Richard S. Westfall

Richard S. Westfall (April 22, 1924 – August 21, 1996) was an American historian of science. He is best known for his biography of Isaac Newton, Never at Rest, and for his study of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. He taught as distinguished professor at Indiana University and served as a president of the History of Science Society. He won the 1985 George Sarton Medal for lifetime achievement in the history of science after winning the 1982 Leo Gershoy Award and 1983 Pfizer Award for Never at Rest.

Life Born in Fort Collins, Colorado on April 22, 1924, Westfall graduated from high school in 1942 and enrolled at Yale University to study engineering. His time at Yale was interrupted by two years of US Navy service in World War II 1944-1946, Reviews also included sharp criticisms, for instance from the British historian of mathematics and Newton scholar Derek T. Whiteside, who alleged defects in the handling of Newton's mathematical education in particular. Westfall considered Newton a driven, neurotic, often humorless and vengeful individual. He published a condensed and simplified version of the biography as The Life of Isaac Newton in 1993.

Westfall published other books on the history of science, including The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics (1971), Force in Newton's Physics: the Science of Dynamics in the Seventeenth Century (1971), and Essays on the Trial of Galileo (1989). Late in life he constructed a database of information on the lives and careers of more than 600 scientists of the early modern era, his Catalog of the Scientific Community in the 16th and 17th Centuries, which he made available to other researchers.

Recognition and awards

Westfall received many awards, most notably election as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Literature and the Sarton Medal (1985) of the History of Science Society. His Never at Rest earned the History of Science Society's Pfizer Award in 1983 as the best book on the history of science and the American Historical Association's Leo Gershoy Award in 1982 as the most outstanding work published in English on any aspect of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European history. He also earlier received the History of Science Society's Pfizer Award in 1972 for his Force in Newton's Physics He won the Wilbur Cross Medal from the Yale Graduate School in 1988.