Extended answers from Angela G. Ray (AGR), panelist from “Evidence: The Use and Misuse of Data”, panel 1: Evidential Standards (Click here to watch)

Question: Do you connect the debating societies of young African American men to the same societies of young women (studied by Mary Kelley, among others)? Do you attribute to them significance beyond the education/experience of the participants? (anonymous)

AGR: Yes, indeed. Important scholarship like Elizabeth McHenry’s Forgotten Readers (2002), Mary Kelley’s Learning to Stand and Speak (2006), and Carly Woods’s Debating Women (2018) informs my own work and encourages an emphasis on the intersectional dynamics of race and gender.

The question of how to attribute significance to educational activity, like a debating society, is an important one. For this project I have amassed persuasive evidence of the benefits to several individuals, and I believe that broader social and cultural benefits can be plausibly demonstrated as well—especially via the members’ later contributions to racial uplift in education, religion, and government. Of course, I am also interested in what participating in a debating society meant for individuals who lacked opportunities later on, or whose lives were cut short; asking those questions gets me thinking about the importance of sociability and camaraderie, about making a supportive enclave within highly oppressive conditions.

Question: Dr. Ray, I am fascinated by the rich repository of records you explored in your transcription and analysis of the Clionian Society of antebellum Charleston. How did you learn about the existence of these proceedings? (Kerry Bryan)

AGR: I had prior experience in studying antebellum debating societies that were run primarily by young white men in the Northeast and Midwest. Once while I was reading about societies in the South, I noted two sentences in the first volume of Michael O’Brien’s Conjectures of Order (2004) that describe the Clionian Debating Society and identify the participants as free Black men. This was an intriguing reference, and when I was later at Duke University, I examined the minute book that is held in the library there. Then my search of the WorldCat database turned up the existence of the earlier minute book, held at the Charleston Library Society and reproduced on microfiche in 1981. I was hooked!

Question: How does digitization, and presenting digital facsimile, affect historians' conception of evidence? (Dominique Daniel)

AGR: I can offer some observations from my own experience: Most of the sources I used for my doctoral dissertation were available either in their original form in archives or on microfilm. As my career has developed, I am increasingly using digitized facsimiles as sources, primarily of print materials but increasingly of handwritten documents as well. I appreciate the increased access and speed that digitization, especially digital facsimile, has brought; I remember cranking microfilm copies of nineteenth-century census records, for example, and I welcome the ability to use searchable databases from my own computer. I also appreciate the possibility of checking other scholars’ transcriptions of primary sources by examining a digital facsimile.

At the same time, I have witnessed a slow evolution in the quality of optical character recognition, and I keep in mind that electronic searches, like physical searches, are imperfect. Also, especially where handwritten documents are concerned, I want to see the original if that is at all possible, especially if the source in question is important to a given research project. Being able to detect the weight of ink—reproducing the gesture of writing—is sometimes the only method for making a handwritten document legible. I’ve sometimes been surprised by the size or color of a piece of letter paper that I had viewed on microfilm, or by the bulk of a book I had seen in digital facsimile. Substantive knowledge can be gained by examining original materials, especially when our research questions involve form in addition to propositional content.

I have responded to this question by focusing on textual sources, although I would make an analogous case for visual images: digitization offers important access, and different kinds of evidence become available when encountering originals.

Question: Can you all discuss the way memory fits into the idea of evidential standards? Does memory as evidence complicate the way we standardize it? Do you think there are areas of growth needed in the field regarding using memories as evidence? (Molly Nebiolo)

AGR: We discussed this question a bit at the conference, and I mentioned Nell Irvin Painter’s Sojourner Truth (1996), an especially important example of historical study of an individual’s life and the ways that her public image was shaped by herself and others during her lifetime and afterward. Merrill Peterson’s Lincoln in American Memory (1994) is another important study that offers a deft presentation of memory practices as historical phenomena. From my own field of rhetoric and communication, Jenell Johnson’s American Lobotomy (2014) studies the ways that stories about lobotomy have influenced perceptions of biomedicine and mental health across time; she draws on sources from medical treatises to horror films.

Rhetorical studies, influenced by Pierre Nora and others, have long claimed a sharp dichotomy between memory and history, but that is changing. Comparable to the perspective that Andrew Schocket mentioned at the conference, my understanding of historical investigation is that it is a form of memory production, albeit a form that has communal expectations for methods, evidence, claims, and arguments. My disciplinary colleague Kirt Wilson has expressed a distinction helpful to rhetoricians: he refers to history as forensic and commemoration as epideictic, arguing that memory encompasses both. That is, history operates within technical arenas of peer-reviewed publications and museum curation, has its own specialized language and accepted methods, and seeks to make factual claims about the past; commemoration has broader participation and fewer methodological constraints, focuses less on accuracy and more on emotional resonance, and emphasizes claims of values and identity more than claims of fact. In the journal Rhetoric & Public Affairs in 2010, Wilson wrote, “Memory is not comprised simply of facts about the past, nor is it solely myth. It is, instead, a rhetorically negotiated commingling of history and commemoration, each form dictating slightly different exigencies.”

Question: Has the physical separation of the two volumes of the Clionian Society's Minutes -- divided between repositories in Charleston and Duke University -- contributed to some of the obscurity or silencing of the society's members? Can digitization or transcription bring these archival sources together -- seems like both Angela and Daniel work towards the ends of  collocation? But what are the bounds of a source, archival or otherwise? What to include in the "works" of the Clionian Society or the "works" of Andrew Jackson is still an issue? (anonymous)

AGR: Yes, I think that the physical separation of the two volumes of debating society minutes has definitely contributed to the organization’s obscurity, but another contributing factor is the comparatively small number of scholars who have examined nineteenth-century debating as a significant cultural phenomenon. And yes, through transcribing the two volumes and studying them together, I am enacting a commitment to the notion that the two are most meaningful as a single unit; while that is an arguable proposition, it is productive for the research questions I have. At the same time, I also understand the “works” of the society as including materials no longer extant. Additional documents (e.g., correspondence, lists of officers) are mentioned in the minutes but have not survived, at least in public archives. The group also collected books, some of which are sufficiently well described in the minutes that I can make a confident judgment about their authors and titles. (These include Benjamin Franklin’s Life.) Although the copies that were in the society’s library are no longer together (at least as far as I can determine), I am reading other copies held in libraries elsewhere or in digital facsimile, and I am, in general, considering these texts as part of the group’s holdings. Drawing on the scholarship of colleagues in theater and performance studies, I can also understand the “works” of the society as including its ephemeral, long-ago activities, which must be studied via surrogates like the minutes themselves.

Select answers from Gaye S. Wilson, author of Jefferson on Display: Attire, Etiquette, and the Art of Presentation

Question: Where do you see the balance between Jefferson and “republican simplicity” and his expensive tastes. . . . I’m wondering about the balance he struck between his taste, the images he wanted to project, and his spending and financial situations? (John Rudder)

GW:  This is a very significant but complex ‘Jefferson’ question. No quick answer but here are a few thoughts.   As president, Jefferson deliberately dressed down and casually received callers at the President’s House, yet he was known for his small, but elegant dinner parties with European wines and food prepared by his French chef and presided over by his French butler. A frequent dinner guest, Margaret Bayard Smith, approved the skills brought by his European staff and wrote that at Jefferson’s table “republican simplicity was united to Epicurean delicacy.” The form of government must remain republican, but Jefferson seemed intent at the same time on elevating the taste of his countrymen by introducing them to Old World refinements that included art, architecture, and cuisine. Just as he cared about his own image, he was sensitive to how the American republic was perceived by the western world. And yes, it did cost him. Many of his expenses while president, such as staff, food and wine, came from his own pocket. As he prepared for retirement in March 1809, he estimated debts contracted while in office at about ten thousand dollars. As always, he was optimistic in covering them with proceeds from his farms. And life would be simpler when he was a “private citizen” and could reduce his style of living to that of a “private family.” But even as private citizen, he never turned away the many guests that called upon the Sage at Monticello, and he continued the image of the elegant host. I discuss in my book, Jefferson on Display, that as he launched his last major project, the founding of the University of Virginia, he knew that it was necessary he maintain the image of gentleman and leading citizen in order to secure the needed support from the Virginia General Assembly. This was while, with the national economic collapse of 1819, his debts mounted to more than he could cover.  

Questions:  Any idea of the document at the bottom of the portrait? (David Maxey);
                    Is there a document on the table or is it fabric? (Anonymous Attendee)

GW:  Good observations and sorry I had to pass over this during the webinar. Yes, you are seeing a document on the desk under Jefferson’s hand in the Mather Brown portrait. Quick brush strokes indicate writing, but the only thing legible is, “M. Brown  p. 1786.” Documents were included frequently in portraits of statesmen. The Gilbert Stuart portraits of Washington and the 1805 of Jefferson, included in the online discussion, both have documents on the desks along with books. In the final portrait, artist Thomas Sully has the figure of Jefferson holding a single rolled document, and again there is an indication of writing that remains illegible. These documents serve as visual reminders as to why these figures were important and their portraits being taken.

Questions: Did Jefferson ever write about the experience of sitting for Houdon? (Jon Friedman)  
                    Did Houdon do a mask to do the bust like George Washington? (Kathy Heath)

GW:  Unfortunately Jefferson did not fully comment on his experience in Houdon’s studio, though he did make a reference to a life mask being made. Late in his retirement he recounted to a visitor at Monticello that Mdm. Houdon had anointed his face and shoulders with almond oil while Houdon stood to one side stirring the plaster He made it sound as though the experience was not altogether unpleasant. Certainly he was pleased with the resulting bust portrait. 

