PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY VOL. 152, NO. 1, MARCH 2008

M A R S H A L L C L AG E T T

23 january 1916 . 21 october 2005

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biographical memoirs

MARSHALL CLAGETT died on 21 October 2005, at the age of eighty-nine. With his passing the history of science, and history in general, have lost one of the greatest and most perceptive scholars of the twentieth century, and I, and all of his other former students and colleagues, have lost a dear and faithful friend.

Marshall Clagett was born on 23 January 1916 in Washington, D.C. In 1933, he began his university studies at the California Institute of Tech-nology, remaining for two years before transferring in 1935 to George Washington University, where, in 1937, he received the A.B. and Mas-ter of Arts degrees. Professor Clagett then entered Columbia University, where, in 1941, he was awarded a Ph.D. degree in history. At Columbia he studied with Professor Lynn Thorndike, who was a renowned student of medieval science and magic. In the preface to his fi rst book, Giovanni Marliani and Late Medieval Physics (Columbia University Press, 1941), which was his Ph.D. dissertation, Professor Clagett expressed his great debt to Thorndike, who, he explained, more than once made it pos-sible for me to continue my work at Columbia.

In the same year he received his Ph.D., Marshall Clagett entered the U.S. Navy. He served fi ve years, until 1946, rising from ensign to lieu-tenant commander. Following his discharge in 1946, he was hired by Columbia University as an instructor in history and history of science. After his brief sojourn at Columbia, the history of science department at the University of Wisconsin hired Professor Clagett in 1947; he re-mained there until 1964. During that period, he rose to the rank of professor (1954) and was subsequently appointed Vilas Research Pro-fessor (1962). During the period 1959 to 1964, Dr. Clagett served as director of the University of Wisconsins Institute for Research in the Humanities. His skills as a scholar and administrator were instrumen-tal in making Wisconsins history of science department world-famous and in facilitating the study of the history of science. In 1957, Professor Clagett organized a ten-day Institute for the History of Science (111 September) that was supported by the National Science Foundation. It was held at the University of Wisconsin for the purpose of promoting and encouraging the study of the history of science. Virtually all major scholars in the history of science participated. From their papers and critiques, Professor Clagett edited a lengthy and seminal volume enti-tled Critical Problems in the History of Science (University of Wiscon-sin Press, 1959).

During 195859 and 1963, Dr. Clagett was an invited visiting mem-ber of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. In 1964, he was appointed permanently to the faculty of the School of Historical Studies, where he served until his retirement in 1986, thereafter assuming the title of professor emeritus, under which title he continued his research.

marshall clagett 123

All told, the Institute for Advanced Study was Marshall Clagetts home base for approximately forty years.

By any standard of measure, Marshall Clagetts research publications are extraordinary and unusual. They may be conveniently divided into two major and unrelated phases. The fi rst encompasses approximately the fi rst forty years of his research career, extending to the time of his retirement in 1986. During that period his publications embraced Greek and Arabic science, but laid overwhelming emphasis on medieval Latin physics and mathematics, which were heavily infl uenced by Greco-Arabic science. The second phase was devoted exclusively to ancient Egyptian science, with which he was preoccupied during the last sixteen to eigh-teen years of his life.

Marshall Clagetts fi rst major publication after his dissertation ap-peared in 1952, when, in collaboration with Ernest A. Moody, he pub-lished The Medieval Science of Weights (Scientia de Ponderibus), which included eight treatises on medieval statics. In their introduction, Clagett and Moody declare that the texts they edited reveal a most interesting interpenetration between the mathematical tradition of Archimedes and Euclid, and the dynamical tradition of Aristotelian physics (p. 9).

In 1957, Clagett published a widely read book, Greek Science in Antiquity, wherein he described Greek science from its beginning to the end of the ancient world and the beginning of the Middle Ages. During this period, he was also deeply immersed in the mathematical physics of the late Middle Ages. In 1959, he published a landmark volume, The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages, which consisted of ten chap-ters divided into three major themes of statics, kinematics, and dy-namics. A fourth partThe Fate and Scope of Medieval Mechanics contained the eleventh and twelfth chapters, which conclude the vol-ume. In each chapter, Clagett not only included the most relevant docu-ments, many of which he translated, but also wrote illuminating intro-ductions that were meant to give the signifi cance of the documents grouped in each chapter. Some of the themes and theorems considered were of great signifi cance for the development of early modern science. Among these theorems, Clagett explained, we can single out the general law of the lever as applied to both straight and bent levers, as well as the problem of the inclined plane, which came into the Middle Ages and there received a brilliant and correct solution which in some respects surpasses both the solutions of Stevin and Galileo (p. xxiii). Indeed, many of the major medieval statical treatises were available in the sixteenth century and undoubtedly infl uenced some early modern natural philosophers. In the three fundamental themes of the book, Clagett discussed all the major topics of medieval physics, adding to the statical themes already mentioned, the intension and remission of

124 biographical memoirs

forms, the mean speed theorem, impetus theory, and the free fall of bodies. In The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages, Clagett made a large amount of medieval physical science available to a broad audi-ence, as well as to specialists on the subjects he included. In recognition of his brilliant achievement, the History of Science Society, in 1960, gave Marshall Clagett its prestigious Pfi zer Award.

