NIKOLAI KREMENTSOV

Professor

Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST)

University of Toronto 

 

n.krementsov@utoronto.ca

OFFICE ADDRESS: Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Victoria College, 91 Charles Street West, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1K7, Canada. OFFICE HOURS: Thursdays, 2-4 pm. Vic, 312

AREAS OF INTERESTS: history of biomedical sciences, history of medicine, history of Russian science, history of Cold War science, international relations in science and medicine.

 

Current research projects

 

- Revolutionary Experiments II: The “New Man” in Soviet Science and Fiction

 

                        - History of Russian Eugenics

 

COURSES:

HPS260H1(2013) BIOLOGY AND THE FUTURE: SCIENCE AND SCIENCE FICTION (syllabus)

HPS319S (2007) HISTORY OF MEDICINE II: MEDICINE AND MODERNITY, 17th-20th cc. (syllabus)

HPS5006 (2007) TOPICS IN THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE (syllabus) 

                        HPS1042 THE BIOLOGY OF DEATH AND IMMORTALITY (syllabus)

                        HMB444 (2007) HUMAN BIOLOGY AND HUMAN DESTINY: SCIENCE, POPULAR SCIENCE, AND SCIENCE FICTION (syllabus)

                        HPS3000 (2007) INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE, MEDICINE, AND TECHNOLOGY: SOURCES, METHODS, AND APPROACHES (syllabus)

 

CURRICULUM VITAE

 Education:

 

- PhD. 1984-1990. Institute of the History of Science and Technology, the USSR Academy of Sciences. Dissertation: “The Interaction of Evolutionary and Behavioral Studies in Twentieth Century Russian Science” (Moscow, 1990).

- MSc. 1980-81. Leningrad University. Department of Ecology.

- 1978-1980. I. P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology, the USSR Academy of Sciences. Department of Neurophysiology. Graduate studies.

- BSc. 1973-1978. Rostov-on-Don University. School of Biology. Department of Human and Animal Physiology. Diploma with distinction (first class honors).

 

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships:

 

 - Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant (2010-13)

- NIH, US National Library of Medicine publication grant (2006-08)

- Associated Medical Services Inc., Grant-in-Aid (Toronto, 2005)

- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Standard Research Grant (2005-08)

- US National Library of Medicine syllabus development grant (2004-05)

- Senior Scholarship, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars (Washington, DC, 2002-2003)

- Senior Fellowship, Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology (Cambridge, MA, 2000-01)

- Senior Associate Fellowship, Remarque Institute (New York, NY, 2000)

- Everett Helm Fellowship, University of Indiana (Bloomington, IN, 1999)

- Rockefeller Foundation Special Interest Grant (1998-99, with Susan G. Solomon)

- Visiting Professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris, 1998)

- Visiting Hannah Professor in the history of medicine, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada, 1996-97)

- Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, Grant-in-Aid, (London, UK, 1995)

- Visiting Fellowship, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Edinburgh University (Edinburgh, UK, 1995)

- Research Scholarship, Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies (Washington, DC, 1994)

- Mellon Research Fellowship in the history of 20th century biology, Science & Technology Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA, 1993-94)

- Mellon Resident Fellowship, American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, PA, 1992)

 

 

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS (selected):

BOOKS:

Stalinist Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997)

(StalinistScience )

 

The Cure: A Story of Cancer and Politics from the Annals of the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)

The Cure

 

International Science between the World Wars: The Case of Genetics (London: Routledge, 2005)

 

International Science

 

A Martian Stranded on Earth: Alexander Bogdanov, Blood Transfusions, and Proletarian Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010)

 

A Martian Stranded on Earth

 

 

Revolutionary Experiments:

The Quest for Immortality in Bolshevik Science and Fiction

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)

 

ARTICLES IN PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS:

 

“From 'Beastly Philosophy' to Medical Genetics: Eugenics in Russia and the Soviet Union,” Annals of Science, 2011, vol. 68, no. 1, pp. 61-92.

“Trypanosoma cruzi, cancer and the Cold War,” História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos (Rio de Janeiro), 2009, vol.16, supl.1, pp. 75-94.

