Charles Coulston Gillispie (/ɡɪˈlɪspi/; August 6, 1918 – October 6, 2015) was an American historian of science. He was the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History of Science, Emeritus at
Princeton University.[1] He was succeeded by
Arno J. Mayer.
Life
The son of Raymond Livingston Gillispie and Virginia Coulston,[2] Gillispie grew up in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.[3] He attended
Wesleyan University, graduating in 1940 with a major in Chemistry[4] and gained his PhD from
Harvard University in 1949. He also served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
Gillispie joined the Department of History at Princeton University, establishing the Princeton Program in History of Science in the 1960s. He was elected a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963.[5] He was president of the
History of Science Society in 1965–66.[6] In 1972, he was elected to the
American Philosophical Society.[7] He headed the editorial board of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, for which he received the
Dartmouth Medal in 1981. Gillispie also received the
Pfizer Award in 1981. He was awarded the
George Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society in 1984 and the
Balzan Prize in 1997 for "the extraordinary contribution he has made to the history and philosophy of science by his intellectually vigorous, precise works, as well as his editing of a great reference work".
^Clare D. Kinsman; Christine Nasso; Gale Research Company (1975). Contemporary authors: a bio-bibliographical guide to current authors and their works, Volumes 21-24. Gale Research Co.
ISBN0810300273.
^Alumni Record of Wesleyan University, 1921, p. 481