Eloge: Susan Ruth Sheets-Pyenson, 9 September 1949-18 August 1998Author(s): David AllenSource: Isis, Vol. 90, No. 1 (Mar., 1999), pp. 168-169Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/237552 .

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NEWS OF THE PROFESSION

Eloge

SUSAN RUTH SHEETS-PYENSON, 9 SEPTEMBER 1949-18 AUGUST 1998

The early death of Susan Sheets-Pyenson has robbed the history of science community of a teacher and researcher whose pathbreaking pub- lications in hitherto-neglected areas of the sub- ject have won her a considerable standing inter- nationally. There had been every reason to expect that much more and even better work was yet to come.

The daughter of Ted C. Sheets and Martha Merrill Sheets of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Susan was born in Toledo, Ohio, where she grew up and attended the public schools before going on to the University of Michigan. Graduating in 1970 with distinction and high honors in history, she then moved to the graduate school of the University of Pennsylvania to specialize in his- tory and sociology of science; after being awarded a doctoral fellowship she gained her Ph.D. in 1976 for a dissertation on the emer- gence of a popular science culture in Paris and London during the middle fifty years of the nine- teenth century (subsequently the basis of a lengthy article in Annals of Science in 1985). Most of her professional career was spent in Canada, at Concordia University in Montreal, where her husband Lewis Pyenson concurrently taught history of science at the Universite de Montreal. Appointed a Sessional Lecturer at Concordia in 1977, she in due course rose to become Associate Professor of Geography and Director of the Programme in Science and Hu- man Affairs. Only two years before her death she and her husband exchanged French Canada for its shadow self in the Deep South to take up posts at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Here she became Associate Professor of History while still maintaining her affiliation with Con- cordia as Associate Professor of Philosophy.

In her postdoctoral years she extended the themes explored in her dissertation. In London she put to good use the remarkably complete yet much underexploited records of the publishing firm of Taylor and Francis at the St. Bride's Li-

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DAVID ALLEN 169

brary for an acute analysis of its costing and mar- keting strategies. These enabled her to explain how it was that the Annals of Natural History was the only one of the many commercial peri- odicals specializing in that area of science in Britain to survive the murderous competition of the 1830s and 1840s. This led to a study of the natural history joumal market as a whole in Brit- ain at that period; a volley of articles and chap- ters in books during the 1980s was the invaluable result. With the possible exception of W. H. Brock, no one else has done so much to open up this important field of inquiry and set the devel- opments within a broader explanatory context.

Though Susan never entirely abandoned that early line of work-a study of the chief equiv- alent joumal in Canada appeared in French as recently as 1997 -increasingly her attention was captured by the short-lived "museum move- ment" of the late nineteenth century. This inter- est came about through a catalogue raisonne' she had compiled of the scientific correspondence of John William Dawson (subsequently published by the British Society for the History of Science in its monograph series) as a preliminary to her eventual comprehensive biography of that lead- ing figure in Canada and geology, published by McGill-Queen's University Press in 1996. Daw- son had had a special relationship with the Red- path Museum in Montreal, and that prompted the idea of a cross-national comparative study of (in her own words) "the museum activities of Daw- son look-alikes in other cultures." To that end she examined archives in six countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina. The re- sulting book, Cathedrals of Science: The Devel-

opment of Colonial Natural History Museums during the Late Nineteenth Century (McGill- Queen's, 1988), was nominated for several prizes and is unquestionably the most influential of her publications. A major theme is the conflict in aims arising out of the peripheral position of these institutions: whether to try to replicate the general collections of their European counter- parts or be content to concentrate on illustrating the natural riches of the home territory. The con- cern at that period to recast museums as essen- tially educational media added a further dimen- sion. Inasmuch as the extra-European topic could be regarded as an outgrowth of popular science publishing, it was a natural and logical progression and must have profited greatly from the broad insights produced by the earlier im- mersion.

These various strands in her work come to- gether in a general text on the social history of science, written jointly with her husband, which is due to appear early in 1999.

Susan Sheets-Pyenson was a person of quiet charm and great determination, an attentive and tactful hostess and the devoted mother of three children. Apart from her intellectual interests, she was an accomplished concert pianist and for many years a master's swimmer.

She died in the presence of her entire family on the morning of her silver wedding anniver- sary. She will be much missed by all who had the privilege of knowing her.

DAVID ALLEN Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine

183 Euston Road London NW] 2BE

England

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