Sally Gregory Kohlstedt
Professor
Earth Sciences
375-02 Tate Laboratory
+1 612 624 9368
Specialities
Natural sciences in the United States; institutional and cultural contexts (amateurs, museums, education); women, gender and science
Bio
Awarded the Sarton Medal in 2018, given each year to an outstanding historian of science, Kohlstedt has engaged actively in national professional organizations, serving in multiple roles, perhaps most notably as President of the History of Science Society. She also was elected to the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, where she subsequently chaired its committee on Science, Ethics, and Religion. Now Professor Emerita of History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, she specializes in the history of the natural sciences, the public influence of scientific institutions, and the dynamics of gender in scientific practice. Throughout her career, she has led programs and conferences relating to women’s and feminist studies and contributed to multiple editorial advisory boards and foundations, as well as served in multiple administrative roles on campus and beyond.
She is author of The Formation of the Scientific Community (University of Illinois Press) and co-authored editions, including Science in the American Century (University of Chicago Press) with David Kaiser; Women, Gender and Science: New Directions (University of Chicago Press) with Helen Longino; and Historical Writing on American Science (University of Chicago Press) with Margaret Rossiter. Kohlstedt’s book Teaching Children Science: Hands-On Nature Study in North America (University of Chicago Press) won the History of Science Society’s Rossiter Prize. She has published essays and articles in multiple edited books and in Isis, Science, Journal of the History of Biology, Museum History Journal, Signs, Historical Records of Australian Science, and Osiris.
Awards
Sarton Medal, History of Science Society, 2018
Joseph H. Hazen Education Prize, History of Science Society, 2015
Outstanding Alumni Award, Valparaiso University 2011
Ada Comstock Outstanding Woman Scholar, 2011
Fulbright Senior Fellowship, University of Auckland, 2008
President's Award for Outstanding University Service, 2004
Mullen/Spector/Truax Women's Leadership Award, UMN, 2002
George Taylor Distinguished Service Award, Institute of Technology, 2000
UMN TEL Award: Outstanding Computer Aided Course Project, 1998
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Selected Publications
“Qualified Mentorship: Josephine Tilden and the Minnesota Seaside Station, 1901-1907,” Journal of the History of Biology (July 4, 2022). Open source at https://rdcu.be/cQZlN
“Mobile Botany: Education, Horticulture, and Commerce in New York City, 1890 to the 1930s” Mobile Museums: Collections in Circulation, ed. Felix Driver and Mark Nesbitt (London: University College London Press, 2021), pp. 178-204. Volume as open access at https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/141630; essay at https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv18kc0px.14
“Teaching and Exhibition on Nineteenth-Century Science Campuses,” Science Museums in Transition: Cultures of Display in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America, ed. Carin Berkowitz and Bernard Lightman (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2017). https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=36692
“Museum Perceptions and Productions: American Migration of Maori Hei-tiki,” Endeavor (2016): 3-17. Open access at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160932716300035?via%3Dihub
"Creative Niche Scientists: Women Educators in North American Museums, 1880-1930" Centaurus (May 2013), 153-174.
Science and the American Century: Readings from Isis, edited with David Kaiser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo14365516.html
Teaching Children Science: Hands-On Nature Study in North America, 1890-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). Order from University of Chicago Press.