Marshall Clagett

Marshall Clagett (January 23, 1916, Washington DC – October 21, 2005, Princeton, New Jersey) was an American scholar who specialized in the history of science before Galileo, especially Archimedes.

Career

He began his undergraduate education in 1933 at the California Institute of Technology. He obtained both the A.B. and M.A. from George Washington University in 1937. In 1941, he received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and enlisted in the US Navy as an Ensign; he mustered out in 1946 holding the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

After one year at Columbia University as an instructor in history and the history of science, Clagett joined the University of Wisconsin's department of History of Science, eventually becoming Vilas Research Professor, in the Department of History of Science. From 1959 to 1964, he was also director of the University's Institute for Research in the Humanities. After two visiting appointments at the Institute of Advanced Study's School of Historical Studies, 1958–59 and 1963, he was made Professor in 1964, and Professor Emeritus in 1986.

The author of more than a dozen volumes on the history of science and mathematics, he was perhaps best known for his landmark 10-tome, five-volume work, Archimedes in the Middle Ages, published between 1964 and 1984. Over the remainder of his life, he completed three of the planned four volumes of Ancient Egyptian Science.

He was honored with the following prizes:

• 1981, the John Frederick Lewis Prize of the American Philosophical Society, and the Alexandre Koyré Medal of the International Academy of the History of Science, for Archimedes in the Middle Ages;
• 1989, the Lewis Prize again for Ancient Egyptian Science, Vol. I;
• 1995, one of two newly-created Giovanni Dondi dall'Orologio European Prizes in the History of Science, Technology, and Industry, given in recognition of a lifetime of scholarship in the history of science;
• 1996, the 35th annual International Galileo Galilei Prize, given by the Award Foundation of the Italian Rotary for outstanding contributions by a foreign scholar to the study and diffusion of Italian culture.

A fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and past president of the History of Science Society, he was a member and former vice president of the American Philosophical Society. He was also a member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik, and the International Academy of the History of Science, which he served as vice president from 1968 to 1971.

References

• Obituary of Marshall Clagett
• Another obituary of Marshall Clagett (PDF format)
• Obituary of Marshall Clagett with photo

Persondata
Name	Clagett, Marshall
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Date of birth	January 23, 1916
Place of birth
Date of death	October 21, 2005
Place of death