Gillispie, professor emeritus, renowned historian dies at 97

Charles Gillispie, the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Emeritus died on Oct. 6. He was 97.

Gillispie, a renowned historian of science, established the program in the History of Science at the University. His honors included the International Balzan Prize for History and Philosophy of Science in 1997, as well as the History of Science Society's 1984 George Sarton Medal for lifetime scholarly achievement.

Gillispie was born on Aug. 6, 1918 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and raised in the same town. In a 1999 retrospective article on his life "Apologia Pro Vita Sua," Gillispie said he enjoyed reading history as a child, even in the form of the stories of King Arthur. He majored in chemistry at Wesleyan University, and went on to postgraduate studies in chemical engineering at Harvard, where he studied history for a semester.

In 1946, Gillispie returned to Harvard from his service in the Chemical Mortar Battalion in Europe during World War II, and switched his postgraduate degree from chemical engineering to the history of science.

“I had never read, or even heard of a single work in history of science, and I hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about it,” he wrote in the same article, looking back to the beginning of his career as a historian of science. The discipline appealed to Gillispie in combining his two passions for history and science.

In 1947, Gillispie joined the University's faculty as a lecturer on British history while pursuing his Ph.D. in history at Harvard. He received his doctoral degree from Harvard in 1949.

During his first sabbatical in 1954 in France, Gillispie conducted research on the scientific discoveries of revolutionary France. “Almost everything I have written since goes back to those heady days,” Gillispie wrote of that year.

Returning from the sabbatical and a subsequent year at the University of Oxford as a guest lecturer, Gillispie began to offer undergraduate courses on the history of science.

He launched the program in History and Philosophy of Science in the fall of 1960, with three students. In 1964, Gillispie contributed to the program's growth by recruiting his long-time friend Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science who at that time had just released "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."

Angela Creager, the Thomas M. Siebel Professor in the History of Science, noted that Gillispie’s first book, "The Edge of Objectivity," is exemplary of his scholarship.

“[The Edge of Objectivity] is a tremendous synthesis of the emergence of science from the early-modern period to Einstein,” she said.

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As the program became more established, Gillispie turned his attention to what is now one of his best-known works, the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, which he worked on from 1964 to 1980 as the editor. Gillispie oversaw the entire editorial process and read every article before it went to press. The 16th volume was completed in 1980, and in 1981, the dictionary was awarded the American Library Association’s Dartmouth Medal for outstanding reference work.

He stepped down from leading the program soon after, although he continued to attend the weekly graduate seminars until a couple of years ago.

History professor Emily Thompson GS ’92, who was his last doctoral student, explained that his supervision has influenced her work tremendously.

“It was a combination of rigor, and curiosity, and style, that his own work was characterized by, that he helped foster in my own work," she said. “For the most part, he was a hands-off advisor who let me find my own voice, and kept me on track and made sure that voice was as clear and as interesting as possible.”

Gillispie, aside from being a rigorous scholar, also cared deeply for his students, Daniel Sachs Class of 1960 Scholarship advisor Matthew Stewart ’85 said.

Stewart explained that Gillispie helped establish the Sachs Scholarship, one of the highest distinctions given to graduating University seniors, after the death of his student Daniel Sachs ’60 in 1967. The Sachs Scholarship funds students to complete a two year postgraduate degree at Oxford University.

The Scholarship was an example of the concern Gillispie took in every aspect of his work, Stewart added.

“Part of it was [his commitment to] Princeton, part of it was his commitment to scholarship, and more generally it was his commitment to developing students in a complete way,” he said.