Robert
A. Hatch
226 Keene-Flint Hall
Phone: (352) 273-3389
Fax: (352) 392-6927
Email: ufhatch@ufl.edu
Website:
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhatch/pages
Mailing address:
Department of History
University of Florida
P.O. Box 117320
Gainesville, FL 32611-7320
Bob Hatch received his B.S. in European History
(1970, Highest Honors) and his M.A. (1972) and Ph.D. (1978) in History of
Science from the University of Wisconsin (Madison). He came to the Humanities
Department at the University of Florida in 1978, and the following year joined
Department of History. Bob currently serves as Interim Director of
the Center for the Humanities, and is Program Coordinator for the Paris Research
Center (Summer Program) and President of the Howe Society.
Professor Hatch specializes in the Scientific Revolution (Copernicus to Newton) and more generally, Early Modern European Intellectual & Cultural history. His teaching interests extend from antiquity through the mid-18th century aiming at relations between science, philosophy, theology, classical studies and the broader context of manuscript & print culture, especially communication networks and the much-discuss Public Sphere. He has twice received both the Mahon Undergraduate Teaching Award and the Wilensky Graduate Teaching Award, as well as three CLAS Teacher of the Year Awards. In 2002 he was named University of Florida Teacher of the Year and received the Joseph H. Hazen Education Prize from the History of Science Society for international contributions to the profession. He has served on over 90 PhD and MA committees in History, English, Philosophy, Mathematics, Anthropology, Sociology, Environmental Sciences, Nursing, and Law.
Professor Hatch regularly teaches the Department graduate seminar on 'Historiography' and particularly enjoys teaching undergraduate courses, among them 'Science-Sex-Race', 'Newton-Darwin-Freud,' and 'Science-Evidence-Law.' Having great fun with 'The Scientific Revolution - Primary Sources' (based on electronic texts), he will soon teach a recently approved course 'Clio Electric: The History of Research in Science & History (HIS 3504). This course offers an overview of scholarly and scientific research traditions. Here students use primary electronic texts to explore how claims to knowledge have changed over the last three centuries across oral, scribal, print, and electronic cultures in the Humanities and the Sciences. Here the 'Two Cultures' are called into question from the outset by focusing on the concept, meaning, and practice of "research" in the transition from 'Renaissance Humanism' to 'Modern Science'. Historically, how do we account for cultural differences in the value and respect we accord different kinds of research and different kinds of knowledge? Comparatively (echoing Ben Franklin) what good is science--what use is history--and indeed, what good is a baby? We need to consider the evidence.
Professor Hatch has published articles, chapters, and essays (particularly on Boulliau, Gassendi, and Peiresc) and some 75 reviews in three dozen scholarly journals. He has lectured in the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, and Netherlands, and was History of Science Editor of the ECCB for two decades. He has received major grants from NEH, NSF, and the American Philosophical Society. As sequel to his first book, The Collection Boulliau (APS 1982), he is currently completing Part II of the trilogy, The Boulliau Correspondence, and continues apace with Part III, Boulliau's Europe: Science & Learning in 17th-Century France. He is also writing a book on the Republic of Letters during the so-called Scientific Revolution.
Current publishing projects include ‘Clio Electric: Primary Texts & Digital Research’, an invited article that launches a new series of Essay Reviews in ISIS on Digital Humanities; ‘Nature’s Profoundest Secret: First Inklings, Second Guesses, Second Thoughts’ [Background to the Inverse-Square Law of Universal Gravitation], Lehrstuhl fur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Munich, in Algorismus; an invited Historiographical Introduction to the landmark Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers (Springer - Verlag International, Berlin, projected 3 Vols.); and now in press, «Singes et Perroquets, ô meilleur de la chair ! Descartes & Gassendi représentant des 'points & parties' » [Monkeys & Parrots, O Best of Flesh! Descartes & Gassendi Representing Points & Parts’] in Actes, Colloque Pierre Gassendi, Brepols.
