Steven Shapin

What does it mean to be an academic? A public intellectual? What is the role of the universities today? Who better to ask than the people who for decades have worked, taught, struggled and lived in these places. Steven Shapin is the Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. He was part of the Science Studies Unit at Edinburgh University in the 1970s and went on to co-author the influential Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. In this book you can read about his journey through the heydays of Science Studies and his thoughts on the future of universities. In the Questions & Afthoughts series you will meet some of the finest and most distinguished senior professors—you will meet living history. They are interviewed by young graduate students, who are eager to learn from past experiences of trial and error in academia, both professionally and personally.