Question: Can you say more about how different audiences responded to portraits of Jefferson? For example did Federalists and Republicans respond to any of portraits differently? Is there evidence that certain portraits actively shaped his public image or were more widely circulated/popular than others? (Janine Boldt)

GW:  During the contentious presidential election of 1800 and on into Jefferson’s first term as president, the portrait most often copied was one by Rembrandt Peale, painted in Philadelphia during the early months of 1800. The validity of the likeness can be judged from the number of prints that were quickly made and circulated. Rembrandt (as he billed himself) has Jefferson gazing very steadily at the viewer in his fashionable black coat and waistcoat with hair dressed and powdered. There is a steadiness in the demeanor that contradicted the Federalists’ accusations in the press casting him as a weak, whimsical intellectual, not fit for the role as chief executive of the nation. Yet this was the image that Federalists copied when they needed to vilify Jefferson in political caricatures, such as “A Philosophic Cock” discussed in the webinar. Though distorted, the face is recognizable as based upon Rembrandt’s portrait. The popularity of this portrait was challenged by the Gilbert Stuart of 1805 commissioned by James Bowdoin for his diplomatic assignment to Madrid and discussed during the webinar. Stuart’s reputation as the leading American portrait artist could have bolstered interest, but certainly he produced a handsome portrait that portrays President Jefferson in a pose and setting worthy of an official state portrait. A very fine engraving of the Stuart portrait, made in 1807 by Robert Field, allowed Jefferson’s presidential image to circulate broadly.

Question: Is he making a specific statement about American simplicity with the old-fashioned coat? He also chose to wear laces and not buckles, which is another deliberate fashion choice. (Janine Boldt) 

GW:  The cut of the coat and waistcoat rendered by Thomas Sully for the West Point commission follows the style fashionable early in Jefferson’s presidency The center front of the coat slopes in a long line from the upper chest toward the side seams and the waistcoat rests slightly below waist and opens in a deep ‘V’. In contrast, the fashionable man’s coat in 1821 was moving toward an almost horizontal cut, arching slightly above the natural waist. This cut was the forerunner of today’s tail coat. I suggest in my book that the suit we see in Sully’s portrait, with knee breeches rather than pantaloons, was chosen not so much as a statement of simplicity but rather for its link to 1802 when Jefferson signed the congressional bill establishing the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. 
I am very glad you point out the shoes---or bootees as Jefferson called them---as I was not able to go into these during the webinar, and they definitely had a political significance. This style in footwear became popular during the French Revolution (but not unique to France) and made its political and egalitarian statement by replacing the elegant buckles with plebeian laces. During the election of 1800, the pro-Republican press touted Jefferson’s preference for American made clothing, including the “Jefferson shoe.” This likely alluded to the lace-up bootee, as it began to appear in political caricatures aimed at Jefferson [see “Providential Detection,” c. 1799] and this theme was taken up by the Federalists press early in Jefferson’s presidency. One Federalist commented that “our philosophic president. . .prefers shoestrings, when other folks wear buckles,” and another claimed that Jefferson was making the statement that buckles were “superfluous and anti-republican especially when he has strings.”

Question:  Did Sully paint any portraits of Jefferson’s family or the women in his life? (Karen A. Chase)

GW: Sully painted Jefferson’s daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph in May 1836 when she was age sixty-three. Family accounts say that she asked Sully to be kind and the portrait is definitely soft in the rendering of her features. She was accompanied to Sully’s studio by her daughter Virginia Randolph Trist, who credited the artist with “powers of entertainment” that caused Martha to become more animated and her eyes to sparkle. Virginia’s husband, Nicholas Trist was in hopes that Sully could be convinced to take her portrait as soon as he completed Martha’s, however it was not possible due to Sully’s extremely full schedule. Thus, the only Sully portraits of the family were those of father and daughter, Thomas Jefferson and his eldest daughter Martha. Monticello currently holds the portrait of Martha and a later Sully copy of the Jefferson bust portrait. 

Question:  Did Jefferson ever express an opinion about the Sully portrait? Also, was Jefferson ever painted together with John Adams or Franklin or Madison…any of his contemporaries? (Kevin Stirling) 

GW:  Jefferson did not comment on the portrait, but his granddaughter, Ellen did. She felt Sully had “succeeded admirably.” She found the upper portion of the face near perfect in likeness and felt that Sully had captured Jefferson’s dignity and expression of benevolence. Her only dissatisfaction was with the area around the mouth and chin, but she felt Sully would be able to correct that in the full-length. She was not explicit as to what troubled her, and I have studied both these portraits carefully trying to determine the change she felt was needed. It does appear that a crease from the corner of Jefferson’s mouth that was pronounced in the original bust portrait is not quite so defined in the final West Point full-length. I have wondered if that slight modification would have please Ellen. 
    The only painting in which Jefferson, Adams and Franklin appear on the same canvas is John Trumbull’s, The Declaration of Independence, July 4th 1776. As I believe I mentioned, when Jefferson commissioned the portrait of himself from Mather Brown, he commissioned one of John Adams as well. When James Bowdoin requested portraits by Gilbert Stuart for his diplomatic duty in Spain, he commissioned one of President Jefferson and one of Secretary of State Madison. In both instances, these portraits were of the same sizes and companion portraits but not on the same canvas.

Questions: Did Jefferson choose to be shown with a column from the H or R? He didn’t visit, but did he know of the column’s design? (Anonymous Attendee)
                   Were all these details carefully thought out by Jefferson OR is it only now that we are interpreting the meaning? (Anonymous Attendee)

GW:  It is impossible to say how much Jefferson may have known of the design for the rebuilding of the House of Representatives. Certainly he discussed architecture with Thomas Sully during his visit to Monticello, as Jefferson requested that Sully visit the construction site for the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where examples of his own architectural designs were going up. He wanted Sully to be prepared to report on his observations. And it is possible that Sully had visited the new House of Representatives, perhaps on his way to Monticello, and could have reported on that to Jefferson as well. But who suggested that the new House chamber serve as the backdrop for Jefferson’s portrait? Ultimately, the decision had to rest with Sully, as the final study and the full-length portrait were not completed until he returned to his studio in Philadelphia. Yet conversations with Jefferson could have influenced his decision. Jefferson always felt strongly that the House of Representatives served as the clearest voice of the people, and even though he did not serve there, a visual association could have been a welcome addition to his legacy. Whether the setting was a direct suggestion from Jefferson or an idea formulated by Sully on his own, visually it gives strength to the composition and adds another level of association for the viewer. 

Select answers from Lukas Rieppel (LR), author of Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons and the Making of a Spectacle

Question: On the list of founders for the American Museum of Natural History was a Benjamin H. Field. Was he affiliated with Chicago's Field Museum? (Mary Anne Eves)

LR: Benjamin Field was a prominent merchant and philanthropist in late-19th century New York. The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago was named after the department store magnate, Marshall Field, who donated one million dollars towards the museum's founding.

Question: Hi Lukas! I’d love to hear you talk more about how questions of gender play out in this narrative—is the history of dinosaurs in the Golden Age an inherently “masculine” story? If so, why? How is this related to the current American phenomenon of paleontology as an attractive science to boys but not necessarily to girls? (It’s easy to see how this plays out when you’re walking through the dinosaur halls amidst school groups at the AMNH.) (Elaine Ayers)

LR: You are right: gender is a big part of the story! This is true on a couple of different levels. For one, the practice of paleontology was itself very gendered. As a scientific endeavor, it depended heavily on outdoor activities, such as field work, that functioned as a performance of what were traditionally seen as masculine qualities like strength, courage, resilience, and virility. Of course, that does not mean there were no women who made contributions to paleontology, as the example of Mary Anning and others help demonstrate. Women played an important role in camp life as well. (See my response to Jessica Linker below.) Still, the overwhelming majority of paleontologists were male, and they understood their scientific activities to be a distinctly masculine pursuit. That is now starting to change, but not fast enough! Second, dinosaurs themselves were often gendered male, even though it is exceedingly difficult (often impossible) to determine the sexual dimorphism of these creatures based on the scant fossil evidence they leave behind. This is part of the story about how and why dinosaurs were so consistently depicted as intensely competitive creatures. That, too, has changed dramatically in recent years, largely as a result of the emerging consensus that dinosaurs were the extinct ancestors of modern birds.

Question: In this period, how did they think about extinction and more specifically, what were the common explanations for the dinosaurs’ demise? (Patrick Spero)

LR: This is a huge, important, and fascinating question! The late 19th and early 20th century was a period in which many biologists engaged in a heated debate about the theory of evolution and the fact of extinction. In fact, vertebrate paleontologists from the United States such as Edward Drinker Cope and his protégé, Henry Fairfield Osborn, were at the forefront of these debates. Drawing on the evolutionary ideas of a French naturalist named Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, most paleontologists at this time rejected the centrality of natural selection acting on random variation in the evolutionary process. Instead, paleontologists such as Cope analogized the evolution of entire species to the development of individual organisms. This is before the discovery of DNA, and it was widely believed that individual organisms are compelled by some internal drive or mysterious substance to grow more complex and functionally integrated over their lifetime. Judging from the fossil record, the same thing appeared to be true of entire lineages as well. So just as individual metazoan organisms develop from a single fertilized egg into a complex multicellular adult made up of many diverse tissue types that are seamlessly integrated into a functioning whole, so too did humans evolve out of single-celled ancestors into our complex, multicellular selves. But the process of individual development does not stop at adulthood. Rather, it ends with senescence and, eventually, death. According to paleontologists such as Cope, extinction was just the death of a whole species, the natural end of its evolutionary life cycle. Moreover, in much the same way that individual humans often become less adaptive and flexible as we enter old age, it was believed that entire species suffer the same fate, which made it impossible for them to keep up as environmental conditions and ecological relationships changed over geological time. Interestingly, dinosaurs were a favorite example of such an evolutionary dead end, a lineage that had outlived its usefulness and was destined to die a natural death, thereby opening up the ecological space for younger, nimbler, and more adaptable mammals to evolve.

