People
Stephen J. Weininger
Professor Emeritus
Faculty Listing
stevejw@wpi.edu
Related Information
70 Park Street #44
Brookline, MA 02446-6335
617-734-1854 (home)
857-225-2915 (mobile)
Educational Background
- BA, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, 1957
- PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1964
Research
For the last 25 years I have been actively working on the history and philosophy of science, with a focus on the history of chemistry and its relationship to other disciplines, especially physics and the humanities. Within the history of chemistry itself I have concentrated on the 19th and 20th centuries, going up to contemporary times. A particular interest has been the question of whether fundamental chemical concepts such as molecular structure can be completely reduced to physics – namely, quantum mechanics. In fact, the cross border traffic between physics and chemistry has been an ongoing topic of investigation. A paper that I co-authored with Helge Kragh in 1996 showed how problematic the concept of entropy was for chemists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because of its association with probability and the numerous interpretations to which it was subject. The prevailing positivism among many 19th-century chemists disinclined them to accept such an apparently nebulous concept. I continue to work on the history of chemical thermodynamics and kinetics.
Having been trained as a physical organic chemist, I retain a strong interest in that field and its historical development. An on-going project centers on the career of Paul D. Bartlett of Harvard, the dean of American physical organic chemists in the 20th century. That career illustrates some very significant differences between the growth of physical organic chemistry in the United States and in Great Britain. Unlike the situation in the UK, a number of American physical organic chemists became involved with industry and the military, especially during and after World War II. Although many organic chemists viewed the study of mechanisms as a “pure” form of organic chemistry, those investigations proved to be very valuable in many applied areas. These in turn shaped the research directions within physical organic chemistry itself. I have written the biographical entry on Bartlett for the New Dictionary of Scientific Biography and am preparing a paper on his wartime research.
An outgrowth of my examination of Bartlett’s life and work has been a study of one of his quite talented and unusual students, Lawrence H. Knox. Knox was an African American who received a PhD from Harvard in 1940, at a time when very few African Americans were receiving PhDs in any subject. Lawrence Knox’s brother, William Jr., obtained a PhD in physical chemistry from MIT in 1935. A third brother, Clinton, took a PhD in history from Harvard in 1940. These remarkable siblings and their family are the subject of a study I am carrying out in conjunction with Leon Gortler, which is engaging the larger issue of the struggle of African Americans for access to the highest levels of university education in the face of much entrenched racism.
Some of my earliest forays into the history and philosophy of chemistry were concerned with the role of language in chemistry and the relationship between chemical languages and ordinary language. Those and related interests led to my being a founding member of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSA) in 1985; it now has a journal, Configurations, and a European branch. An outgrowth of those interests is a current project dealing with public perceptions of chemistry, the origins of “chemophobia,” and the extent to which chemistry has given rise to both positive as well as negative perceptions in the public imagination. A talk on that theme is being given at the 5th Biennial Meeting of SLSA-Europe in Berlin in June, 2008.
Recent Publications
Years of Service at WPI
- Assistant Professor, 1965-1970
- Associate Professor, 1970-1977
- Professor, 1977-2005
- Professor Emeritus, 2005-