Judith Kaplan
Public Historian of Science
Judy Kaplan develops resources that will help public audiences look at the world from the perspective of the history of science. At the Institute, she edits the Scientific Biographies and contributes to a wide variety of interpretive projects. Her background is in the history of the language sciences, and she enjoys writing about the histories of philology and linguistics. This work has been supported by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine.
Judy received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. With Jenny Bangham and Xan Chacko, she edited a collection of case studies on Invisible Labour in Modern Science, published in 2022. In her work to build community around the history of science, she also publishes Transactions of the IsisCB, a biweekly newsletter about recent literature in the field.
More from Judith Kaplan
Collecting Lives and Live Collections
How does a museum and library negotiate biography, civics, and the history of science?
Writing Lives in the History of Science
Our latest rare book exhibition sheds light on the personalities and projects of scientific biographers.
Of Mummies, Moss, and Magic
A conversation on the weapon salve, a sensational cure.
The ‘Microbe Hunters’ Go to School
What a 1932 special edition of Paul de Kruif’s bestselling book reveals about U.S. science education.
Sensational Science: A Century of Microbe Hunters
An outdoor exhibition exploring the nearly 100-year-old book that influenced generations of scientists.
Ellen H. Swallow Richards
A pioneer in water sanitation and the first women to be admitted into MIT, Richards is one of the founders of home economics and spearheaded one of the first school lunch programs in the U.S.
A Remote Idea
Healing at a distance: Our latest rare book exhibition explores the debate over the effectiveness of the weapon salve.
Robert W. Parry
A champion of scientific literacy, Parry was an inorganic chemist who devoted himself to education.
Marie Maynard Daly
A biochemist who made lasting contributions to medicine, Daly was the first Black woman to receive a PhD in chemistry.