Michael H. Shank

News of the Society

The 1999 Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society was unusually large for a singlesociety meeting, probably because it marked the Societys 75th anniversary: there were 671 registrants, a new record. As program chairs, we received electronically from the HSS Executive Office proposals for 48 sessions, 68 contributed papers, and 18 works-in-progress papers. Significant numbers of the proposals came from outside the United States (Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, Russia, and elsewhere). Of those who submitted papers, 165 identified themselves as faculty members, 11 as independent scholars, 23 as postdocs, and 82 as graduate students. In light of the 75th anniversary of the Society, we created a special plenary session in which the Presidents of the four societies with which HSS holds joint meetings-SHOT, 4S, PSA, and BSHS-presented their perspectives on the seventy-five years that history of science has been formally organized in North America. We submitted a slate of potential Distinguished Lecturers to the Executive Committee in the spring and, having received its approval, sought to enlist its first choice, Charles Gillispie of Princeton University. We were delighted that Professor Gillispie accepted the invitation, since he had not only served the Society as President but had also given the first Distinguished Lecture in the fall of 1981. The quality and charm of Gillispies lecture confirmed that our judgment, based on his long career as a historian of science and his historical importance in the life of the Society, had been sound. The call for papers for the meeting included a request for sessions dealing with the history of the Society and the discipline, and sessions devoted to these themes were, when possible, assigned lead positions in the program. In order to maximize the number of sessions, three workshops were assigned the usual Friday evening time slot. Several interest group meetings occurred at the same hour. We accepted 51 of the contributed papers and 8 of the works-in-progress proposals, combining them in thematic sessions-with some ingenuity-wherever possible. We found little basis, from the abstracts, for