Ruth Schwartz Cowan

Ruth Schwartz Cowan (born 1941) is an American historian of science, technology and medicine noted for her research on the history of human and medical genetics, as well as on the history of household technologies. She is the author of a widely used textbook, A Social History of American Technology, on the history of colonial American, industrial, and 20th century socio-technical relations.

Cowan was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Betty (a home-maker and antique-dealer) and Louis E. Schwartz (an attorney and office manager). She co-wrote a book detailing their assimilation as Jewish immigrants with her husband Neil.

She attended the Brooklyn public schools, graduating in 1957 from Midwood High School. Cowan received a B.A. in zoology from Barnard College in 1961, an M.A. in history from the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, and a Ph.D. in the history of science from Johns Hopkins University in 1969.

More Work for Mother Cowan's book More Work for Mother found that since 1700, "technological change shifted the burden of domestic labor from adult men and children to mothers and wives."

Honors and awards Cowan's More Work for Mother received the Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology in 1984. In 1997 the Society for the History of Technology also awarded her the Leonardo da Vinci Medal.

Cowan received the John Desmond Bernal Prize in 2007 for distinguished scholarly contributions to the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) for her textbook A Social History of American Technology.

Cowan was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2014.

Selected publications Heredity and Hope: The Case for Genetic Screening (2008). Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press. , More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. Basic Books. 1983. A Social History of American Technology, Oxford University Press, 1997,