Everett I. Mendelsohn, a Harvard professor who as a scholar of the historical past of science explored how science’s evolution has been influenced by historic and cultural traits and vice versa, died on June 6 at his dwelling in Cambridge, Mass. He was 91.
His spouse, Mary B. Anderson, mentioned the trigger was a stroke.
Professor Mendelsohn had a protracted affiliation with Harvard, starting in 1953, when he was a graduate pupil in biology, and persevering with for greater than half a century. In 1960, he earned a Ph.D. within the historical past of science on the college and, after a yr as a junior fellow, started educating there. He retired in 2007.
Over that point he lectured on numerous matters — genetic engineering, the setting, the making of the atomic bomb — and inspired college students to look at how science had influenced world occasions and on a regular basis lives.
“Everett was one in every of a brand new technology of social historians of science who insisted that it was not sufficient to concentrate to the inner mental story of science,” Anne Harrington, the Franklin L. Ford professor of the historical past of science at Harvard, mentioned by electronic mail. “The sector wanted to attend additionally to how science was formed by and likewise helped form the circumstances of the social world.”
She added: “There was a powerful moral dimension to that work, not less than for Everett. For years, he taught a course to undergraduates referred to as merely ‘Science and Its Social Issues.’ Utilizing historic strategies to carry into focus a few of the moral challenges and ambiguities of science appears at the moment like an apparent transfer to make; it was not apparent on the time.”
Professor Mendelsohn had a specific curiosity within the relationship between science and warfare. As a lifelong pacifist, he was energetic in teams just like the American Mates Service Committee and the American Affiliation for the Development of Science’s Committee on Science, Arms Management and Nationwide Safety, of which he was a founder. In February 1968, shortly after coming back from a monthlong journey to Cambodia, Thailand and South Vietnam throughout the Vietnam Battle, he painted a bleak view of the army scenario that was at odds with the official American authorities line.
“I feel we’re taking a really unhealthy shellacking militarily,” he advised The Boston Globe, “to the extent that each one of many defenses had been pierced, from one finish of the nation to the opposite.”
In an in depth interview with The Harvard Crimson that very same month, he additionally described the toll the conflict was taking over civilians, one thing he noticed throughout a go to to a hospital in Quang Ngai.
“After we went past the medical ward into the extreme harm ward, you noticed the complete horror of the conflict itself,” he mentioned.
A gaggle of physicians dispatched to South Vietnam the earlier yr by President Lyndon B. Johnson had reported discovering only some circumstances of civilians burned by napalm (“A better variety of burns seemed to be attributable to the careless use of gasoline in stoves,” the group’s report mentioned). However Professor Mendelsohn mentioned he noticed dozens of napalm victims on the hospital.
Extra not too long ago, Professor Mendelsohn had devoted consideration to encouraging dialogue which may result in lasting peace within the Center East. His household, in a ready obituary, mentioned that he thought of the dearth of progress on that entrance “his biggest life failure.”
Everett Irwin Mendelsohn was born on Oct. 28, 1931, in New York and raised within the Bronx. His father, Morris, was a salesman for an organization that imported sweet from Europe; his mom, Might (Albert) Mendelsohn, was a secretary within the New York Metropolis public college system.
After graduating from Brooklyn Technical Excessive College in 1949, Professor Mendelsohn studied each biology and historical past at Antioch School in Ohio, incomes a Bachelor of Science diploma in 1953.
In 1955, whereas doing graduate work at Harvard, he studied for a time on the Marine Organic Laboratory in Woods Gap, Mass., the place he labored beneath the biologist Clifford Grobstein on a challenge that concerned extracting hormones from the attention stalks of lobsters. That process left the lobster alive and effectively, and likewise edible.
“I had numerous associates,” Professor Mendelsohn mentioned in a 2013 video interview for an archive dedicated to the historical past of the laboratory, “as a result of all of them wished to come back whereas we needed to do away with the lobsters, which meant cooking them on the seashore.”
He based the Journal of the Historical past of Biology in 1968.
“Biology, particularly, should be studied when it comes to its relationships with the opposite sciences and with the mental currents of its day,” he wrote in an introductory essay within the journal’s first problem. “It might be examined as effectively for its interplay with the establishments of the society which spawns it.”
Whichever department of science he was writing or lecturing about, he was involved with ensuring the topic was not arcane. He advised doctoral college students that they need to be capable of exit to Harvard Sq. and clarify their dissertations to folks on the road.
In a 2013 lecture at Dartmouth School, he talked in regards to the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Industrial Revolution and the latest digital and organic revolutions, and ended by questioning if advances had been in peril of turning into so advanced that most people wouldn’t be capable of perceive them or make knowledgeable choices about their purposes — a prospect he didn’t welcome.
“Scientific revolutions require extra absolutely developed citizen participation, one thing which is tough, as a result of the data stage may be excessive, and one of many challenges is the way you bridge that hole,” he mentioned.
He added, “Science, I suppose lets say, in some methods, is actually too essential in our lives to be left to consultants alone.”
Professor Mendelsohn’s marriage in 1954 to Mary Maule Leeds resulted in divorce. He and Dr. Anderson, an economist and writer, married in 1974. Along with her, he’s survived by a sister, Bernice Bronson; three kids from his first marriage, Daniel, Sarah and Joanna Mendelsohn; Dr. Anderson’s son from a earlier marriage, Marshall Wallace; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
“Within the classroom,” Professor Harrington mentioned, “Everett had a present of gathering collectively the threads of a dialogue, tidying up any incoherences and distilling the deeper insights. ‘Let me see if I can pull collectively what I’m listening to right here,’ he would say. Then he would present college students an elevated and elegantly synthesized model of their contributions, in order that they’d all discover themselves amazed and impressed by their very own collective thoughtfulness.”