Question: Thank you, Lukas, for this very interesting and important presentation and work. I really appreciated your attention to the typically less appreciated “independent fossil hunters” whose labor made possible the excavation and movement of the bones to spaces of exhibition in the United States. I am wondering if you could speak to colonial or imperial context of this story? Did, for example, these white fossil hunters, philanthropists, or naturalists from the U.S. depend on Indigenous knowledge or technology to locate and extract these bones, or to access the land in which they were embedded? Did they encounter resistance by Indigenous nations to their removal? Thank you so much for any and all insight on this! (Gustave Lester)

LR: Another excellent question. The short answer is "yes"! Dinosaur paleontology was deeply tied up with the history of American imperialism. You mention one of these entanglements in your question. It is often said that dinosaurs were discovered in the American West during the late 19th century, as white settlers colonized this region, largely in search of mineral wealth. But people lived in these parts of the North American interior long before the United States had come into being, and there is ample evidence that Indigenous tribes such as the Lakota took a strong interest in the fossil bones of strange-looking creatures that littered this region. If you are interested in this history, I would recommend the work of Adrianne Mayor, who has traced the way that vertebrate fossils helped to inform and inspire a range of Native American origin stories, much as they have also informed scientific accounts of the history of life on earth. As a result, American paleontologists such as Edward Drinker Cope and Otheniel Charles Marsh often relied on Native American guides and informants like the famous Lakota Chief Red Cloud to provide information about the location of these wonderful and mysterious objects. You are also right about resistance from Indigenous tribes, who often (correctly, as it turns out) suspected that white explorers who claimed only to be interested in esoteric knowledge were also tasked with helping to develop the extractive economy taking shape in the American West at the time, which directly contributed to the dispossession of Native American tribes. An argument can therefore be made that, in addition to being dispossessed of their ancestral homelands and traditional hunting grounds, Native American tribes like the Lakota were also robbed of their pre-history, as origin stories that sought to explain the abundant fossils one could find in places such as the Black Hills were refigured as scientific accounts of how life evolved over time. I'll stop there, because this response is getting too long already. But I want to note, quickly, that vertebrate paleontology was implicated in other expressions of American imperialism as well. For example, prominent paleontologists such as Barnum Brown frequently consulted for petroleum companies, often conducting clandestine intelligence-gathering expeditions on their behalf in places like Cuba, Ethiopia, and Mongolia under the guise of merely looking for dinosaur bones.

Question: This really isn't a question, but there are plenty of women engaged with science in the nineteenth century -- but consider the source. Re: interest in dinosaurs, Graceanna Lewis has a longstanding interest in tracing the evolution of dinosaurs from birds and was lecturing about this in the latter half of the nineteenth century! (Jessica Linker)

LR: Yes, absolutely! While the practice of paleontology was traditionally understood as a masculine pursuit, that does not mean women did not make significant and foundational contributions to our knowledge about the deep past. Thank you for mentioning Graceanna Lewis -- I'd love to learn more about her! It sounds like you are working on this history, and I can't wait to read your contributions to this important conversation. And of course, there are many other examples as well. I mentioned the most famous one, Mary Anning, above. Let me add another example: Marion Brown. She was the first wife of Barnum Brown, who is perhaps the most famous dinosaur hunter of all time. There is a fascinating correspondence between her and her husband that deserves more attention. Barnum Brown also had an interesting dispute with his boss at the American Museum, Henry Fairfield Osborn, who insisted that women had no place in the field. Marion loved the outdoors and was passionate about fossil hunting, and there is good evidence that she made a lot of contributions to paleontology which have gone almost entirely uncredited. Barnum Brown's second wife, Lilian, is a fascinating case also. She wrote many popular books about her adventures all over the world. Finally, let me plug the work of Jenna Tonn here, who has done fascinating research about family dynamics in natural history. I think Marion and Lilian Brown's cases, among many others, are a perfect example of all the invisible labor that is required but often goes unacknowledged in natural history.

Question: Hi all! Thanks so much for the great talk :) My question is how the 19th century conversation around paleontology differs or is similar to the 18th century trans-Atlantic conversations that French naturalists (like Buffon) were having with Americans (like Thomas Jefferson). Do we have any correspondences that link paleontology and nation-building in the U.S.? (Ariana Potichnyj)

LR: Again, the short answer is yes! In my remarks during the online conversation, I mentioned the example of Diplodocus carnegii. I have an entire chapter in my book that uses Andrew Carnegie to make more or less exactly this point. There is also a whole book about the Carnegie dinosaur, American Dinosaur Abroad by Iljia Nieuwland, which you might be interested in checking out. But of course you are right that there were differences too. The most important one, I would say, is that dinosaurs were believed to have gone extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period. Their extinction allowed more intelligent mammals, such as the Mastodon, to evolve. So the relationship between the U.S. and dinosaurs was more complex and ambivalent than in the case of the Mastodon in some ways. While dinosaurs were celebrated as an expression of American exceptionalism, an object lesson in the awesome power and fecundity of the United States, dinosaurs also served as a cautionary tale, illustrating the theory of "racial senescence" that I described in my response to Patrick Spero above.

Question: How were schoolchildren taught about dinosaurs in the late 19th century and do you see connections between capitalism and paleontology exhibited in these educational materials? (Lauren Killingsworth)

LR: During the 19th century, museums were understood as educational institutions. (The phrase that was often used at the time was "rational recreation.") This frequently brought them into contact with schools. The American Museum of Natural History, for example, secured funding from the New York municipal government by partnering with the public school system. This museum hosted evening lectures for NY schoolteachers, invited classes into its exhibition halls, and created a number of "traveling exhibits" that toured all five boroughs to visit individual public schools. And dinosaurs certainly featured in all of these outreach programs, because they were so immensely popular. However, in my research, I was surprised to discover that dinosaurs were not especially connected to children at this time. The strong association between a fascination with dinosaurs and childhood only seems to have truly emerged after the Second World War. I have some ideas about why that might be, having to do with the way dinosaurs were taken up by mass media companies like Disney, but I'm still not satisfied that I fully understand how this transition took place. I'm hoping a post-war historian might be enticed to take up the question and provide a more solid answer!

Question: Thank you so much for this interesting program! I was aware that wealthy capitalists and industrialists like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie funded many of the early discoveries of dinosaurs and purchased fossils for donations to local museums.  Are some members of today's wealthy elite doing the same thing? (Daniel Bornstein)

LR: Very much so. To cite just a single example, the recently renovated dinosaur exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC is called the "David H. Koch Hall of Fossils -- Deep Time." There's a lot to be said about that, especially since the late David Koch and his brother Charles also donated huge sums of money to sow doubt and promote skepticism about anthropogenic climate change. You might be interested in a short op-ed that I wrote on this topic a few months ago.

Question: My impression of the early historical interpretation of dinosaurs is that they were very influenced by contemporary understandings of reptiles--this was of course long before we understood (some) dinosaurs as possibly warm-blooded, sometimes feathered proto-birds. The contrast between portrayals of dinosaurs and extinct mammals as, on the one hand, solitary and predatory and, on the other hand, social and cooperative seems influenced by what was known about modern animals as much as by capitalism, social Darwinism, and the like. How do you balance this "simple" natural history account with more sociological/cultural explanations? (Jesse Hochstadt)

LR: Another excellent question. And a hard one at that! As I read it, this question goes beyond the particular case of dinosaurs. It's really a question about the relationship between science and its larger social, cultural, and economic context. You are completely correct to point out that dinosaurs are reptiles. The modern understanding is that dinosaurs are part of a lineage called "archosaurs," and their closest living relatives are crocodiles. Birds are nested within the dinosaur family tree, meaning that dinosaurs did not go extinct. If anything, they are thriving! But during the late 19th and early 20th century, the evolutionary history of birds was a big mystery, and their relationship to dinosaurs was very controversial. This is true despite the fact that "Darwin's bulldog," Thomas Henry Huxley, had theorized that dinosaurs might constitute a missing link between reptiles and birds as early as 1868. So it's true that dinosaurs were usually analogized to reptiles rather than birds at the time, and it's completely fair to point out that many reptiles are solitary predators. Still, the question remains: why model the functional anatomy and behavioral ecology of dinosaurs on something like the monitor lizard rather than another type of organism? For example, Richard Owen thought that dinosaurs inhabited the same ecological niche as modern pachyderms do, and hence the Crystal Palace dinosaurs sculpted by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins have a very mammalian body plan. Later paleontologists like Joseph Leidy modeled American dinosaurs like Hadrosaurus on the kangaroo, because of its relatively diminutive forelimbs coupled with much bigger hind legs and a powerful tail. Now we tend to imagine dinosaurs as bird-like creatures. Moreover, even early 20th century paleontologists such as Osborn did not model their dinosaurs on reptiles in every respect. The functional anatomy of long-necked and plant-eating sauropod dinosaurs such as the Brontosaurus or Diplodocus, for example, featured strong columnar legs that extend straight out under the animal's body. A number of German paleontologists objected to this pose because it was insufficiently reptilian, preferring to mount their dinosaurs with the legs splayed out to the side and bent in a 90 degree angle, dragging their bellies on the ground like many lizards now do. Anyway, that's all to say that we've got something of a chicken or the egg problem here. Were dinosaurs understood as solitary brutes because they were modeled on reptiles, or were they modeled on reptiles because they were understood as ferocious tyrants of the prehistoric? I personally prefer to evade the issue altogether by saying that both went hand in hand. For me, it's less important to specify which way the causal arrow goes. Instead, I try to assemble a kind of picture of gestalt of what might be described as the scientific culture that prevailed at the time, one that tries to integrate technical knowledge with social and economic factors, suggesting that all of these mutually reinforced one another.

