Location
Age
Area of FocusAbout Margaret's Work
Margaret Rossiter is an historian of science who has helped establish the history of women in science as a scholarly field.
Rossiter’s work has been of critical importance to understanding both American scientific institutions and the experience of women in academic and intellectual institutions. She is the author of Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (1982) and of Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940-1972 (1995). In these studies, she examines women’s efforts to establish themselves as contributing members of the scientific community and the factors that inhibited their visible participation in the sciences. She has also written on other aspects of the history of science in the United States, including agricultural chemistry in the nineteenth century, science education, scientific information and communication, and the history of philanthropy.
Biography
Rossiter is the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of the History of Science at Cornell University, where she is a founding member of its Department of Science and Technology Studies. She served as editor of Isis, the official journal of the History of Science Society, from 1994 to 2003.
Rossiter received an A.B. (1966) from Radcliffe College, an M.S. (1967) from the University of Wisconsin, and an M. Phil. (1969) and Ph.D. (1971) from Yale University.
Last updated January 1, 2005.
Published on August 1, 1989
