Charles Coulston Gillispie

Charles Coulston Gillispie (August 6, 1918 – October 6, 2015) was an American historian of science. He was the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History of Science, Emeritus at Princeton University. He was succeeded by Arno J. Mayer.

Life
The son of Raymond Livingston Gillispie and Virginia Coulston, Gillispie grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He attended Wesleyan University, graduating in 1940 with a major in Chemistry and gained his PhD from Harvard University in 1949. He also served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Gillispie joined the Department of History at Princeton University, establishing the Princeton Program in History of Science in the 1960s. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963. He was president of the History of Science Society in 1965–66. In 1972, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. He headed the editorial board of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, for which he received the Dartmouth Medal in 1981. Gillispie also received the Pfizer Award in 1981. He was awarded the George Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society in 1984 and the Balzan Prize in 1997 for "the extraordinary contribution he has made to the history and philosophy of science by his intellectually vigorous, precise works, as well as his editing of a great reference work".

He died on October 6, 2015, at the age of 97.

Works

 * Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Britain, 1790–1850, 1951 ;
 * The edge of objectivity: an essay in the history of scientific ideas, 1960
 * Lazare Carnot, savant, 1971
 * Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime, 1980 ISBN 0691082332 Winner of the 1981 Pfizer Award.
 * pbk reprint with slight change in title.
 * Science and Polity in France: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Years (2004) ISBN 0-691-11541-9
 * The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation, 1783–1784, 1983 ISBN 0691083215
 * Pierre-Simon Laplace, 1749–1827: A Life in Exact Science, 1997 ISBN 0691011850
 * Essays and Reviews in History and History of Science, 2006 ISBN 9780871699657
 * Pierre-Simon Laplace, 1749–1827: A Life in Exact Science, 1997 ISBN 0691011850
 * Essays and Reviews in History and History of Science, 2006 ISBN 9780871699657
 * Essays and Reviews in History and History of Science, 2006 ISBN 9780871699657
 * Essays and Reviews in History and History of Science, 2006 ISBN 9780871699657