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Alan Shapiro
Professor Emeritus
231 Tate, 624-4387, email ashapiro @ physics.umn.edu
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Guggenheim Fellow, 1985-86, AAAS Fellow, 1988; International Academy of the History of Science, Corresponding Member,1984, Effective (voting) Member, 1999, Vice President, 2005-09.
Member-at-large, Section L (History & Philosophy of Science), AAAS 1984-87; Chair-elect, Chair, Retiring Chair, Section L, AAAS, 1998-2001; Co-organizer, 12 Sloan Foundation Workshops on “The Nature and limitations of historical knowledge,” 1996-98; Physics in Perspective, Editorial Board, 1997-2007; Physics Today, Book Review Advisory Board, 1997-; Centaurus, Associate Editor, 1994-; Early Science and Medicine, Board of Editors, 2002-; Nuncius, Editorial Board, 2005.
Current Research
My research area is the history of the physical sciences from antiquity to the early 19th century. I specialize in the history of optics from the 16th to 19th centuries and am working on the final two volumes of an edition of Isaac Newton's optical papers. I am also interested in the historical development of scientific methodology and the interaction of science, technology, and art in the problem of color.
Selected Publications
“Twenty-nine years in the making: Newton’s Opticks,”, Perspectives in Science (2008)
“Images: real and virtual, projected and perceived, from Kepler to Dechales,”, Early Science and Medicine (2008)
ed. Carolin Bohlmann, Thomas Fink and Philipp Weiss (Munich: Wilhelm Fink), In search of Cartesian painting: Descartes on the nature of light and color,", Lichtgefüge des 17. Jahrhunderts: Rembrandt und Vermeer, Leibniz und Spinoza, (2008)
Jed Z. Buchwald and Allan Franklin (Berlin, Springer), “Skating on the edge: Newton’s investigation of chromatic dispersion and achromatic prisms and lenses,”, Wrong for the Right Reasons (2005)
“Newton’s ‘experimental philosophy’,”, Early Science and Medicine (2004)
Education
M.Phil., History of Science, Yale, 1969.
M.S., Physics, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 1965.
B.S., Physics, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 1962.