Nicolaas Adrianus Rupke
Encyclopedia
Nicolaas Adrianus Rupke (* 22 January 1944) is a Dutch historian of science, who began his academic career as a marine geologist.
He studied biology and geology at the university of Groningen and geology and the history of science at Princeton
and Oxford. When in 1977 he was elected to a Wolfson College, Oxford
research position in the history of science, Rupke made this subject his full-time occupation. A series of similar international research posts followed, until in 1993 he took up a professorship at Göttingen University to teach the history of science and medicine. Since 2009, Rupke holds a Lower Saxony research chair.
Rupke is known for his studies of late-modern biology, geology and science & religion. With an interest in the biographical approach, he restored to their contemporary prominence several nineteenth-century scientists, most important among them Richard Owen
who well before the appearance of The Origin of Species
developed a naturalistic theory of evolution, albeit a non-Darwinian one.
Studies of Alexander von Humboldt
came next, in which Rupke developed what he terms the metabiographical approach
by exploring how a famous life – in this case Humboldt's – may be multiply retold and reconstructed as part of different belief systems and memory cultures.
Rupke is a fellow of Germany's National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences
.
He studied biology and geology at the university of Groningen and geology and the history of science at Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
and Oxford. When in 1977 he was elected to a Wolfson College, Oxford
Wolfson College, Oxford
Wolfson College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Located in north Oxford along the River Cherwell, Wolfson is an all-graduate college with over sixty governing body fellows, in addition to both research and junior research fellows. It caters to a wide range of...
research position in the history of science, Rupke made this subject his full-time occupation. A series of similar international research posts followed, until in 1993 he took up a professorship at Göttingen University to teach the history of science and medicine. Since 2009, Rupke holds a Lower Saxony research chair.
Rupke is known for his studies of late-modern biology, geology and science & religion. With an interest in the biographical approach, he restored to their contemporary prominence several nineteenth-century scientists, most important among them Richard Owen
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
who well before the appearance of The Origin of Species
The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the...
developed a naturalistic theory of evolution, albeit a non-Darwinian one.
Studies of Alexander von Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt...
came next, in which Rupke developed what he terms the metabiographical approach
Metabiography
Metabiography is concerned with the relation of biographical representations to the temporal, geographical, institutional, intellectual or ideological locations of biographers. It is an hermeneutics of biography that sees the biographee as a collective construct of different memory cultures and so...
by exploring how a famous life – in this case Humboldt's – may be multiply retold and reconstructed as part of different belief systems and memory cultures.
Rupke is a fellow of Germany's National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences
Göttingen Academy of Sciences
The Göttingen Academy of Sciences is the second oldest of the seven academies of sciences in Germany. It has the task of promoting research under its own auspices and in collaboration with academics in and outside Germany...
.
Selected Books
- Distinctive Properties of Turbiditic and Hemipelagic Mud Layers (with Daniel J. Stanley). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1974.
- The Great Chain of History: William Buckland and the English School of Geology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.
- Vivisection in Historical Perspective (ed.). London, Croom Helm, 1987; Routledge, 1988.
- Science, Politics and the Public Good (ed.). London: Macmillan, 1988.
- Medical Geography in Historical Perspective (ed.). London: Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, 2000.
- Richard Owen: Biology without Darwin (revised ed. of Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist, New Haven and London: Yale, 1994) Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
- Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography (corrected edition). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
- Eminent Lives in Twentieth-Century Science and Religion (ed.) (revised and much expanded edition). Frankurt a.M.: Lang, 2009.
- Albrecht von Haller im Göttingen der Aufklärung (ed. with Norbert Elsner). Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009.