ABSTRACT

This presentation will examine the work of six ground-breaking scientists, and how the invention of printed book allowed them to share their discoveries with the world. These are stories of the scientific endeavor at work with some of the greatest minds in the Western scientific canon, but they are also stories of ignorance, egotism, censorship, religious bigotry, fear, plagiarism, theft, and fraud - - - all the good stuff that often gets left out. The cast of characters will include Nikolas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, William Harvey, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, and Andreas Vesalius.

About the Speaker:

Stephen Greenberg received his doctorate in Early Modern History from Fordham University in 1983 with a dissertation on early printing and publishing. After teaching for several years, he returned to school and earned his library degree from Columbia University in 1991, specializing in Rare Books and Archival Management. Starting in 1992, he worked in the History of Medicine Division at the US National Library of Medicine (one of the constituent units of the US National Institutes of Health), becoming Section Head for Rare Books and Early Manuscripts. He retired from NLM in June of 2021. Dr. Greenberg is a past chair of the Medical Library Association (MLA) History of the Health Sciences Section and past president of Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences (ALHHS). He has lectured and taught nationwide through such groups as the NIH Speaker's Bureau, the Medical Library Association's Continuing Education Program, and Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. Before his retirement, he was a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals (AHIP), a Fellow of the Medical Library Association, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the ALHHS Publication Award (2011) and National Institutes of Health Award of Merit in 2013. In 2018, Dr. Greenberg received the ALHHS Lisabeth E. Holloway Lifetime Achievement Award "for significant contributions through leadership and service to ALHHS and the profession."