Pamela H. Smith is an American historian of science specializing in attitudes to nature in early modern Europe (1350-1700), with particular attention to craft knowledge and the role of craftspeople in the Scientific Revolution. She is the Seth Low Professor of History, ^[1] founding director of the Making and Knowing Project, ^[2] founding director of the Center for Science and Society, ^[3] and chair of the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience, ^[4] all at Columbia University. Smith is serving a two-year term (2016-2018) as president of the Renaissance Society of America. ^[5]

Smith received a bachelor's degree from the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, in 1979 (First Class Honors), and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, in 1991. ^[6] Smith was the Margaret and Edwin F. Hahn Professor in the Social Sciences, and professor of history at Pomona College from 1990-2005 and the director of European Studies at Claremont Graduate University from 1996–2003.

Awards and fellowships

• Smith was a fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg, the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin in 1994–1995. ^[7]
• In 1995, Smith received the Pfizer Award for her book The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (1994). ^[8]
• Smith was selected as a John S. Guggenheim Foundation fellow in 1997–1998. ^[9]
• Smith won the Sidney M. Edelstein international fellowship for research in the history of chemistry in 1997–1998. ^[10]
• Smith served as Getty Research Institute Scholar in 2000–2001. ^[11]
• In 2003-2004 and 2009–2011, Smith was awarded a New Directions Fellowship by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. ^[12]
• Her book, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (2004) won the 2005 Leo Gershoy Prize awarded by the American Historical Association. ^[13]
• Smith was a Samuel H. Kress Paired Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in 2008. ^[14]
• Smith was a Fellow at Princeton University's Davis Center for Historical Studies in 2009–2010. ^[15]

Selected publications

Books

• From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022.
• The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250-1750, co-edited with Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop, Manchester University Press, 2015. ISBN  978-0-7190-9060-8
• Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge, co-edited with Amy Meyers and Harold J. Cook, Bard Graduate Center/ University of Michigan Press, 2014. ISBN  978-0-4721-1927-1. Second printing, 2017. ISBN  978-1-9417-9211-7
• Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400-1800 co-edited with Benjamin Schmidt, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. ISBN  978-0-2267-6329-3
• The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ISBN  978-0-2267-6423-8
• Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe, co-edited with Paula Findlen, New York: Routledge, 2002. ISBN  978-0-4159-2816-8
• The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Paperback edition, 1996; reprint paperback 2016.; reprint paperback 2016. ISBN  978-0-6911-7323-8 (paperback), ISBN  978-0-2267-6426-9 (ebook)

References