History

This award supports doctoral dissertation research in history of science that focuses on the use of mathematical and chemical symbolism. Such notation is currently regarded as essential to scientific work. By contrast, for much of Western European history, the use of symbols in science was not regarded as a suitable approach. However, by the nineteenth century, symbolic notation had become ubiquitous. This project's objective is to explain why European scientists came to see symbolic notation as credible during the early modern period.

This award provides support for the Making and Knowing Project, a research initiative of the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University. The research brings together students, practitioners, scholars of the humanities and social sciences, natural scientists, and specialists from computer science and the digital humanities in formal university courses and a series of "expert crowdsourcing" workshops and working groups. The award will support further development of the project's collaborative and pedagogy-driven research methodology.