In the 1960s, Clagett was once again at work on two projects, one very much more extensive than the other. The smaller of the projects resulted in a book that is undoubtedly larger than any single volume most scholars will ever publish. I refer to Marshall Clagetts great 1968 edition and English translation of Nicole Oresmes lengthy Latin trea-tise on the intension and remission of forms entitled Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and Motions: A Treatise on the Uni-formity and Difformity of Intensities Known as Tractatus de confi gura-tionibus qualitatum et motuum. In this treatise, Clagett shows us how Oresme represented all sorts of variable qualities geometrically. When velocity came to be treated as just another variable quality, Oresme, and other medieval scholastics, formulated defi nitions for uniform, acceler-ated, and instantaneous motions, all of which culminated in the formula-tion of a geometric proof of the famous mean speed theorem (s = at2). When Galileo gave the same proof in the seventeenth century, it was strik-ingly similar to Oresmes. Clagetts summary and analysis of the history of the intension and remission of forms doctrine, which culminated in Oresmes great treatise, is a masterpiece of historical scholarship.

All historians of science should read the opening page of his book. Here Clagett warns against anachronistic claims and then declares (p. 3), No medieval schoolman has been singled out as a precursor more of-ten than the French scholastic Nicole Oresme. This brilliant scholar has been credited with the framing of Greshams law before Gresham, with the invention of analytic geometry before Descartes, with propounding structural theories of compounds before the nineteenth-century organic chemists, with discovering the law of free fall before Galileo, and with advocating the rotation of the earth before Copernicus. None of these claims is, in fact, true, although each is based on discussions by Oresme of some penetration and originality.

Although The Science of Mechanics and the book on Oresme were already more than many scholars achieve in a lifetime, Clagetts larger project was a fi ve-volume work in ten tomes. Archimedes in the Middle Ages was truly monumental, engaging his attention for twenty years, from 1964 to 1984. In these volumes, Clagett published Latin editions and English translations of all the known Latin texts that had been trans-lated from the works of Archimedes, as well as numerous Latin works that were ultimately infl uenced by Archimedes. The number of Archi-medean texts editedmost of which were also translatedover the fi ve

marshall clagett 125

volumes is truly amazing. For his Herculean efforts, Clagett was awarded the Alexandre Koyr Medal of the International Academy of the His-tory of Science (Paris) in 1981.

The second great phase of Marshall Clagetts career is utterly extra-ordinary. Sometime around 1977, he began the study of Egyptian hiero-glyphics and culture. After completion of the last volume of Archimedes in the Middle Ages in 1984, he turned his attention wholly to ancient Egyptian science, and continued after his retirement from the Institute for Advanced Study. To do this, he had not only to immerse himself in ancient Egyptian thought, but also to learn Egyptian hieroglyphics, which he did. He immersed himself in the sources and monuments of Egyp-tian science by making numerous trips to Egypt, becoming, in the pro-cess, a professional Egyptologist, able to read hieroglyphic inscriptions in tombs and monuments. From 1989 to 1999, Clagett published three volumes in four tomes. They are collectively entitled Ancient Egyptian Science: A Source Book. In the fi rst volume (in two tomes), he treated two themes: the history of writing and the creation of the world (cos-mology and cosmogony). Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy formed the subject matter of the second volume, while Ancient Egyptian Mathe-matics was the topic of the third volume.

A glance at these volumes immediately reveals the enormous com-plexity of the undertaking. Clagett supplied camera-ready copy and there-fore had to devise computer programs that enabled him to express the hieroglyphs in his manuscript. In the preface of the third volume, Clagett informs readers that he had planned to publish only three volumes and to do so by the end of the twentieth century, but it became apparent to me, he explains, as I approached the end of my treatment of math-ematics, that the additional sections on Egyptian medicine and biology as well as on ancient Egyptian representations of nature promised for this volume would produce an unwieldy tome (p. v). To avoid this, Clagett included only mathematics in the third volume and declared his intention and hope to complete a fi nal, fourth volume to encompass the remaining themes. Although we shall not see the fourth volume, his-torians of science will be forever grateful for the magnifi cent volumes he did give us.

Marshall Clagett surely ranks among the greatest historians and scholars of the twentieth century. Few could match the enormous range of his scholarship. He had a natural instinct for making diffi cult an-cient and medieval texts comprehensible and for placing them in their contexts. He not only had great linguistic skills in a wide range of lan-guages, but also possessed scientifi c and mathematical knowledge to explain precisely the meaning of the diffi cult texts he confronted. Over the course of his long career, he penetrated the dense fog of many Latin and hieroglyphic texts.

