I I EUGENE GARFIELD INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC iNFORMATION~ I 3501 MARKET ST., PHI LADELPHIA, PA 19104 George Sarton: The Father of the I&tory of Scfesme. Part 2. Sartoss !Nsapes a New Discipiisse Number 26 Jlfiv 1, 1985 Introduction engineer. The young couple established The first part of this short biography themselves in a picturesque country focused on the early lie of George Al- house in Wondelgem, near Ghent. fred LKon Sarton, 1 widely regarded as There, Sarton’s only surviving child, one of the key figures in the establish- Eleanore Marie (later shortened to May) ment of the history of science as a disci- was born. There, too, Sarton founded pline in its own right. I examined the fac- the primary journal of the history of sci- tors that influenced Sarton’s philosophy ence, Isis, which he edited for 40 years, concerning the interconnections be- and began work on his mammoth Zrrtro- tween the two cultures of science and duction to the History of .%ience. s the humanities. According to F.S. During these early years, it seemed as Bodenheimer, Sarton called this philos- though Sarton’s life and career had set- ophy “the new humanism. ” Embodied in tled into a comfortable pattern. But the his vision of the hktory of science was devastation of World War I shattered his the synthesis of science and the humani- scholarly idyll, forcing the Sartons to ties that would help make “scientists abandon their home in Belgium. They who are not mere scientists, but also could take so little with them that the men and citizens. “z precious notes for Sarton’s Introduction As mentioned in Part 1, shortly after to the History of Science were stored in a Sarton received his doctorate for his the- metal trunk buried in his garden. How- sis on celestial mechanics, on June 22, ever, a distant cousin later managed to 1911, he married Eleanor Mabel Elwes, dig up the notes and return them to Sar- the daughter of a Welsh civif and mining ton after the war. SartossEmfgrates search of a position that would support both his family and hk dream of completing his The Sartons first went to England, where History of Science. In September 1915, as George worked as a censor in the WarOffice. May reveals in her memoir, 1 Knew a Phoe- Although the flood of refugees from Belgium nix, she and her mother, Mabel, completed was welcomed, the War Office did not pay the hazardous passage across the Atlantic enough to support a family of three, and em- and joined George at the New York home of ployment opportunities in the history of sci- Leo Baekeland, the eccentric Belgian inven- ence were nowhere to be found. E.J. Dijk- tor of Bakelite, the first successful plastics sterhuis notes that the Italian hktonan of sci- (p. 86-91) ence, Aldo Mieli, offered Sarton the hospital- By good fortune, Sarton had reached the ity of KM home at Chlanciano, near Sienna.4 US at a time when the history of science was Instead, Sarton left his wife and child in En- becoming a recognized activity. Robert K. gland while he went to the United States in Merton, Columbia, and Arnold Thackray, 248 University of Pennsylvania and present editor position. With the hefp of Carnegie Institu- of Isis, note that although it was far from be- tion trustee Andrew Dickson White, Wood- ing an established discipline and was almost ward created the post of research associate in unthought-of as a profession, it was begin- the history of science for Sarton. Characteris- ning to reach maturity.s (p. 110) Never- tically, according to I. Bernard Cohen, a theless, Sarton endured an uncertain time in member of the board that assumed the duties which he must have wondered whether or not of edhing Isis when Sarton eventually he would have to abandon his dream of a life stepped down, afmost as soon as Sarton heard exclusively devoted to the history of science. that he had secured a permanent position Despite this, he turned down a good job as a with a reguIar salary, he made plans to revive librarian at Rice University, Houston, Texas, Isis, which had been dormant during the because the university could not meet the one years of the war.7 condition about which he was adamant: that Thus began Sarton’s nearly lifelong associ- his employer take over the publication and ation with the Carnegie Institution; but financial support of Isis, which had been out though he was employed on a full-time basis of print since shortly after the invasion of Bel- in Washhrgton, he remained at Cambridge to gium.s (p. 93) study in the then-new Widener Library.b (p. The summer of 1916 found Sarton deliver- 110) When