Oral history interview with Allen G. Debus
- 2007-Mar-29
Oral history interview with Allen G. Debus
- 2007-Mar-29
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.Allen G. Debus grew up in Evanston, a suburb to the north of Chicago, where he attended public schools. He earned a BS in chemistry, with almost enough credits for a second major in history. After working at Abbott Laboratories for about five years, Debus decided to seek a Ph.D. in the history of science, at Harvard University under I. Bernard Cohen. He accepted an assistant professorship at University of Chicago and became the first director of the Morris Fishbein Center for the Study of the History of Science and Medicine. Debus wanted to study the place of chemistry in the scientific revolution with materials available to all; to that end he has a large collection of rare books from this time period, a collection he began in the early 1940's. He says that he has about 650 such books, the earliest from 1501.
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About the Interviewer
James J. Bohning was professor emeritus of chemistry at Wilkes University, where he had been a faculty member from 1959 to 1990. He served there as chemistry department chair from 1970 to 1986 and environmental science department chair from 1987 to 1990. Bohning was chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of the History of Chemistry in 1986; he received the division’s Outstanding Paper Award in 1989 and presented more than forty papers at national meetings of the society. Bohning was on the advisory committee of the society’s National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program from its inception in 1992 through 2001 and is currently a consultant to the committee. He developed the oral history program of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and he was CHF’s director of oral history from 1990 to 1995. From 1995 to 1998, Bohning was a science writer for the News Service group of the American Chemical Society. In May 2005, he received the Joseph Priestley Service Award from the Susquehanna Valley Section of the American Chemical Society. Bohning passed away in September 2011.
Institutional location
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| Oral history number | 0365 |
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Interviewee biographical information
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Education
| Year | Institution | Degree | Discipline |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1947 | Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) | BS | Chemistry |
| 1949 | Indiana University, Bloomington | AM | History (assistant to John J. Murray) |
| 1961 | Harvard University | PhD | History of Science (under I. B. Cohen) |
Professional Experience
Abbott Laboratories
- 1951 to 1956 Research and Development Chemist
Harvard University
- 1957 to 1959 Teaching Fellowship
University of Chicago
- 1961 to 1965 Assistant Professor of the History of Science
- 1965 to 1968 Associate Professor of the History of Science
- 1968 to 1978 Professor of the History of Science
- 1971 to 1977 Director, Morris Fishbein Center for the study of the History of Science and Medicine
- 1978 to 1996 Morris Fishbein Professor of the History of Science and Medicine
- 1996 to 2008 Morris Fishbein Professor Emeritus of the History of Science and Medicine
Honors
| Year(s) | Award |
|---|---|
| 1957 to 1958 | Bowdoin Award in the Natural Sciences |
| 1959 to 1960 | Fulbright and Social Science Research Council Fellowship |
| 1960 to 1961 | Fels Foundation Fellowship |
| 1961 to 1962 | American Philosophical Society Research Grant |
| 1961 to 1963 | National Science Foundation Research Grant |
| 1962 to 1970 | National Institutes of Health Research Grant |
| 1966 to 1967 | Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge |
| 1966 to 1967 | Guggenheim Fellowship |
| 1969 | Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge |
| 1971 to 1974 | National Science Foundation Research Grant |
| 1972 to 1973 | Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton |
| 1974 to 1975 | National Institutes of Health Research Grant |
| 1975 to 1976 | National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, The Newberry Library, Chicago |
| 1977 to 1978 | National Science Foundation Research Grant |
| 1977 to 1978 | National Institutes of Health Research Grant |
| 1978 | Edward Kremers Award of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy |
| 1978 | Member, Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award Committee |
| 1978 | Pfizer Book Award, History of Science Society |
| 1980 to 1981 | National Science Foundation Research Grant |
| 1980 | Member, Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award Committee |
| 1981 to 1982 | Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin |
| 1981 to 1983 | National Science Foundation Research Grant |
| 1982 | Appointed to the International Advisory Committee, the Cohn Institute for the History of Science and Ideas of Tel-Aviv University and the Sidney M. Edelstein Center for the History of Philosophy of Science of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem |
| 1983 | Invited Lecturer, University of Coimbra |
| 1984 to 1985 | Visiting Distinguished Professor, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Arizona State University |
| 1985 | DSc, Honorary, Catholic University of Louvain |
| 1985 to 1986 | Consultant, Literature and Science Curriculum, Georgia Institute of Technology |
| 1987 | NEH Fellow, The Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, D. C. ) |
| 1987 | Elected Foreign Associate Member, Académico Correspondente Estrangeiro (Classe de Ciências) Académia das Ciências de Lisboa |
| 1987 | Dexter Award, American Chemical Society |
| 1988 | Member, International Program Committee, Portuguese meeting of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science |
| 1990 | Visiting Lecturer, Insituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici |
| 1990 | Visiting Professor, Instituto de Química, Universidade de Sãn Paulo, Brazil |
| 1992 to 1993 | Consultant to the History of Medicine Library of the National Library of Medicine for the 500th Anniversary of the birth of Paracelsus |
| 1992 to 1997 | National Institutes of Health Research Grant |
| 1993 to 1996 | Appointed to the International Advisory Committee, the Cohn Institute for the History of Science and Ideas of Tel Aviv University |
| 1994 | Sarton Medal, History of Science Society |
| 1996 | Distinguished Lecturer, History of Science Society |
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The published version of the transcript may diverge from the interview audio due to edits to the transcript made by staff of the Center for Oral History, often at the request of the interviewee, during the transcript review process.