Paul Lawrence Farber

Paul Lawrence Farber
Born(1944-03-07)March 7, 1944
New York, NY
DiedNovember 28, 2021(2021-11-28) (aged 77)
Corvallis, OR
NationalityAmerican
EducationUniversity of Pittsburgh (BS) Indiana University (PhD)
Known forHistory of Ornithology
Scientific career
FieldsHistory of Science
InstitutionsOregon State University

Paul Lawrence Farber (March 7, 1944 – November 28, 2021) was a professor of the history of science at the Oregon State University. He wrote or edited eight books about the history of science as well as dozens of articles.[1] He was an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[1]

Farber was born in New York City, his mother born to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and his father born in a family of Latvian Jews. Farber grew up in Manhattan and then Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He took an interest in science and philosophy, tinkering with rockets and reading on science. He became interested in biology after attending a summer NSF school in Syracuse while in high school and joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1961, intending to study mecicine, but after receiving a BS in zoology in 1965 he shifted to philosophy and the history of science at Indiana University. His master's thesis in 1968 was on "Buffon and Newton's Science", and his PhD in 1970 was on "Buffon's Concept of Species." He joined Oregon State University in 1970 and contributed works on the history of ornithology, species concepts, race, and ethics.[2]

In 2010, he was elected president of the History of Science Society.[1] Oregon State University's special collections hold Farber's personal papers.[1]

Books

  • The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline, 1760–1850. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co. 1982)[3] ISBN 902771410X
  • (as editor with Margaret J. Osler) Religion, Science, and Worldview: Essays in Honor of Richard S. Westfall. (Cambridge, England; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press 1985) ISBN 0-521-30452-0; Osler, Margaret J.; Farber, Paul Lawrence (22 August 2002). 2002 pbk edition. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-52493-8.
  • (coauthored with Mix, Michael C. and King, Keith I.) Biology: The Network of Life. (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers 1992.)
  • Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1994. ISBN 0-8018-6389-9; Farber, Paul Lawrence (10 July 2000). 2000 pbk edition. JHU Press. ISBN 0-8018-6390-2.[4]
  • Discovering Birds: The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline, 1760–1850. (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1997) ISBN 0801855373[5]
  • The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1998) ISBN 0-520-21369-6
  • (coauthored with Cravens, Hamilton) Race and Science: Scientific Challenges to Racism in Modern America. (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press 2009); Hamilton Cravens (1938–2015) was a professor of history at Iowa State University for 42 years.[6]
  • Mixing Races: From Scientific Racism to Modern Evolutionary Ideas. (Baltimore, Md: The Johns Hopkins University Press 2011)

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Catalogue Information – Paul Lawrence Farber Papers". Oregon State University. 2013. Archived from the original on 2012-01-17. Retrieved 2013-02-17.
  2. ^ Oregon State University biography
  3. ^ Outram, Dorinda (1984). "Review of The emergence of ornithology as a scientific discipline: 1760–1850 by Paul Lawrence Farber". The British Journal for the History of Science. 17 (3): 321. doi:10.1017/S0007087400021415. S2CID 143945268.
  4. ^ Ertter, Barbara (2004). "Review of Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson by Paul Lawrence Farber". Isis. 95 (3): 504–505. doi:10.1086/429018.
  5. ^ Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi (1998). "Review of Discovering Birds: The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline: 1760-1850 by Paul Lawrence Farber". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 73 (2): 194–195. doi:10.1086/420190.
  6. ^ "Obituary. Hamilton Cravens". Star Tribune. Minneapolis. November 29, 2015.


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