“Off with your heads: isolated organs in early Soviet science and fiction,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2009, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 87-100

“Hormons and the Bolsheviks: from Organotherapy to Experimental Endocrinology, 1918-1929,” Isis, 2008, vol. 99, no. 3, pp. 486-518.

            “‘In the shadow of the bomb’: US-Soviet biomedical relations in the early Cold War, 1944-1948,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 2007, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 41-67.

 “Big Revolution, Little Revolution: Science and Politics in Bolshevik Russia,” Social Research, 2006, vol. 73, no. 4, pp. 1173-1204.

“State Limits on International Science: A Comparative Study of German Science under Hitler, Soviet Science under Stalin, and U.S. Science in the Early Cold War,” Osiris, 2005, vol. 20, pp. 49-76;  (with Ronald E. Doel and Dieter Hoffmann).

"L’essor de la science sovétique," La Recherche, 2002, (April) no. 7, pp. 15-19.

"Giving and Taking Across Borders: The Rockefeller Foundation and Soviet Russia, 1919-1928," Minerva, 2001, no. 3, pp. 265-298 (with Susan G. Solomon).

"A 'Second Front' in Soviet Genetics: the International Dimension of the Lysenko Controversy," Journal of the History of Biology, 1996, vol. 29, no 2, pp. 229-250.

"The 'KR Affair': Soviet Science on the Threshold of the Cold War," History and Philosophy of Life Sciences, 1995, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 419-446.

"Footprints of a Vanished Science: Russian Archival Sources for the History of Soviet Genetics," The Mendel Newsletter, 1994, no. 4, pp. 2-4.

"W. A. Wagner and the Origin of Russian Ethology," International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 1992, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 61-70.

"On Metaphors, Animals and Us," Journal of Social Issues, 1991, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 67-82 (With Daniel P. Todes).

 

ARTICLES IN EDITED VOLUMES:

“Eugenics in Russia and the Soviet Union,” in Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010),  pp. 413-429.

“Marxism, Darwinism, and Genetics in Soviet Union,” in Denis Alexander and Ron Numbers, eds., Biology and  Ideology: From Descartes to Dawkins (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010), pp. 215-246.

“Dialectical materialism and Soviet science in the 1920s and 1930s,” in William Leatherbarrow and Derek Oxford, eds.,  A History of Russian Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 340-367 (with Daniel P. Todes).

“From a ‘prominent biologist’ to a ‘Red Frankenstein’: Il’ia Ivanov in Soviet and Post-Soviet biographies,” in Thomas Lahusen and Peter H. Solomon, Jr. eds., What Is Soviet Now? Identities, Legacies, Memories (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008), pp. 120-132.

 “Eugenics, Rassenhygiene, and Human Genetics in the late 1930s: The Case of the Seventh International Genetics Congress,” in Susan G. Solomon, ed., Doing Medicine Together: Germany and Russia between the Wars (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), pp. 369-404

"The War on Cancer and the Cold War: A Soviet Case," in Ilana Lowy and John Krige, eds., Images of Disease: Science, Public Policy and Health in Post-war Europe (Luxembourg: European Communities, 2001), pp. 213-226.

"Cancer Biotherapy—from Toxins to Antibiotics: A Soviet Case, 1929-1951," in Wolfgang U. Eckart, ed., 100 Years of Organized Cancer Research (Stuttgart-New York: Georg Thieme Verlag, 2000), pp. 143-148

 "Lysenkoism in Europe: Export-Import of the Soviet Model," in Michael David-Fox and Gyorgy Peteri, eds., Academia in Upheaval: Origins, Transfers, and Transformations of the Communist Academic Regime in Russia and East Central Europe (New York: Garland Publishing Group, 2000), pp. 179-202.

"Russian Science in the Twentieth Century," in John Krige and Dominique Pestre, eds., Science in the Twentieth Century (London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), pp. 777-794.

"Th. Dobzhansky and Russian Entomology: The Origin of His Ideas on Species and Speciation," in Mark B. Adams, ed., The Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky: His Life and Thought in Russia and America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 31-48.