Lynn K. Nyhart
Professor, History of Science
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Special interests and recent research:
History of biology, especially natural history, genetics, and evolution, and marine biology; biology and society; feminist approaches to science, technology, and gender. I am currently working on two overlapping projects. One concerns science in the civic sphere, especially natural history clubs, societies, zoos, museums, and school teaching, in late nineteenth- and early twentieth century Germany; the other focuses on natural history museum exhibits and their makers during the same period, but not confined to Germany. Both projects are aimed at uncovering the ways in which ideas about science and nature circulate in cultural settings beyond the scientific elite, and the ways in which ostensibly non-scientific cultural concerns shape elite science.
Recent publications:
Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Science and Civil Society, with Thomas H. Broman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).- "Economic and Civic Zoology in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany: The 'Living Communities' of Karl Moebius," Isis, 1998, 89: 605-630. Winner of 1999 Derek Price Award from the History of Science Society for outstanding article published in Isis.
- "Natural History and the New Biology," Cultures of Natural History, ed. N. Jardine, J. A. Secord, and E. C. Spary (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 426-443.
Biology Takes Form: Animal Morphology and the German Universities, 1800-1900 (University of Chicago Press, 1995).
Regularly offered courses:
- 202: The Rise of Modern Science (meets with ILS 202) (spring semester)
- ILS 202: Western Civilization: Science, Technology, Philosophy II (meets with HistSci 202)
- 333: History of Modern Biology (alternate years)
- 343: The Darwinian Revolution (alternate years)
- 909: Seminar in History of Biology and Medicine (alternate years; topics change each time. Recent topics include: Relations of Elite and Popular Biology, 1880-1940; History of Natural History; Recent Readings in History of Evolution and Molecular Biology)