History of Science and Technology

The Alfred P. Sloane Foundation has begun two programs to catalog the history of science and technology (1) Arhival Program, and (2) Recent History of Science and Engineering on the Web. Here is a link to the Alfred P. Sloane's History of Science and Technology webpage.



History of Science and Technology

The goal of this program is to preserve the raw material of history by supporting archival projects now centered on Charles Darwin, Thomas A. Edison, and Kurt Gdel, and via new projects based on the World Wide Web.



Archival Program
Doron Weber, Program Director

The goal of this program is to preserve and make available to scholars complete collections of the papers, letters, and notes of Darwin, Edison, and Gdel. In 2003, Volume 13 of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin was published while work continued on Volumes 14-21. Over 50 new letters from Darwin were recorded and transcribed while more letters were translated from the French, Italian and German. The Darwin Correspondence Project has won international recognition, most recently when it received the prestigious Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education, presented to its editors by Queen Elizabeth.

The fourth volume of the Edison papers was published and work is underway on volume five and on the electronic edition. The Edison web site has received wide praise.

In 2003, the final two volumes of Kurt Gdel's Collected Works, edited by Solomon Fefferman and John W. Dawson, Jr., were published by Oxford University Press.



Recent History of Science and Engineering on the Web
Jesse H. Ausubel, Program Director

The goal of this program is to develop and diffuse a new way of creating, accessing, and preserving the historical record of recent major technical and scientific events by using the Internet. Use of the web allows the actual participants in important technical events, for example, the invention of the computer mouse, to volunteer their own recollections. Initial grants supported the creation of over 30 web sites by ten professional societies, six universities, and a museum, on a wide variety of topics ranging from the development of the artificial heart to the planning, construction, and early operation of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. The goal is to create interactive sites attracting contributions by participants in the actual scientific or technical development to which the site is devoted.