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Erwin Nick Hiebert (May 27, 1919 – November 28, 2012) was a Canadian-American physical chemist and professor of the history of science.[1] He was the president of the History of Science Society for a two-year term from 1973 to 1974.[2]
Erwin N. Hiebert, whose father was a Mennonite minister, was born in Waldheim, Saskatchewan and grew up in an urban Mennonite community in Winnipeg, Manitoba.[1] He went to high school in Winnipeg and financed his own college education by working during summers on Mennonite farms in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. He attended Tabor CollegeinHillsboro, Kansas for two years and then transferred to Bethel CollegeinNorth Newton, Kansas. There he graduated in 1941 with a B.A. degree in chemistry and mathematics. In 1943 he graduated with an M.A. in chemistry and physics from the University of KansasatLawrence. He met Elfrieda Franz (1921–2012) while they both attended Tabor College and they married in 1943. Soon after their marriage, the couple moved to Whiting, Indiana, where Erwin Hiebert became employed as a research chemist for a corporate laboratory of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana under the jurisdiction of the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratories as part of the Manhattan Project. He worked for the Standard Oil Company until 1946. From 1946 to 1947, he held the position of Assistant to the Chief of the Scientific Branch of the United States Department of War's General Staff in Washington, DC. From 1947 to 1950 he worked as a research chemist at the Institute for the Study of Metals at the University of Chicago, where he graduated in 1949 with an M.Sc. in physical chemistry.[3] At the University of Chicago, he was inspired by Alexander Koyré and Farrington Daniels to study the history of science.[1] In 1954 Erwin Hiebert graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with Ph.D. consisting of double major in the history of science and in physical chemistry. During his years of study for his Ph.D., he worked from 1952 to 1954 as an assistant professor of chemistry at San Francisco State College. As a postdoc, he was from 1954 to 1955 a Fulbright Lecturer at the Max-Planck-InstitutinGöttingen.[3] By 1955, Erwin and Elfrieda Hiebert had three children, with the eldest born in 1948.[1]
Erwin Hiebert was from 1955 to 1957 an instructor in the history of science at Harvard University. From 1957 to 1970 the Hiebert family lived in Madison, Wisconsin. There Erwin Hiebert was a faculty member in the University of Wisconsin–Madison's department of the history of science and chaired the department from 1960 to 1965.[3] While on academic leave, he was for the academic years 1961–1962 and 1968–1969 a member of the School of Historical Studies of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study.[4] He was a visiting professor at the University of Tübingen in 1964–1965 and at Harvard University in 1965.[1] In 1970 his wife Elfrieda Franz Hiebert, an accomplished musician,[1] received a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her Ph.D. thesis is entitled The piano trios of Beethoven: an historical and analytical study.[5] In 1970 Erwin Hiebert was appointed to a professorship at Harvard University and the Hiebert family settled in Belmont, Massachusetts.[3] In 1972 he served as the pastor of the Mennonite Congregation of Boston.[6] Erwin Hiebert held a professorship in Harvard's department of the history of science from 1970 to 1989, when he retired as professor emeritus. From 1977 to 1984 he chaired the department. During his professorship at Havard, he was on academic leave in visiting positions in Germany, Jerusalem, Churchill College, Cambridge, and Beijing.[1] For many years during his retirement, he continued to commute almost every day from Belmont to Harvard to work at Widener Library.[3] In retirement, he was a visiting professor in Göttingen for the academic year 1991–1992 and in Berlin for visits in 1998, 2002, and 2007.[1]
From 1970 to 1990 Hiebert was a member of the advisory committee of the multi-volume Dictionary of Scientific Biography, published by Charles Scribner's Sons. Hiebert, Robert Sonné Cohen, and Everett Mendelsohn were the general editors of D. Reidel's book series Studies in the History of Science.[7]
Hiebert's doctoral students that he supervised or co-supervised include Jed Buchwald, Michael J. Crowe, Lorraine Jenifer Daston, Peter Louis Galison, Diana L. Kormos-Buchwald, Carolyn Merchant, Mary Jo Nye, and Joan L. Richards.[8] In Belmont, Erwin and Elfrieda Hiebert welcomed many of the Harvard students into their home and sometimes entertained their guests with impromptu musical performances. He played the clarinet and she played the piano.[9]
He was elected in 1966 a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,[10] in 1975 a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[3] and in 1989 a fellow of the American Physical Society.[11] He was elected in November 1971 a membre correspondant of the Académie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences.[12] In 1992 a festschrift was published in his honor.[13]
The focus of Hiebert's research was the history and philosophy of chemistry and physical sciences in the 2nd half of 19th century and 1st half of the 20th century. During his lifetime he completed three books and his fourth book (which deals with acoustics) was nearly complete at the time of his death.[9][14] His book 1961 book The Impact of Atomic Energy examined the Manhattan Project, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and WW II's consequences related to atomic energy from an ethical and religious perspective. He wrote numerous papers on the history of science, the relations between science and religion, and the philosophy of science as viewed by outstanding scientists of the modern era, especially among those scientists from 1850 to 1930 in Germany and Austria.[9] His 1962 book Historical Roots of the Principle of Conservation of Energy is a notable achievement in writing the history of thermodynamics.[15] He wrote papers about the science and philosophy of Max Planck, Ernst Mach, Walther Nernst, Ludwig Boltzmann, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Wilhelm Ostwald.[9] Hiebert had a strong conviction that historians of science should have a good, scientific grounding in the particular science that they study and write about.[3]
Erwin Hiebert died in Waltham, Massachusetts in November 2012, shortly after his wife of 69 years died in September 2012. They had two daughters and a son.[3] Catherine Hiebert Beissinger became a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Princeton University.[16]
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