the war ended and he recovered ing a course of lectures at the University of 11- his notes—which were greatly augmented by linois, Urbana, and through Zsis board mem- the mass of new data he had accumulated in ber David Eugene Smith, among others, he the US—he found himself secure in one of tbe soon received other appointments.4 In the world’s great libraries, with his salary guaran- same year, for example, he gave a series of six teed by the Carnegie Institution, and with no lectures on Renaissance science at the Lowell specific responsibilities or duties other than Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, and later those be set for himself. He was free at last to was a lecturer at the George Washington Uni- pursue the mission that he had never forgot- versity, Washington, DC. ten. Among those who helped Sarton arrange this frenetic but sustained round of tempo- Later Works rary appointments was L.J. Henderson, a bio- chemist and a junior but influential member Sarton’s sense of mission found its first, and of the Harvard University faculty at Cam- perhaps best, expression in hk most-cited bridge, Massachusetts.b (p. 110) Henderson work, the Introduction to the History of Sci- had been teaching a course on the history of ence.s,s,g The development of this work is a science regularly since 1911 and supported microcosm of the evolution of Sarton’s con- Sarton’s goals for the discipline. He managed cept of the unity of scientific and cultural en- to obtain an appointment for Sarton as a “lec- deavors. Sponsored by the Carnegie Institu- turer in philosophy” at Harvard that extended tion, the Introduction has been cited in the until 1918, when the US involvement in Science Citation Indexm (SCP ), Sociai Sci- World War I caused financial problems for ences Citation IndeP (SSCP ), and the A rts the university. & Humanities Citation Index% (A& HCfl”) over 150 times from 1955 through 1984. It was not conceived as a work of hktorical narra- A Permanent PosMfon tive, but rather as a bibliography that would In response to Sarton’s renewed appeals serve as the basic source material for such a for work, Robert S. Woodward, second pres- hk.tory. 10It would deal with all science, cov- ident and successful organizer of the Carne- ering the enterprise from its earliest begin- gie Institution, Washington, DC, provided nings up through the twentieth century. Sar- the crucial financial support for Sarton.b ton at first imagined that it woufd be a rela- (p. 110) Wcrodward had a personal interest in tively short work. the history of science, and Sarton had been in Gradually, there emerged the concept of a touch with him even before the exile from colossal work that would consist of three se- Belgium. Although Woodward had initially ries of books. The first would survey cross- been unsympathetic to Sarton’s dream of sections of civilization by half-centuries; the establishing the history of science as a science second would deal with dtiferent types of civ- in its own right, he had slowly softened his ilizations; and the third would discuss, in de- 249 .. ..........__. tail, the histories of various %peciaf” sci- again the task eluded him. He published two: ences. The entire work would comprise some A History of Science. Ancient Science 26 volumes, but Sarton lived to complete only through the Golden Age of Greece, 12cited the first three volumes of the first series.4 60 times from 1955 through 1984, and A The first of these volumes, From Homer to History of Science, Hellenistic Science and Omar Khayyam,3 was published in ]927 and Culture in the Last Three Centun”es B. C,, 13 contained 840 pages. It represents nine years cited about 45 times from 1955 through 1984. of active work and covered the period from Ironically, although Sarton had been wont to Homer through the eleventh century. The say that his real interests lay in the modern second volume took another four years to period, when he died, the bulk of his pub- complete. Published in 1931 in two large fished work covered antiquity and the Middle parts consisting of a total of 1,252 pages, it Ages. 10 was titled From Rabbi Ben Ezra to Roger Bacons and covered the twelfth and thk- Honors and Awards teenth centuries. The third volume, g also printed in two parts, did not appear until Among the honors bestowed on Sarton 1947; when it did, it was apparent that the were the Prix Binoux of the AcadEmie des project could not continue, for it covered on- Sciences, Pans, in 1915 and again in 1935, ly the fourteenth century and had a total of and the Charles Homer Haskins Medal of the 1,018 pages.