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Boston memories
History's David Wilson is making a return trip to the Dibner Institute
at MIT
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David Wilson remembers his days at the Dibner Institute for the History
of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
fondly.
"The Dibner Institute had its own building on the MIT campus and
my office, which was three times as big as mine here, gave me a great
view of the Charles River and the Boston skyline," the professor
of history, mechanical engineering and philosophy recalled.
But Wilson's time at MIT was much more than scenic views and spacious
offices. He was a fellow at the Dibner Institute during the 1998 spring
semester, along with other academicians from Israel, Germany, Russia,
France, Britain and China.
The Dibner Institute is an international center for advanced research
in the history of science and technology.
Wilson recalled that every Tuesday during his stay, each fellow presented
some aspect of his or her research at the Institute’s yearlong program
of lunchtime colloquia. Those presentations were open to the public.
What happened next put a little different spin on the colloquia.
"The next day at lunch, the discussion would continue on that subject,
but just among the fellows," Wilson said. "I hadn't seen it
done that way before. By doing it like this, it really allowed you to
explore a subject quite deeply."
This May, Wilson will return to MIT for a Tenth-Year Fellows Reunion at
the Dibner Institute.
"This will be a gathering of fellows from the ten-year history of
the Institute," he said. "It will be an international meeting
of probably a hundred or more historians of science. It promises to be
a highly significant meeting for me."
During his initial stay at the Dibner Institute, Wilson used his time
away from the Iowa State campus to work on his upcoming book, Natural
Philosophy in Theology in the Scottish Enlightenment.
During this time period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Wilson
said the University of Edinburgh was the world's leading scientific institution.
Leading scientists of the time included economist Adam Smith, philosophers
David Hume and Thomas Reid, geologist James Hutton, chemist Joseph Black,
and physicist John Robison, most of whom were connected with the University
of Edinburgh.
"As one person rightfully said, 'No small nation since ancient times
has had such a stellar group of minds,'" Wilson said. "A lot
of really interesting thinking comes from 18th century Scotland."
Prior to focusing on the Scottish Enlightenment, Wilson wrote on Victorian
physics. He is the author of Kelvin and Stokes: A Comparative Study
in Victorian Physics and articles in journals like Annals of Science.
He is also the editor of the two-volume Correspondence between Sir
George Gabriel Stokes and Sir William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs.
This spring Wilson will continue his activities in Victorian physics.
He has been asked to give lectures on Stokes both in Cambridge, England,
in March, and in Dublin, Ireland, in June. Stokes was Irish and for more
than 50 years, he was the Lucasian professor at Cambridge University,
a position held by Isaac Newton and currently by Stephen Hawking.
Around LAS
March 10-23, 2003
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