Question: Do zoos serve the same purpose? (Bill Mancuso)

LR: Yes, zoos have a very similar history, and many of the same people who created these natural history museums also served on the board of trustees of zoos. There are some great books if you are interested in this topic. A good place to start would be Elizabeth Hanson's book, Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos, as well as Nigel Rothfels' book, Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo. But there are many more, including ones that touch on zoos in other time periods and different parts of the world.

June 8-12, 2020

Papers for "Evidence: The Use and Misuse of Data" can be found below.  You will be required to enter a password provided by conference organizers to access them. Please contact Adrianna Link at [email protected] if you are attending the conference but have not yet received the password.

Papers are not to be cited or circulated without the written permission of the author

All events will be held via Zoom (times listed in EDT)

Monday, June 8

1:00 p.m.: Opening Keynote 

“The Weighing of Evidence Requires Expert Judgment and Consensus”
Richard Shiffrin, Indiana University, Bloomington 
Stephen Stigler, University of Chicago
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, The University of Pennsylvania

3:00 p.m.: Panel 1: Evidential Standards

"Archival Profusion, Archival Silence, and Analytic Invention: Reinventing Histories of Nineteenth-Century African American Debate"
Angela Ray, Northwestern University 

"President Andrew Jackson: Fake Quotations, False Facts, and the Debasement of History" 
Daniel Feller, University of Tennessee, Knoxville 

"Bunk History and the Standards of Historical Interpretation"
Andrew Schocket, Bowling Green State University

Tuesday, June 9

1:00 p.m.: Panel 2: How do We Know: Reading Evidence in the 18th Century

"What did eighteenth-century readers know, and when did they know it?"
Gordon Fraser, University of Manchester 

"The Morbid Lives and the Afterlives of the Elizabeth (1737) Reproduction, Data, and Enslaved People's Lives in History of the Intra-American Slave Trade"
Elise Mitchell, New York University 

“Peculiar Blue Spots: Evidence and Causes around 1800”
Jutta Schickore, Indiana University, Bloomington 

Thursday, June 11

1:00 p.m.: Panel 3: Making Data: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

“Bad Data: Settlers Measuring Dust, 1930-1940” 
Sara Grossman, Bryn Mawr College 

“In Search of Data Cleaning: Making Demographic Regularities Between Theory and Observation”
Alexander Kindel, Princeton University 

“Narrative Data and the Psychiatric Method”
Lindsey Grubbs, The Johns Hopkins University, Berman Institute for Bioethics

3:00 p.m.: Panel 4: Envisioning Evidence

"How Not to Analyze Data: John W. Tukey Against the Mechanization of Statistical Inference"
Alexander Campolo, The University of Chicago 

“‘Aren’t we kind of splitting hairs?’: Reframing the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and the Anthropology of Edward Spicer in the United States Congress”
Nicholas Barron, Mission College 

“How the Universe Went Missing in 1974”
Jaco de Swart, University of Amsterdam

Friday, June 12

1:00 p.m.: Panel 5: Data in the Digital Age

"The Use and Misuse of Anthropological Evidence: Digital Himalaya as Ethnographic Knowledge (Re)Production"
Mark Turin, The University of British Columbia 

“When Voices Become Data: Reading Data Documenting Contemporary Reading”
Jennifer Burek Pierce, The University of Iowa

“Historical Evidence in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”
Joshua Sternfeld, Unaffiliated Independent Scholar 

Imagine a world where there are vast physical distances between you and a friend, family member, or colleague. This might sound all too familiar to a reader in 2020, but this was also very familiar for most prior to modern transportation. To compensate for distance and instead of texts, Zoom, or emails, letters were commonly used to communicate with those far away. Though the technology of communication has changed drastically, has much else changed? 

In centuries past, letters were the main form of communication over long distances. Their envelopes or folds and contents communicated implied and direct messages through the materials used and the written word. Today, we have text messages and other forms of digital communication. How are these methods and choices of media similar, how are they different? If you look beyond handwriting and some basic mechanics, the similarities might be surprising. During COVID-19, as we practice social distancing, the moment provides us with a set of constraints similar to those of earlier centuries. We seek ways to connect while spending time in physically different spaces. The written word provides comfort and conveys vital information. Even the way messages are sent continues to give information about power structures, hierarchies, relationships, and historical context. 

As it was then and is now, few things compete with that feeling of opening a letter. We all know it. That feeling of opening a card or a letter you’ve received in the mail. The little teasers of information on the envelope - who sent it, the stamp they chose to use - give you a sense of what to expect. The time of year you’ve received the card might also give additional hints of the contents. The quality of the paper, a wax seal, and the physical condition of the letter also carry meaning. Now, there are almost too many ways in which we receive written messages. Mail, social media, text, email, and probably others all convey their own meaning. Think about the difference between your initial thoughts on receiving a text from a friend compared to receiving an email from a friend.

The contexts in which the sender composed the message and in which the recipient reads the message carry emotionally-based, time-based, and socially-based meanings. In the 18th century, the lucky writer might have found a book full of templates for situations running between needing money while at sea to checking in on a sibling. Today, we still have a variety of contexts and templates. Between writing cover letters for a job to saying “happy birthday” on Facebook, modern communicators find themselves in different yet similar situations to those in earlier centuries. You can now see edits on posts to certain social media platforms; somewhat like seeing strikethroughs in the 18th century letters. Though we’ve been gifted (or occasionally cursed) with autocorrect, is the context for edits any different? These contexts also usually give hints about how to send the message and how to respond. 

Luckily, responses could also come from the same book of templates and modern society has also set-up some standard responses based on the context. If you’ve sent a generic response to a job application, is that very different from copying a template that tells you how to respond to someone asking a favor in the 18th century? Responses to written communication are usually tied to the context. Those receiving a response usually already have your response in mind. It’s often important to match that expectation. Responses always demonstrate, very clearly, that written communication involves more than one person -- it is a social act. 

Now that you are thinking way too much about written communication, check out the activities. Think about family or friends who might not be nearby. This moment is a great one for sending letters or communicating with those we care about!

Header image: Post Office - Post Office, 1788 January 1 - https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/object/post-office-1788-january-1#page/1/mode/1up

During the 18th century, letter writing was the only way to communicate long distance. Therefore, learning how to properly write a letter was a part of any young man or woman’s education. 

Letters were incredibly important. They were sent for the same reasons that we send letters, emails, and texts today—to conduct business, share news with friends and family, and share information or ask questions about various topics. Letters could also serve as a means of introduction to someone whom you’d never met.

However, in the 18th century, letter writing and learning how to write letters was much more formal than it is today. The tone of a letter and what was considered appropriate to write in a letter depended on who you were writing to and why. You would not write the same letter to your mother as you would to a business partner. This is still true today, but we no longer formally learn the etiquette of writing letters the way they did in the 18th century. Eighteenth-century letter writing manuals provided sample letters for a variety of situations. Copying these sample letters allowed a person to practice letter writing and learn appropriate letter-writing manners. 

Ever try to write an email to someone, only to revise it several times and worry over the appropriate tone of voice or the content? Ever worry about how to address a letter or email -- should it be to Dr., Mr., Mrs., Ms., Mx., or Miss? 18th-century folks worried about that, too. In fact, one letter writing manual stated, “Many being at a Loss how to address Persons of Distinctions either in Writing or Discourse, are frequently subject to great Mistakes in the Stile and Title due to Superiors.” It then included a very detailed list of how to address a letter, whether you were addressing the King (“To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, ‘Sire, or May it please your Majesty.’”) or a merchant (“To Mr. A.B. or Esq; Merchant, in Tower-Street, London, ‘Sir’”). 

Be careful though—in the 18th century, if you wrote a letter to a well-known person with a detailed address, they might be offended. Mail carriers should well know how to find “Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia” without his specific address! After all, “In directing your Letters to Persons who are well known, it is best not to be too particular, because it is lessening the Person you direct to, by supposing him obscure, and not easily found.” These days, we are expected to use specific addresses when sending a letter, but that was not standard practice in the 18th century before standard street numbers and zip codes. Luckily we no longer have to worry about that particular faux pas. 

Benjamin Franklin, an expert letter writer, owned a manual titled The Art of Letter-Writing. A scroll through the contents will give you a sense of the variety of sample letters and topics. Franklin also published an American edition of George Fisher’s The American Instructor, or Young Man’s Best Companion. This book for children included letter writing as an important task a young gentleman had to learn, coming just after learning the alphabet and how to make a pen. It included pages of the alphabet in different scripts for students to practice by copying or tracing—just like students do in schools today. However, while students today often only learn print and cursive (which is increasingly falling out of favor), Franklin's students were encouraged to learn five types of handwriting, and each was used for a different purpose.

Try out the activities to learn more about 18th-century letter writing!

Header image credit: 
Portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Mason Chamberlin (1762), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

New Members for 2026

The American Philosophical Society has extended invites of membership to newly elected members for 2026. Election to the American Philosophical Society honors extraordinary accomplishments in all fields. Read more about this year's election.

Further Reading

For other news about Members and the APS please visit our APS Press page, specifically the annual American Philosophical Society News.

