Alan J. Rocke
Description
Alan J. Rocke (b. 1948) is a historian of scientific thought, and a Distinguished University Professor at Case Western Reserve University. He has authored more than forty scholarly articles and several books, including Image and Reality: Kekule, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination and Nationalizing Science: Adolphe Wurtz and the Battle for French Chemistry. His numerous honors include being named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2012 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2000. Rocke received his undergraduate education at Shimer College and Beloit College, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. (from Shimer College Wiki)
Books
The quiet revolution
Focuses on the human and civil rights the handicapped are campaigning for, and on the various methods they are using to bring change to society and make it more aware of the needs of the disabled.
Nationalizing science
"After looking at the early careers of Wurtz's two mentors, Liebig and Jean-Baptiste Dumas, Rocke describes Wurtz's life and career in the politically complex period leading up to 1853. He then discusses the turning point in Wurtz's intellectual life - his conversion to the "reformed chemistry" of Laurent, Gerhardt, and Williamson - and his efforts (social and political, as well as scientific) to persuade his colleagues of the advantages of the new chemistry. He examines the effects of political patronage (or the lack thereof) and of the French government's insufficient material support of chemistry during the middle decades of the century. From there Rocke goes on to examine the rivarly between Wurtz and Marcellin Berthelot, the debate over atoms versus equivalents, and the reasons for Wurtz's failure to win acceptance for his ideas. The story offers insights into the changing status of science in this period and helps to explain the eventual course of both French and German chemistry."--BOOK JACKET.
Image and reality
19th-century chemists were faced with a particular problem: how to depict the atoms and molecules that are beyond the direct reach of our bodily senses. Here, Rocke focuses on the community of organic chemists in Germany to provide the basis for a fuller understanding of the nature of scientific creativity.