Owen Hannaway

Owen Hannaway (8 October 1939 – 21 January 2006) was a Scottish historian of science. He was particularly known for work in the history of chemistry, especially the 1975 book The Chemists and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry. He was a professor and department chair at Johns Hopkins University.

Early life and education He was born on 8 October 1939 in Glasgow, Scotland and educated at the Jesuit school St Aloysius' College then Glasgow University. He earned his BSc in chemistry from Glasgow in 1961 and a PhD in chemistry in 1965. His doctoral advisor at Glasgow was Andrew Kent, and his thesis subject was the chemistry textbooks used in European universities in the 17th century.

Hannaway retired at Johns Hopkins in 1999, becoming professor emeritus. His retirement was honored with a symposium organized by the Chemical Heritage Foundation titled "Chemists and Texts: A Symposium on the History of Chemistry in Honor of Dr. Owen Hannaway." He received the 1988 Derek Price/Rod Webster Prize from the History of Science Society for his 1986 Isis paper "Laboratory Design and the Aim of Science: Andreas Libavius versus Tycho Brahe" and the 1991 Dexter Award from the American Chemical Society,