May 2026

APS Members Receive Honorary Degrees
Cecilia Rouse (APS 2021), Bowdoin College
Harriet Zuckerman (APS 1996), Columbia University
Cass Sunstein (APS 2010), Duke University
Katalin Karikó (APS 2024), Simon A. Levin (APS 2003), Johns Hopkins University
Mary-Claire King (APS 2012), New York University
Kip Thorne (APS 1999), Rochester Institute of Technology
Francis S. Collins (APS 2022), The Rockefeller University
Janet Rossant (APS 2025), Toronto Metropolitan University
Fabiola Gianotti (APS 2019), University College Dublin
Daron Acemoglu (APS 2021), Henry Louis Gates (APS 1995), Katalin Karikó (APS 2024), University of Oxford
Joyce Carol Oates (APS 2016), Marcia McNutt (APS 2002), University of Southern California
Janet Rossant (APS 2025), University of Toronto
Kwame Anthony Appiah (APS 2001), Robert D. Putnam (APS 2005), JoAnne Stubbe (APS 2004), Yale University

Katalin Karikó (APS 2024) joins Hungary's Tisza Government Health Advisory Team.

Joseph L. Goldstein (APS 1987) received David Rockefeller Award for Extraordinary Service from The Rockefeller University in recognition of his scientific contributions throughout his career.

Joyce Chaplin (APS 2020) named Walter Channing Cabot Fellow by Harvard University in recognition of her contributions to the field of early American history.

Ken Burns (APS 2011) awarded inaugural Commonwealth Prize by the Virginia Museum of History & Culture in Richmond, established to commemorate America's 250th, in recognition of his career chronicling our nation's past through documentary films.

Jill Lepore (APS 2014) awarded the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book, We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution.

Seyla Benhabib (APS 2024) receives Upsala University's Skytte Prize in Political Science, honoring her for "examining how justice is possible in a world of constant human mobility, with deep respect for the rights of both individuals and states."

April 2026

APS Members Richard L. Kagan (APS 2011), Angela R. Riley (APS 2025), Leslie B. Vosshall (APS 2022), and Patricia J. Williams (APS 2019) elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Carla Hayden (APS 2020) receives 2026 Champion of Writers Award from The Author's Guild.

Francis Collins (APS 2022) awarded 2026 Dr. Charles L. Branch BrainHealth Award from the Center for BrainHealth in recognition of of his "transformative contributions to neuroscience, leadership and human health."

Deborah Willis (APS 2024) receives 2026 AIPAD Award for redefining and rewriting the "historical and cultural narratives of African American photography in the United States."

Terrence Sejnowski (APS 2025) wins inaugural World Digital Technology Academy Award for the foundational development of the Boltzmann Machine, a precursor to modern AI tools

Stuart Orkin (APS 2017) receives 2026 Breakthrough Prize, along with Swee Lay Thein, for "determining the mechanism behind the body’s transition from fetal hemoglobin to adult hemoglobin and validating its potential as a therapeutic target for sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia."

Naomi Oreskes (APS 2019) delivers Stanford University's 14th Annual Stephen H. Schneider Memorial Lecture.

David Ginsburg (APS 2020) delivers University of Michigan's 101st Henry Russel Lecture.

Irwin M. Jacobs (APS 2013) receives TechCon Fellows Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his "visionary thinking, transformative innovations, and lasting impact" on telecommunications.

Carl Wunsch (APS2003) awarded BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change and Environmental Sciences for his "foundational contributions to studies that revealed the impact of global warming on the world's oceans."

March 2026

Hazel Rose Markus (APS 2025) receives 2026 Sage-CASBS Award in recognition of her pioneering research and theory connecting the self, identity, and agency to the structure of an individual's daily life.

February 2026

Natasha Trethewey (APS 2022) named 2026 recipient of the Stone Award for Literary Achievement by Oregon State University, honoring her work and "the role that poetry and literature play in expanding awareness and cultivating connection."

Carl June (APS 2020) receives the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine for "revolutionizing cancer treatment using immunotherapy based on the patient's own genetically modified cells."

APS Members named to the Forbes 250 Innovators: Martine Rothblatt (APS 2008), Michael Bloomberg (APS 2015), Leroy Hood (APS 2000), Carl June (APS 2020), Phillip Sharp (APS 1991), J. Craig Venter (APS 2013), Frances Arnold (APS 2018), William Kaelin (APS 2024), Xiaowei Zhuang (APS 2019), Drew Weissman (APS 2024), Katalin Karikó (APS 2024), Warren Buffet (APS 2009).

Francis Collins awarded Public Welfare Medal by the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his "visionary leadership of the Human Genome Project...[and] decades of public service."

Mary Beard receives Gold Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Public Discourse by the College Historical Society (Hist) of Trinity University in Dublin, celebrating her "outstanding contribution to academia and public life."

David Nirenberg (APS 2024) named inaugural Distinguished Visitor in the Arts and Humanities at Johns Hopkins University.

Yo-Yo Ma (APS 1999) wins 20th Grammy Award, Best Classical Instrumental Solo, for Shastakovich: The Cello Concertos.

Xiaowei Zhuang (APS 2019) awarded the 2026 Ernest Solvay Prize for "pioneering the development of genome-scale imaging, which has transformed biochemical research, enabled spatial genomics, and created a new paradigm for understanding the molecular and cellular architecture of complex tissues."

January 2026

Rosalie Abella (APS 2018) awarded the Order of Canada in recognition of her outstanding legal career and her steadfast commitment to equality, human rights, and social justice.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan (APS 2006) receives Crafoord Prize in Geosciences from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences "for fundamental contributions to our understanding of how aerosol particles and other climate pollutants influence the atmospheric energy balance of the Earth System."

Martha Minow awarded the 2025 Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Social Sciences and Technology by the Technical University of Munich School of Social Sciences and Technology "in recognition of her exceptional and field-defining contributions at the intersection of law, social sciences, and technology, notably in the area of Artificial Intelligence."

Marcia McNutt receives the 2025 Public Service Award from the American Association of Immunologists in recognition of her advocacy for federal research support, scientific integrity, and evidence-based policy-making.

Cynthia Dwork awarded the 2026 Japan Prize for her contributions to "building and ethical digital society."

Carol Anderson (APS 2023) to deliver the 2026 Lewis & Clark Law School's Martin Luther King, Jr. Endowed Lecture on January 19, focusing on "The Strangling of American Democracy" and the forces reshaping democratic participation in the United States.

Lorraine Daston (APS 2017) receives Award for Scholarly Distinction from the American Historical Association in recognition of her transformative scholarship, visionary leadership, and profound service to the global historical discipline.

Emanuel Ax (APS 2009) is named 2026 Musical America Artist of the Year.

December 2025

Riccardo Muti (APS 1989) presented with the 2025 Ratzinger Prize by Pope Leo XIV in recognition of his broad reach and impact as a Classical conductor.

Mary-Claire King (APS 2012) is awarded 2025 VinFuture Special Prize for Women Innovators in recognition of her identification of the BRCA1 gene, responsible for inherited susceptibility to breast and ovarian cancers.

Belgian town of Neder-Over-Heembeek names the Ingrid Daubechies Street after mathematician, Ingrid Daubchies (APS 2003), in recognition of her work on modern imaging formats, including JPEGS, and for her commitment to gender equality in science.

November 2025

APS Members Danielle S. Allen (APS 2015), S. James Gates (APS 2012), and Anthony Grafton (APS 1993) are awarded the 2025 Barry Prize for Intellectual Achievement from the American Academy of Sciences & Letters and are inducted into the Academy.

Jonathan Losos (APS 2024) honored with the Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award from Washington University in St. Louis.

Gordon S. Wood (APS 1994) awarded the 2025 Irving Kristol Award by the American Enterprise Institute.

Joy Harjo (APS 2021) receives Portrait of a Nation Award from the Smithsonian in recognition of her transformative contributions to American culture and letters.

October 2025

John Clarke (APS 2017) is awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics, with Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis, "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit."

Naomi Oreskes (APS 2019) received the 2025 Volvo Environment Prize in recognition of work on the history of science, climate change, and scientific consensus.

September 2025

Lucy Shapiro (APS 2003) receives the 2025 Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science in recognition of her discovery of bacterial coordination through the generation of daughter cells and her exemplary leadership in the field of developmental biology.

Veeranhadran Ramanathan (APS 2006) awarded the Grand Medal of the French Academy of Sciences, the highest distinction awarded by the Academy, for his visionary commitment to climate science and research.

Maria Jasin (APS 2022) is the 2025 recipient of the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, awarded by Rockefeller University in recognition of her contributions to DNA repair and gene editing.

David Eisenberg (APS 2003) awarded the 2026 Gregori Aminoff Prize in Crystallography by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences "for his discoveries of amyloid fibril structures of relevance for the field of amyloid structural biology in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases."

August 2025

Geraldine Brooks (APS 2024) wins 2025 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.

Claire Parkinson (APS 2010) elected and Honorary Member of the American Meteorological Society.

July 2025

APS Members Ann M. Blair (APS 2009), Claudia Goldin (APS 2015), Richard Ovenden (APS 2015), and Susan R. Wolf (APS 2006) elected to the British Academy's Fellowship.

June 2025

Richard J. Tarrant (APS 2014) receives 2025 Antonio Feltrinelli Award in Humanities Classica Philology from the Academia dei Lincei.

Martin Kern (APS 2015) awarded the 18th China Special Book Award, the highest distinction bestowed by the Chinese government on foreign writers, translators, and publishers, in recognition of his scholarly work on ancient Chinese literary culture.

Alberto Ibargüen (APS 2022) honored with 2025 Esserman-Knight Excellence in Journalism Award. The prize, which celebrates exceptional leadership in journalism, will be renamed the Alberto Ibargüen Excellence in Journalism Award in recognition of his national leadership in promoting innovation and a sustainable future for journalism.

