin Press, 1964; American Philosophical Society, 1967–1984. 1968 – Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and Motions. University of Wisconsin Press. 1989–99 – Ancient Egyptian Science: A Source Book, 3 vols. American Philosophical Society.