Ullica Segerstråle

Ullica Christina Olofsdotter Segerstråle (born October 10, 1945) is a Finnish-American sociologist and historian of science who is professor of sociology at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Segerstråle's published nonfiction books include Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond (2000) and Nature’s Oracle: The Life and Work of W. D. Hamilton (2013), the latter of which is the first biography of evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton.

Early life and education Ullica Christina Olofsdotter Segerstråle was born October 10, 1945, in Finland. She holds two M.S. degrees – one in organic chemistry and one in sociology – from the University of Helsinki, as well as an M.A. in communication from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University.

Her Ph.D. thesis, supervised jointly by sociologist Alessandro Pizzorno, historian of science Everett Mendelsohn and positive psychologist Philip J. Stone, described the sociobiology controversy of the 1970s that she had witnessed first-hand as a postgraduate student at Harvard, and it subsequently formed the basis of an article published in the first issue of Biology & Philosophy in 1986. The thesis was welcomed by E.O. Wilson and dismissed by his opponent Richard Lewontin.

Recognition A Guggenheim Fellow in 2002, she was elected a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2012. and a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science.

Books