Mary-Claire King (APS 2012) is awarded the 2025 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research for her groundbreaking contributions to the application of genetics to the study and prevention of cancer, interspecies similarity, and the defense of human rights.

Martha Minow (APS 2010) receives 2025 Burton Award, The Hon. Robert A. Katzmann Award for Academic Excellence, in recognition of her exemplary career in law and her time as Dean of Harvard Law School.

David Ginsburg selected as the University of Michigan's 2025 Henry Russell Lecturer, to be delivered during the Winter 2026 term.

Gayatri Spivak (APS 2007) receives 2025 Holberg Award in recognition of her groundbreaking work in the fields of literary theory and philosophy.

May 2025

APS Members Katalin Karikó (APS 2024), Desmond King (APS 2022), Jianguo 'Jack' Liu (APS 2015), and Marilyn Raphael (APS 2023) elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Ithzak Perlman (APS 1997) and Toby Perlman awarded the Samuel Simons Sanford Medal by Yale School of Music in recognition of their lifelong commitment to music performance and education.

Philip Kitcher (APS 2018) awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in honor of his impact as a 'humanist intellectual' whose work "addresses a broad spectrum of the core questions of our time."

Henry Louis “Skip” Gates (APS 1995) wins Newberry Award for leaders in the Humanities.

Katalin Karikó (APS 2024) receives Semmelweis Medal by the Medical University of Vienna in recognition of her pioneering contributions to medical science.

Mary Beth Norton (APS 2010) honored with Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Centennial Medal, presented to alumni who have made fundamental and lasting contributions to knowledge, their disciplines, their colleagues and society.

Douglas Hofstadter (APS 2009) to receive Choose Creativity's Curious Cognitive Explorer Award.

Daron Acemoglu (APS 2021) appointed to lead MIT’s new James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work, launching fall 2025.

Steven Chu (APS 1998) and Darren Walker (APS 2021) receives 2025 Ellis Island Medal of Honor, awarded by the Ellis Island Honors Society.

Elizabeth Alexander (APS 2020), Darren Walker (APS 2021), and Michael Bloomberg (APS 2015) named to the TIME100 Philanthropy 2025 list—Alexander for “championing diversity in the arts,” Walker for "driving transformation," and Bloomberg as 2024’s biggest donor.

Katalin Karikó’s (APS 2024) pioneering work in mRNA vaccine technology is honored in the new exhibit, Forever Forward, at Vienna’s Museum of Medical History, the Josephinum.

Douglas S. Massey (APS 2004) granted the 2025 Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences by the Princess of Asturias Foundation, to be presented in October.

Robbert Dijkgraaf (APS 2013) and Terrence J. Sejnowski (APS 2025) elected as Fellows of the Royal Society.

APS Members Receive Honorary Degrees
Frances H. Arnold (APS 2018); Doctor of Science, Yale University
Esther Duflo (APS 2025); Doctor of Laws, Harvard University
Henry Louis “Skip” Gates (APS 1995); Doctor of Humanities, Yale University
Annette Gordon-Reed (APS 2019); Doctor of Letters, Yale University
Lonnie Bunch (APS 2020); Doctor of Humane Letters, University of Pennsylvania
Lene Hau (APS 2023); Doctor of Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
Sherrilyn Ifill (APS 2025); Doctor of Laws, Princeton University
Nancy Weiss Malkiel (APS 2019); Doctor of Humane Letters, Princeton University
Alondra Nelson (APS 2020); Doctor of Humane Letters, Amherst College
Vinton G. Cerf (APS 2008); Doctor of Science, Amherst College
William Kentridge (APS 2012); Doctor of Fine Arts, Brown University
 

January 2025

Larry M. Bartels (APS 2019), Bonnie L. Bassler (APS 2012), Helen M. Blau (APS 2018), Emery N. Brown (APS 2023), Ingrid Daubechies (APS 2003), Cynthia Dwork (APS 2016), and Wendy L. Freedman (APS 2007) are recipients of the 2025 National Medal of Science. David R. Walt (APS 2023) is a recipient of the 2025 National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The National Medal of Science recognizes "groundbreaking discoveries and innovations that tackle humanity's most urgent needs," while the National Medal of Technology and Innovation "honors visionaries whose advancements have revolutionized industries, driven economic growth and strengthened the nation's global competitiveness."

October 2024

John J. Hopfield (APS 1988) is the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared with Geoffrey Hinton) “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

Gary Ruvkun (APS 2019) won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared with Victor Ambros) "for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation." 

July 2024

Kwame Anthony Appiah (APS 2001), Gerd Gigerenzer (APS 2016), and Catharine MacKinnon (APS 2023) were elected to the British Academy as International Fellows. Election to the British Academy honors distinction in the humanities and the social sciences. 

APS President Roger Bagnall (APS 2001) received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Reading. 

Frances Arnold (APS 2018) is the winner of the American Chemical Society's highest honor, the Priestly Medal, "for her pioneering contributions to the development of directed evolution as a method for chemical and biological design."

APS Members Adi Shamir (APS 2019), Joanne Chory (APS 2015), and Martin Rees (APS 1995) are 2024 Wolf Prize laureates. It is awarded "to Scientists and Artists for their achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations amongst peoples."

June 2024

"Economics and Beyond" at Harvard will feature Daron Acemoglu (APS 2021)

The Kohli Foundation for Sociology is delighted to announce Michèle Lamont (APS 2024) is this year’s laureate of the Kohli Prize for Sociology.

Mary Robinson (APS 1999), a former lawyer and senator, former president of Ireland, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and current Chair of The Elders, is awarded the Tang Prize in Rule of Law. 

Living Classrooms Foundation is proud to host a special event featuring David M. Rubenstein (APS 2019)

Paul Alivisatos (APS 2015) shares 2024 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience

Sara Seager (APS 2018) shares 2024 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics

Anthony Fauci (APS 2001) says empathy motivated his medical career but an old phrase from high school kept him going.

Retired judge David Tatel (APS 2007) issues a stark warning about the Supreme Court

Kwame Anthony Appiah (APS 2001) is the new Hans Blumenberg Professor

John Wilmerding (APS 2006) died on June 6, 2024, in New York City, NY, at the age of 86.  He was a towering figure in American art whose eclectic career as a scholar, museum curator and collector was instrumental in elevating the cultural significance and market value of painters such as Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins and Fitz Henry Lane.

Edward C. Stone (APS 1993) died on June 9, 2024, in Pasadena, CA, at the age of 88. He was the visionary physicist who dispatched NASA’s Voyager spacecraft to run rings around our solar system’s outer planets and, for the first time, to venture beyond to unravel interstellar mysteries.

May 2024

Brandeis Undergraduate Commencement Address by Ken Burns (APS 2011)

Elizabeth Loftus (APS 2006), distinguished professor of psychological science and criminology, law & society, who made the event possible through the donation of her American Philosophical Society Patrick Suppes Prize money, kicked off the UCI discussion of "Reimagining the Justice System".

Kwame Anthony Appiah (APS 2001) has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence.

Vicki L. Chandler (APS 2015), chief academic officer and provost at Minerva University, will address the Drexel University College of Medicine class of 2024 at its commencement ceremony on May 9.

Stuart H. Orkin (APS 2017) has won the Shaw Prize in Life Science & Medicine

Former Executive Officer, Keith S. Thomson (APS 2011), has a new book Murder in Cottisthorpe

Mary Beth Norton gave a virtual discussion of her latest book, 1774: The Long Year of Revolution

Glenn Loury has published new memoir, “Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative” 

Peter Dougherty (APS 2023) receives honorary degree from La Salle.

Cecilia Rouse (APS 2021) was elected to the National Academy of Science.

James H. Simons (APS 2007) died on May 10, 2024, in New York City, NY, at the age of 86.  He was a prizewinning mathematician who abandoned a stellar academic career, then plunged into finance — a world he knew nothing about — and became one of the most successful Wall Street investors ever.

Robert H. Dennard (APS 1997) died on April 23, 2024, in Sleepy Hollow, NY, at the age of 91.  He was an engineer who invented the silicon memory technology that plays an indispensable role in every smartphone, laptop and tablet computer.

J. D. Hawkins died in February 2024, in London, UK, at the age of 83.  He was one of the world’s leading scholars of the languages of ancient Turkey.

April 2024

Joseph Francisco to Give Pulay Lecture, 'Water in the Atmosphere,'

Kwame Anthony Appiah has won the the Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies

Roy Vagelos received an Honorary Degree from Dartmouth

The Smithsonian celebrates Women’s History Month by featuring Native Rights Champion Suzan Shown Harjo

Helen Hennessy Vendler (APS 1992) died on April 23, 2024, in Laguna Niguel, CA, at the age of 90.  She was known for her method of close reading, going methodically line by line, word by word, to expose a poem’s roots.

Julius Adler (APS 19989 died on April 2, 2024, in Madison, WI, at the age of 94.  He was best known professionally for his groundbreaking research on chemotaxis — the relationship between chemical stimuli and organism behavior — first in bacteria and later in fruit flies.

Ellen Ash Peters (APS 1993) died on April 16, 2024, in West Hartford, CT, at the age of 94.  A copy of the Yale Law School obituary is pasted below.  She was a former chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court and a groundbreaking figure among women in the law.

Lubert Stryer (APS 2006) died on April 8, 2024, in Stanford, CA, at the age of 86.  He made fundamental discoveries in fluorescence spectroscopy and vision, established structural biology at Stanford, and uplifted young scientists.

