Professor Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis received her Honours BSC degree from the University of Western Ontario in Biology with an area of concentration in the Plant Sciences. She completed her PhD in the graduate field of ecology and evolutionary biology and in the Program for the History and Philosophy of Science at Cornell University in 1988. She joined the history department at UF in 1988 and has been teaching a range of courses mostly in the history of biology since then. In 2004, she also joined the Zoology department at UF where she has developed courses on Biology and Society. Her most popular courses in history include The History of Evolutionary Thought, Science, Exploration, and Empire and the History and Evolution of Infectious Disease. She has also developed a series of graduate seminars in the history of biology and in the cultural history of scientific knowledge. She has been the recipient of a range of teaching awards at UF that include the outstanding University teaching award in 1997, the John Mahon Undergraduate Teaching Award, and she has been a three-time recipient of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teaching Award.
Professor Smocovitis' research interests include the history of modern evolutionary biology, genetics, systematics and ecology and the history of American botany in twentieth century Britain and America. In 1996 she completed her book, Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology, that appeared with Princeton University Press. It was designated one of Choice's Outstanding Academic Books of 1997. She has published extensively in the history of evolution and botany with articles and reviews appearing in Osiris, Journal for the History of Biology, Science, Nature, Isis, and the Quarterly Review of Biology. She is currently working on a biographical study of the noted plant evolutionary biologist, G. Ledyard Stebbins. With systematic botanist Daniel Crawford, she recently published an annotated collection of his most important scientific papers and has recently edited his autobiography. She has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society. In 1990-92 she was named Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University and in 2001 she was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has served on a range of editorial boards including Isis, Osiris, Social Epistemology and the Mendel Newsletter. She was Associate Editor for the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas and is currently Editor-In-Chief of the New York Botanical Garden Press series “Studies in Botanical History.”
Professor Smocovitis has been active in a range of societies where she has been an elected member and officer including the History of Science Society, The Society for the Study of Evolution (where she currently serves as archivist), The Botanical Society of America (where she has served as Chair for the Historical Section), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science where she is Chair of Section L, The History and Philosophy of Science. She is also an active participant in the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology. She has delivered lectures all over the world and has taught at the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Athens, in Athens, Greece.
