| Everett Mendelsohn | |
| Birth Name: | Everett Irwin Mendelsohn |
| Birth Date: | 28 October 1931 |
| Birth Place: | Yonkers, New York, U.S. |
| Fields: | History of science |
| Workplaces: | Harvard University |
| Education: |
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| Thesis Title: | The development of the theory of animal heat |
| Thesis1 Url: | and |
| Thesis2 Url: | )--> |
| Thesis Year: | 1960 |
| Doctoral Advisors: | )--> |
| Doctoral Students: | Garland E. Allen |
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Everett Irwin Mendelsohn (October 28, 1931 – June 6, 2023) was an American historian of science. He was Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at Harvard University, where he was a faculty member from 1960 until his retirement in 2007.[1] [2]
Everett Irwin Mendelsohn was born on October 28, 1931, in New York City.[3] He grew up in the Bronx. His father worked for a candy importation company. His mother was a school secretary.[4]
In 1949, he graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School. He then studied biology and history at Antioch College, graduating with a BS in 1953. He then went to graduate school in biology at Harvard. In 1960, he received a PhD in the history of science.[4]
Mendelsohn was a co-founder of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Committee on Science, Arms Control, and National Security and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Committee on International Security Studies. A self-described pacifist, he was active in attempting to negotiate peace in the Middle East both as the chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Committee on Middle East Studies and through his work with the American Friends Service Committee.[2] [5]
In 1962 Mendelsohn was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[6] In 1968, he founded the Journal of the History of Biology and served as its editor-in-chief for 31 years thereafter.[7] He was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1970.[8] He received the Gregor Mendel Medal from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1991 and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize in 1996.[5] In 1998, the Harvard Graduate Council honored Mendelsohn's work mentoring students by establishing the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award, which is given annually to academics who are judged to have gone above and beyond in mentoring graduate students at Harvard.[9] In 2007, when Mendelsohn announced his impending retirement, his Harvard colleague Anne Harrington described him as "one of the founders of the social history of science."[2] In 2017, the Journal of the History of Biology established the Everett Mendelsohn Prize in his honor.[7]
In 1954, Mendelsohn married Mary Maule Leeds. Together they had three children. The marriage ended in divorce. In 1974, he married Mary B. Anderson, an economist and author.[4]
Mendelsohn died after a stroke in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 6, 2023, at the age of 91.[4]