March 2024

David Rubenstein is the new controlling owner of the Baltimore Orioles

Phillips Lecture will feature David M. Rubenstein

A Supreme Legacy: Linda Greenhouse on 45 Years Covering the High Court

Andrea Ghez and Claudia Goldin are among the recipients of the 2024 Alumni Awards

Martha Nussbaum to receive 2024 Norman Maclean Faculty Award

Joe Francisco to Receive Theodore William Richards Medal

Laurie Glimcher is now a strategic advisor to the J.P. Morgan Life Sciences Private Capital team

Jeffrey Gordon, MD, is the recipient of the 2024 Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science at Northwestern University

The Hana and Franciso J. Ayala Center for Science, Technology, and Religion commemorated the 90th anniversary of Francisco Ayala’s birth at the Pontifical Comillas University in Madrid, Spain, on March 12, 2024. The event was entitled “Frontiers of the Universal: Towards a Symphony of Science, Art, Faith, and Knowledge Economy to Mobilize the Wonder of the Natural World in Benefit of Humanity.” Executive Officer of the APS, Robert M. Hauser (APS 2005) spoke about the contributions of Francisco J. Ayala (APS 1984) to the American Philosophical Society. As guest of honor, Dr. Hauser was awarded the medal of the Ayala Center, the first such award ever given.

Walter Massey (APS 1991) featured in article as a Physicist With a Higher Calling

Henry Louis Gates Jr. (APS 1995) Unpacks Black Literature’s ‘Black Box’ in his latest book.

PACSW Women We Admire will feature UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ (APS 2013)

Brandeis University awarded honorary degrees to Ken Burns (APS 2011) and Ruth Simmons (APS 1997)

Daniel Kahneman (APS 2004) died on March 27, 2024, likely in New York, NY, at the age of 90.  He helped pioneer a branch of the field that exposed hard-wired mental biases in people’s economic behavior. The work led to a Nobel.

Richard Serra (APS 2012) died on March 26, 2024, in Orient, NY, at the age of 85.  He was an American artist known for his large-scale abstract sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings, whose work has been primarily associated with Postminimalism.

Marjorie Perloff (APS 2012) died on March 24, 2024, in Los Angeles, CA, at the age of 92.  She was one of America’s leading poetry critics.

Estella Bergere Leopold (APS 2024) died on February 25, 2024, in Seattle, WA, at the age of 97. She was a botanist who examined ancient pollen to illuminate the effects of climate change and who, as the last child of the pioneering environmentalist Aldo Leopold, helped preserve her father’s legacy as a founder of the modern conservation movement.

February 2024

Jeffrey I. Gordon (APS 2014) of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received the 2024 Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science from Northwestern University.

Sheila E. Blumstein gave the 2024 Dr. Donald G. Doehring Memorial Lecture

Joanne Chory (APS 2015) will receive the Franklin Institute's Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science for her achievements in plant science.

Kenneth C. Frazier (APS 2018) will become a fellow of the Harvard Corporation, the senior governing board.

Angela Creager (APS 2020) has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in a round of awards to humanities projects nationwide.

Michael S. Brown (APS 1987) will address graduates and their guests at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine’s 165th commencement ceremony on Monday, May 13.

Rice University’s Ruth Simmons (APS 1997), a President’s Distinguished Fellow, has accepted an invitation to join the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation’s Board of Directors. 

Venki Ramakrishnan (APS 2020) discusses ribosomes, resilience during FSU public lecture

Ernesto Zedillo will deliver the 2024 Anthony C. Janetos Memorial Distinguished Lecture.

Robert Badinter (APS 2009) died on February 9, 2024, in France, at the age of 95.  He was a French lawyer and former justice minister who led the fight to abolish the death penalty in France.

January 2024

Danielle Allen (APS 2015) has joined the board of directors at Monticello.

The National Academy of Sciences has recognized two APS members with awards: Stanislas Dehaene (APS 2010) received the Atkinson Prize in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences and Kimbery Prather (APS 2022) received the NAS Award in Chemical Sciences.

Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute Presents Shirley Tilghman (APS 2000), 19th President of Princeton University, with the Yale Legend in Leadership Award

David Pierpont Gardner (APS 1989) died on January 2, 2024, in Park City, UT, at the age of 90. He served as president of the University of Utah and later president of the University of California.

As part of our annual search, we found these members passed previously:

Jacob Ziv (APS 2003) died on March 25, 2023, in Israel, at the age of 91. He was an Israeli electrical engineer and information theorist who developed the LZ family of lossless data compression algorithms alongside Abraham Lempel.

Frank H. Shu (APS 2003) died on April 22, 2023, in Atherton, CA, at the age of 79.  He was an astrophysicist who is credited with making pivotal contributions to our understanding of galaxies and star formation.

Daniel Roche (APS 2009) died on February 19, 2023, in France, at the age of 88. He was a "professor who profoundly renewed the social and cultural history of modern Europe."

Donald R. Kelley (APS 1995) died on August 24, 2023, in New Brunswick, NJ, at the age of 92.  He was a scholar of, in his words:  "language, law, and history in the French Renaissance".

John S. Chipman (APS 2000) died in 2022, at the age of 96. Other details of his death are unknown.  He was an economist who was a noted expert on the econometrics of international trade.

December 2023

Robert M. Solow (APS 1980) died on December 21, 2023, in Lexington, MA, at the age of 99. American economist and Nobel laureate whose work on the theory of economic growth culminated in the exogenous growth model named after him.

John G. A. Pocock (APS 1994) died on December 12, 2023, at the age of 99.  Pocock wove philosophy, political science, and history into a program in political and moral thought that Johns Hopkins University is known for today.

Edgar S. Woolard, Jr. (APS 1996) died on December 4, 2023, in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, at the age of 89. He was the former CEO and chair of DuPont who led the company through tremendous restructuring in the early 1990s.

Sandra Day O'Connor (APS 1992) died on December 1, 2023, in Phoenix, AZ, at the age of 93.  She was the first woman to serve as a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

November 2023

John L. Heilbron (APS 1990) died on November 5, 2023, in Padua, Italy, at the age of 89.  He was a historian of science whose books, including a biography of Galileo, helped to debunk several myths.

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (APS 1979) died on November 22, 2023, in  Paris, France, at the age of 94. He led a movement that rejected historiography’s traditional emphasis on great events and leaders in favor of mining the “mental universe” of peasants, merchants and clergymen.

October 2023

Hans E. Mayer (APS 1978) died on October 21, 2023, in Klausdorf, Germany, at the age of 91. Hans Mayer was an international expert on the history of the Crusades.

Natalie Zemon Davis (APS 2011) died on October 21, 2023, in Toronto, ON, at the age of 94.  She wrote of peasants, unsung women, border crossers and, most popularly, Martin Guerre, a 16th-century village impostor recalled in a 1980s movie.

Louise Glück (APS 2014) died on October 13, 2023, in Cambridge, MA, at the age of 80.  Acclaimed as one of America’s greatest living writers, she blended deeply personal material with themes of mythology and nature. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020.

September 2023

Gloria Ferrari Pinney (APS 2003) died on September 18, 2023, likely in Lawrenceville, NJ, at the age of 82.  She was an internationally renowned classical archaeologist and art historian.

Evelyn Fox Keller (APS 2006) died on September 22, 2023, in Cambridge, MA, at the age of 87.  A copy of the MIT obituary is pasted below.  She was a distinguished and groundbreaking philosopher and historian of science.

Victor R. Fuchs (APS 1990) died on September 16, 2023, in Palo Alto, CA, at the age of 99.  He demonstrated that the real problem facing the country was not health care coverage but health care costs; America, he said, was spending more and more without achieving better health outcomes.

August 2023

John Warnock (APS 2009) died on August 19, 2023, at the age of 82.  Dr. Warnock played a seminal role in the history of computing as co-founder and chief executive of Adobe Inc., helping create the Portable Document Format (PDF) and software that turned computers into digital printing presses, radically reshaping office life and publishing.

Richard M. Goody (APS 1997) died on August 3, 2023, in Cockeysville, MD, at the age of 102.  Dr. Goody spearheaded a program referred to as "Global Habitability" to examine the factors affecting the Earth's ability to sustain life, principally through biogeochemical cycles and climate.  He was described as "the grandfather of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program."

July 2023

Professor Laura Kiessling (APS 2017) joins the Advisory Board of RSC Chemical Biology

Ruth J. Simmons (APS 1997) named 2023 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities

Former BBC director general Mark Thompson (APS 2017) knighted

Penn State chemist Stephen Benkovic (APS 2002) named Atherton Professor

Éva Tardos (APS 2020) has been awarded the Donald E. Knuth Prize

Rudy Marcus (APS 1990) celebrated his 100th birthday with a day of festivities at Caltech

Stephen M. Stigler (APS 2006) has published Casanova’s Lottery: The History of a Revolutionary Game of Chance

Patrick Spero (APS 2019) on panel to discuss The Founding Fathers’ Legacy Series: Unpacking the Complex Truth

APS member Lewis M. Branscomb (APS 1970) died on May 31, 2023, in Redwood City, CA, at the age of 96.  He was an American physicist, government policy advisor, and corporate research manager. He was best known for being head of the National Bureau of Standards and, later, chief scientist of IBM; and as a prolific writer on science policy issues.

APS member André Watts (APS 2020) died on July 12, 2023, in Bloomington, IN, at the age of 77.  With a performance career that spanned over 60 years, he was internationally celebrated as a musical and artistic legend.

