James E. Strick

James E. Strick is trained as a microbiologist and a historian of science. After completing his B.S. degree in biology (1981) then an M.S. degree (1983) at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, he taught high school and middle school biology and chemistry for ten years then returned to graduate study in the history of science at Princeton, completing an M.A. and Ph.D. degree (1997). His research interests include Darwin studies and the history of microbiology, especially ideas about the origin and nature of life. His first book, Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation (2000), is a close-up look at heated debates about the origin of life among Darwin and his followers in the first twenty years after publication of On the Origin of Species.

Dr. Strick won the History of Science Society's 1994 Henry and Ida Schuman Prize. He has taught at Arizona State University, Johns Hopkins University, and Princeton and was a visiting senior fellow at the Center for History of Recent Science, George Washington University. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Franklin and Marshall College. [from page 308 of The Living Universe, published in 2004]