[Sci-tech-public] HASTS alum wins HSS book prize

[Michael Fischer]

for those who were not at the HSS meetings this year, the awards are  
now up on the HSS webpage.  Notable for us is the prize in the  
History of the Life Sciences and Natural History


Suzanne J. Levinson Prize: Hannah Landecker

It is with great pleasure that the committee awards the Suzanne J.  
Levinson Prize for the best book in the life sciences and natural  
history to Hannah Landecker for Culturing Life: How Cells Became  
Technologies (Harvard University Press, 2007).

Landecker’s book is an interdisciplinary synthesis featuring the  
history of cell and tissue culture, but also uses fresh  
anthropological and philosophical perspectives to show the  
redefinition of what it means to be a biological entity. The practice  
of contemporary biological science continues to redefine such central  
terms as hybridity, individuality, and immortality. The manipulation  
of cells outside the organism is leading biologists to surprising  
conclusions linking biological technology and philosophical and  
ethical understandings of what it means to be alive, to be human and  
to be of value.

Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies is a worthy winner of  
the Suzanne J. Levinson Prize and we feel sure this book will be  
recognized as a creative work that moves the disciplines of the  
history of biology and natural history forward.

– Muriel L. Blaisdell
– Richard (Chip)
  – Manfred Laubichler

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/sci-tech-public/attachments/20081218/27bbb0a0/attachment.htm