2023 News Archive

2022 News Archive

2021 News Archive

2020 News Archive

Select answers from Drs. Jane E. Boyd (JB), historical curator of Spit Spreads Death: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 in Philadelphia at the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and Graham Mooney (GM), Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of the History of Medicine in the School of Medicine and the Department of Epidemiology in the Bloomberg School of Public Health

Question: Thanks for this great webinar. Working fine for me in Scotland. It seems that 'experts are back' in public discourse (at least in the UK) about COVID-19, they have regained authority. What was the status of past scientific and medical experts in past pandemics such as 1918? (Lawrence Dritsas)

JB: During the 1918–19 pandemic, state and local governments in the United States used the medical qualifications of health experts to reinforce public health messages. Newspapers also covered scientific research about the disease, quoting doctors and scientists as they raced to identify the source of infection and to develop vaccines and treatments. In Philadelphia, Dr. Wilmer Krusen, Director of the Department of Public Health and Charities, was quoted frequently in newspaper stories. He put his name on health posters printed in different languages and on signs posted on streetcars and around the city. One streetcar sign from October 1918 read:

LISTEN—MR. CITIZEN!

Dr. Krusen Says Spittle Becomes Dust and Blows About

Causes EPIDEMIC INFLUENZA Infection

4596 CITIZENS DIED HERE LAST WEEK!

IT’S SERIOUS STOP THE SPITTER

The title of our project, Spit Spreads Death, is taken from one of these signs. We know now that influenza does not spread in dust from dried spit, but focusing on public behavior like spitting or mask-wearing was a highly visible way for authorities to demonstrate that they were doing something to fight the disease. Dr. Krusen has often been blamed for the disastrous impact of the pandemic on Philadelphia, but a recent article places his actions during the flu in a wider context of urban public health and argues for his competence and quick action. 

GM: I'll refer to the section on "Medical systems and know-how" in this excellent History and Policy opinion piece by Michael Bresalier.

Question: What is the experience with confined populations during a pandemic—prisons? (David Maxey)

JB: Confining a group of people during a pandemic can be a double-edged sword. It can protect the group from becoming infected, or keep the disease from spreading outward to other groups, but it can also increase the infection rate within the group if the virus is already present, as we’ve seen on cruise ships. In the Philadelphia area in 1918–19, only a few institutions had strict influenza quarantines. Girard College, a full-scholarship boarding school for boys, had 903 influenza cases and nine deaths. Eastern State Penitentiary had just three deaths behind its high prison walls. Bryn Mawr College, a women’s college located in the suburbs west of Philadelphia, was also quarantined. Though 110 students (a quarter of the student body) fell ill, none died. Bryn Mawr was one of the “escape communities” with one or no pandemic flu deaths studied in a 2006 article on the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs).

GM: This resource on Pandemics and Prison is embedded in a project about prison history.

Additional Reading:

“A Medical Historian on Why We Must Stay the Course in Fighting the Coronavirus,” The New Yorker, April 1, 2020.

Question: COVID-19 seems to present a unique challenge in that it is a very long-lasting and slow-moving illness—long incubation period (up to 14 days), followed by a week or more of milder symptoms and then a long hospitalization period for the seriously ill.  How does COVID-19 compare to the 1918 flu in that sense? (Diana Leonard)

JB: The 1918–19 influenza virus generally acted fast. Some people died within 24 hours of contracting the virus, though other cases lasted longer before death or recovery. The variety and complexity of secondary infections (mostly, but not exclusively, bacterial pneumonia) caused a range of illness lengths and symptoms. A 2007 article—co-authored by Dr. Anthony Fauci—details the origins and epidemiology of the 1918–19 influenza virus. This article compares the coronavirus to the most recent influenza pandemic, the swine flu pandemic of 2009. The CDC has a website about the 1918 virus and pandemic that includes information about the reconstruction of the virus’s genome. 

GM: Again, I refer to this.

Question: The predominant experience of the COVID pandemic in the USA is not being sick or witnessing disease, but rather experience of "being locked in one's home." How does it compare to people's experience during past pandemics, and how is it novel and unusual? (Jakub Kwiecinski)

GM: Obviously all epidemics are different. One great source for understanding how people have responded to social distancing is Giulia Calvi, Histories of a Plague Year: The Social and the Imaginary in Baroque Florence, translated by Dario Biocca and Bryant T. Ragan, Jr., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. (Calvi used used court records of what we might call transgressions against self-isolation regulations. For many epidemics, however, people were sent to hospitals. Here's a nice piece that reflects on what was a common experience for many until the mid-twentieth century.

Question: In previous epidemics how long does it take on average for society to “normalize.” With these current recommendations of social distancing how long before we see people feel comfortable with gathering again and interacting again? (Paul Spechler)

GM: Depends on what "normalize" means! Difficult to say. It may be, and it is my personal hope, that the post-pandemic "normal" looks very different to the pre-pandemic normal in some areas, particularly inequalities in access to health care.

Question: How do we a avoid over preparing for every possible situation and even with having stockpiles of outdated technology? (Bill Mancuso)

GM: Not sure if "outdated technology" is referring to anything specific here. I'm not a big fan of the particular flavor of hindsight in this article, but Mark Lipsitch does make a good point when he says that, "the dilemma of public health is the more it does its job, the more it seems like it's overreacted."

Question: What kind of “spin” happened during the 1918 pandemic? (Nils van Ammers)

JB: News coverage of the 1918–19 pandemic in the United States was hampered by wartime laws that restricted free speech and freedom of the press and punished criticism of the government. Remarkably, President Woodrow Wilson made no public statements about the pandemic. In Philadelphia, as in most cities, war news dominated the papers. Even at the height of the pandemic in October 1918, influenza stories only sometimes made the front pages. To keep up morale, headlines of flu stories—like “Death Rates Mount But Cases Decline”—tried to put a positive spin on bad news. Despite these limitations, newspapers are a major source for researching the pandemic. In addition to case and death statistics, they printed health advice from the city; reported on the work of doctors, nurses, and volunteers; and recorded the deaths of people from all walks of life, from society matrons to policemen.

Question: What were the economic effects of the 1918-19 Flu Pandemic? Is our situation unique? (Matt Monteverde)

JB: Unlike now with coronavirus, there weren’t widespread, long-term business shutdowns in 1918. Public gathering places like schools, theaters, and saloons were closed in many cities, but most stores and other businesses remained open. Factories continued to operate to meet wartime production demands, though with reduced productivity. Because the flu came and went so quickly, any closures or slowdowns only lasted for a few weeks at most. As soon as death rates declined, cities and states lifted restrictions. A just-published article examines the highly disruptive effect of the 1918–19 pandemic on the U.S. economy. The authors conclude: “Timely measures that can mitigate the severity of the pandemic can reduce the severity of the persistent economic downturn.” 

GM: I haven't looked at this article in great depth, but this preprint paper is available. It may also address in part the question raised above by Paul Spechler.

Question: Was there a correspondent “gain” for organized labor after the 1918-19 flu pandemic? We’re currently seeing a valorization of grocery clerks and delivery drivers, was there ever something similar after the Spanish Flu? (Matt Monteverde)

JB: That’s a fascinating question, but it’s not something we studied specifically for our project—you’d need a labor historian to answer it properly. One study of the labor market from 1914 to 1919 found increased manufacturing wages in cities with high pandemic mortality, most likely because of the grim fact that employers were competing for a smaller pool of workers.

Question: How can we label the lack of coverage in media during the 1918 influenza pandemic as irresponsible—or even the holding of a liberty loan parade in Philadelphia as such—when they occurred during a World War? Do we not owe something to our soldiers? Isn’t this type of censorship and morale building also a core necessity of public health and wellness? (Nicholas Bonneau)

JB: Morale-building is important, but censorship that suppresses life-saving information can be dangerous. In Philadelphia, a few doctors tried to warn the city and the public of the risks of holding large public gatherings during a disease outbreak, but the pressure on the city to meet fundraising goals was too great and the Liberty Loan parade went ahead. The parade was not the only factor in the pandemic virus’s rapid spread in Philadelphia, but it almost certainly played a role. Once the pandemic took hold in the city, however, volunteers who were already mobilized for the war effort quickly pivoted to face the crisis. Clubs, businesses, organizations, and individuals set up an emergency telephone switchboard, drove victims to hospitals, helped to care for the sick in hospitals and homes, and much more. So we can say that patriotism and the war also had a positive effect on Philadelphia’s response to the disease. 

GM: I think the question points to governments navigating the fine line between transparency and keeping hold of the narrative. I think World War II also bears thinking about for comparisons. I read this with interest, particularly the implication that social solidarity can't be manufactured by messaging alone. "You cannot kill a virus by being cheerful" should give governments pause for thought.

Additional Reading:

Kevin Siena, “Epidemics and ‘essential work’ in early modern Europe,” History & Policy (March 25, 2020).

Question: Did the shadow of World War One and the great tragedies it wrought minimize the public’s view and reporting of the 1918 Flu Pandemic? (Ryan Berley)

JB: World War I certainly overshadowed the pandemic, though the exact relationships of the two events still need to be examined thoroughly. War stories were all over the newspapers, pushing pandemic stories to the inside pages, and censorship laws restricted reporting. Once the war was over, communities built memorials to the military personnel who had died in combat, but there were almost no public memorials for the victims of the pandemic. Instead, families mourned their lost loved ones quietly and privately. 

Question: What correlations can be made to the arts during 1918 and now? What was helpful then and what can be now? (Rheytchul Kimmel)

JB: One of the notable things about the 1918–19 pandemic is how small a cultural footprint it left behind, especially compared to the literature, visual arts, and music directly inspired by World War I. Pale Horse, Pale Rider, a short novel by Katherine Anne Porter published in 1939, is one of the few exceptions. The story is based on the author’s own experiences of being severely ill during the pandemic. But even though the pandemic is neglected in the cultural and artistic sphere, we discovered that many families have passed down memories of the event through the generations. Storytelling, no matter what form it takes, has always helped people to make meaning out of chaos and trauma.