By Catherine Curan

Angela N. H. Creager, the Thomas M. Siebel Professor in the History of Science and chair of the Department of History at Princeton University, visited the Princeton Athens Center for a lecture and workshop last month.

We were thrilled to host Creager, who studies the history of 20th-century biomedical research, for two events.

On March 6, Creager gave a talk on “What is “Good” Research? Debates Over Scientific Misconduct in the 1980s and Beyond.” Focusing on these debates in the U.S. Congress, Creager discussed policymakers and practitioners’ efforts to clarify the distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable research – and the moral and ethical frameworks that can be attached to breakdowns in the dependability of published scientific findings. 

Dimitri Gondicas, director of the Seeger Center, introduced Creager.

“Our mission at the Princeton Athens Center is to inspire, motivate and support research in the humanities and the social sciences; to provide a physical and intellectual space for teaching, learning, and scholarly exchange, and to connect Princeton faculty and students with our counterparts at academic and cultural institutions in Greece and the broader region,” said Gondicas.

“History and Hellenic Studies at Princeton enjoy a longstanding, happy collaboration: sharing joint faculty, hosting postdoctoral fellows, and mentoring graduate students. It is always wonderful to work with Angela in all these areas of shared interest,” Gondicas added.

On March 7, Creager led a graduate seminar titled “Residues and Chemical Environments: Historical, Philosophical and Social Considerations.” Theodore Arabatzis, a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Athens, and Kostas Tampakis, a senior researcher at the National Hellenic Research Foundation, nominated eight students from the University of Athens to participate.

The seminar focused on a book that Creager co-edited, "Residues: Thinking Through Chemical Environments," published in 2023. Tampakis, a 2011-12 postdoctoral fellow at the Center, noted that the students’ backgrounds and interests ranged from gender and science to AI and the environment and from the history of modern physical sciences to the development of concepts and institutions. 

“Participation in the seminar gave the students an amazing opportunity to interact with a leading scholar in the history of science and discuss groundbreaking new research on a socially relevant topic,” said Arabatzis, a 1995 graduate alum.

These events reflected the Seeger Center’s ongoing efforts to develop links with the history of science academic community in Greece. Last June, Jennifer M. Rampling, an associate professor of history at Princeton, led a workshop at the Princeton Athens Center titled “Sources of Alchemy,” which focused on alchemical sources in Byzantine Greek, Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, and Latin and explored connections between these texts.

Looking ahead, the Seeger Center plans to launch a research community focused on the history of science next fall.