126 biographical memoirs

In addition to his extensive scholarly activities, Clagett served in an editorial capacity on a number of occasions. He was the medieval edi-tor for the journal Isis (195364) and also the general editor of a series he initiated at the University of Wisconsin entitled Publications in Me-dieval Science (195271). During the period 1970 to 1980, he was an associate editor for the fi rst sixteen volumes of the Dictionary of Scien-tifi c Biography, perhaps the single most important publication in the history of science during the twentieth century.

In recognition of his great scholarly achievements, Marshall Clagett received many awards, prizes, and research grants. In addition to the Pfi zer Award and Alexandre Koyr Medal mentioned above, he was awarded the Charles Homer Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy of America (1969) and the George Sarton Medal of the History of Sci-ence Society (1980) for outstanding scholarship. He was twice awarded the John Frederick Lewis Award of the American Philosophical Society (see below). In recognition of a lifetime of scholarship in the history of science, Clagett was awarded one of two Giovanni Dondi dall Orolo-gio European Prizes in the History of Science, Technology, and Industry in 1995; and in 1996 received the thirty-fi fth annual International Gali-leo Galilei Prize for outstanding contributions by a foreign scholar in the study and diffusion of Italian culture.

Prior to his appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1964, Professor Clagett received a number of research grants, including two Guggenheim Fellowships (1946; 195051), as well as grants from the National Science Foundation, the University of Wisconsin, and the American Philosophical Society.

In addition to serving as president of the History of Science Society (196264), he was also elected to the following honorifi c societies: fel-low of the Medieval Academy of America; member of the American Philosophical Society, where he was vice president from 1969 to 1972; member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik; and member of the International Academy of the History of Science, serving as vice president from 1968 to 1971. He was also awarded honorary degrees from George Wash-ington University and the University of Wisconsin.

Of the numerous organizations to which he belonged, Professor Clagett was most heavily involved in the activities of the American Philosophical Society, to which he was elected in 1960 (see below). He held numerous offi ces and committee assignments. In the course of his membership, Clagett read three papers at APS meetings and published three articles in the Proceedings. The last four volumes of Archimedes in the Middle Ages were published by the Society, as were his three vol-umes on Ancient Egyptian Science. For the fourth volume of the for-

marshall clagett 127

mer, he was awarded the Societys John Frederick Lewis Award in 1981; and for the fi rst volume of the latter, he was again awarded the John Frederick Lewis Award in 1989.

Marshall Clagett not only contributed greatly to the advance of the history of science and its maturation as a discipline, but was also active in the affairs of the History of Science Society for many years. His ten-ure at the Institute for Advanced Study proved a boon for the history of science. Through his concern and generosity, he arranged for numer-ous historians of scienceincluding the author of this logeto be-come visiting members of the School of Historical Studies at the Insti-tute. The appointments were usually for one year, but could be arranged for less time if that was deemed necessary. Many important research projects were pursued in consultation with Marshall Clagett, who al-ways gave generously of his time and penetrating scholarship. To all of his visiting colleagues, John Murdoch and I explained in our intro-duction to the festschrift we organized in his honor, Marshall Clagett functioned as a research resource, social companion, and, most impor-tant of all, as a true friend. This was so from the very beginning of my relationshipand that of my fellow graduate students at the University of Wisconsin in the 1950swith him. We usually held our seminars at the Clagett home, where Marshall and his wonderful wife, Sue, wel-comed us with warmth and kindness.

Marshall Clagett is survived by his wife, Sue Riley Clagett, of Prince-ton; his daughter, Kathleen Williams, of Towson, Maryland; two sons, Dennis Clagett, of Nyon, Switzerland, and Michael Clagett, of Yardley, Pennsylvania; a half-brother, Brice Clagett, of Washington, D.C.; and fi ve grandchildren: Mary Kate Di Tursi, of Troy, New York; Jay K. B. Williams Jr., Marshall Clagett Williams, and Michael Williams, of Tow-son, Maryland; and Emily Clagett, of Yardley, Pennsylvania.

Marshall Clagett was one of the greatest and most extraordinary scholars of the twentieth century. His like will not soon come again.

Elected 1960; Councillor 196366, 197982; Vice President 196972; Committees: Advisory to the Council on Election 197172; Council Nominees 197172; Executive, by invitation 198788; Library 198695; Meetings 19872001; Membership IV 198086; Nomination of Offi cers 196566, 197273, 198183; Research 196988; John C. Slater Research Fund 19872000

Edward GrantDistinguished Professor Emeritus

Department of History and Philosophy of ScienceIndiana University

This memoir has been adapted by the author from an loge published in ISIS 97.2: 33033. 2006 by The History of Science Society Press.

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