Historian of science Roger Hahn dies at 79

Roger Hahn, emeritus professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leader in shaping the academic field of the history of science, died unexpectedly on May 30 in New York City. He was 79.

Now widely recognized as a significant field of study, the history of science was an emerging discipline when Hahn, in 1953, was among the first students to graduate from Harvard College with majors in both science (physics) and history. 

Through his studies in Paris at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, as a Fulbright Scholar, and then at Cornell University, where he earned his Ph.D., Hahn developed a keen interest in the relationship between science and society. 

Moving away from the established approach of teaching scientific development as a series of isolated chronological discoveries, Hahn pursued an integrated view of the development of scientific ideas and institutions as reflective of the socio-political, philosophical, human and other dimensions of their times....