Who Does the Work of Science? A Century of Science as Passion, Punishment, and Paycheck

Laura Stark is a historical sociologist and Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University. Her second book project, The Normals: A People’s History, explores how a global market for healthy civilian “human subjects” emerged in law, science, and everyday imagination over the past century. The Normals shows how logics of racialized citizenship were built into American clinical science in the post-World War II period—and how scientists and their human subjects worked for change.

The George Sarton Memorial Lecture in the History and Philosophy of Science, named after a founding member of the History of Science Society (HSS), was first awarded in 1960. The lecture is given annually at the AAAS Annual Meeting by a distinguished practitioner in the history of science.

Recorded March 4, 2023 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

For more information on this topic, please see https://www.chstm.org/video/170