Ann Hibner Koblitz (born 1952) is a Professor Emerita of Women and Gender Studies at
Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
known for her studies of the history of
women in science
The presence of women in science spans the earliest times of the history of science wherein they have made significant contributions. Historians with an interest in gender and science have researched the scientific endeavors and accomplishments ...
. She is the Director of the Kovalevskaia Fund, which supports women in science in developing countries.
Education and career
She received her B.A. in history of science from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
, where she was in the first class of women admitted as undergraduates. She earned her Ph.D. in history from
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...
. She studied and did research in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
in 1974–75, 1978, 1981–82, 1985, and 1986. In 1984–85 she was a member of the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
in Princeton, after which she had temporary teaching positions at
Wellesley College
Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...
,
Oregon State University
Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering co ...
, and the
University of Puget Sound
The University of Puget Sound (UPS or Puget Sound) is a private university in Tacoma, Washington. The university draws approximately 2,600 students from 44 states and 16 countries. It offers 1,200 courses each year in more than 50 traditional an ...
. From 1989 to 1998 she taught at
Hartwick College
Hartwick College is a private liberal arts college in Oneonta, New York. The institution's origin is rooted in the founding of Hartwick Seminary in 1797 through the will of John Christopher Hartwick. In 1927, the Seminary moved to expand into a ...
in
Oneonta, New York
Oneonta ( ) is a city in southern Otsego County, New York, United States. It is one of the northernmost cities of the Appalachian Region. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Oneonta had a population of 13,079. Its nickname is "City of the Hil ...
. Since 1998 she has been a professor at Arizona State University.
Controversies
In a graduate seminar in 1977 Ann Hibner Koblitz criticized an article by political scientist
Samuel Huntington for misusing mathematics in an attempt to buttress his arguments. This led her husband
Neal Koblitz
Neal I. Koblitz (born December 24, 1948) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington. He is also an adjunct professor with the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research at the University of Waterloo. He is the creator of hyp ...
to include her critique in an article he wrote on "Mathematics as Propaganda," and this in turn inspired Yale mathematician
Serge Lang
Serge Lang (; May 19, 1927 – September 12, 2005) was a French-American mathematician and activist who taught at Yale University for most of his career. He is known for his work in number theory and for his mathematics textbooks, including the i ...
to lead a
campaign
Campaign or The Campaign may refer to:
Types of campaigns
* Campaign, in agriculture, the period during which sugar beets are harvested and processed
*Advertising campaign, a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme
* Bl ...
against the election of Huntington to the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
. The journalist
Charles Sykes, who describes the episode in detail in his book ''Profscam'', writes that
Despite the vigorous defense of Huntington by Nobel Prize winning economist
Herbert Simon, Lang's campaign was successful, and Huntington was twice voted down by the Academy's members.
In the 1980s and 1990s Koblitz was a critic of the
gender essentialism
Gender essentialism is a theory that is used to examine the attribution of distinct, fixed, intrinsic qualities to women and men. In this theory, based in essentialism, there are certain universal, innate, biologically or psychologically based feat ...
of
Evelyn Fox Keller
Evelyn Fox Keller (born March 20, 1936) is an American physicist, author and feminist. She is Professor Emerita of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller's early work concentrated at the intersecti ...
, who maintained that modern science is inherently patriarchal and ill-suited for women. Koblitz argued that Keller failed to appreciate the multi-faceted nature of scientific research and the great diversity of experiences of women across cultures and time periods. For example, in the 19th century the first women to earn advanced university degrees in Europe in any field were almost all in the natural sciences and medicine. In an article about the first 20 years of the
Association for Women in Mathematics
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...
(AWM), the mathematician and former AWM president
Lenore Blum
Lenore Carol Blum (née Epstein, born December 18, 1942) is an American computer scientist and mathematician who has made pioneering contributions to the theories of real number computation, cryptography, and pseudorandom number generation. She ...
wrote
In the 1990s and early 2000s a group of archaeologists, led by
Steven A. LeBlanc
Steven A. LeBlanc (born 1943) is an American archaeologist and former director of collections at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University's Peabody Museum.
He is the author a number of books about Southwest archeolog ...
of Harvard, popularized the notion that warfare was endemic among all prehistoric peoples. Koblitz analyzed the writings of this group, compared them to other sources, and concluded that the claim of pervasive warfare among the ancient
Hohokam
Hohokam () was a culture in the North American Southwest in what is now part of Arizona, United States, and Sonora, Mexico. It existed between 300 and 1500 AD, with cultural precursors possibly as early as 300 BC. Archaeologists disagree about ...
people of present-day central Arizona is a modern "masculinist narrative" that has little support in the archaeological record. After speaking at the Old Pueblo Archaeology Center near Tucson, Arizona, Koblitz was asked to write a version of her ''Men and Masculinities'' article for the Center's ''Bulletin''. In that article she wrote:
Philanthropy
In 1985 Koblitz and her husband Neal established th
Kovalevskaia Fundas a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to support and encourage women in developing countries in science, mathematics, engineering, and medicine. It was originally aimed at promoting women in the sciences in Vietnam; it grew out of Ann's work on the history of women and science, her and Neal's experience in the
opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War
Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War (before) or anti-Vietnam War movement (present) began with demonstrations in 1965 against the escalating role of the United States in the Vietnam War and grew into a broad social move ...
, and their efforts to help promote science in Vietnam afterwards.
Grants were at first made solely in Vietnam, but were eventually extended to other developing countries.
[
]
Selected works
;Books
*
*
*
;Selected journal publications
*
*
*
*
*
Honors
* In 1985, Koblitz was invited to give the Kenneth O. May
Kenneth O. May (July 8, 1915, in Portland, Oregon – December 1977, in Toronto) was an American mathematician and historian of mathematics, who developed May's theorem.
May was a prime mover behind the International Commission on the History of ...
Lecture on the History of Mathematics at the University of Toronto.
* In 1990, Koblitz won the History of Science Society's Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize
The Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize is awarded by the History of Science Society for an outstanding book or article on the history of women in science. It is named after Professor Margaret W. Rossiter, a pioneer in the fiel ...
for her article "Science, Women, and the Russian Intelligentsia: The Generation of the 1860s" that appeared in the Society's journal ''Isis'' in 1988.
* In 1995, Koblitz received an honorary doctorate from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana.
* In 2010, the Government of Vietnam conferred a President's Friendship Medal on her.
* In 2015, Koblitz won the "Transdisciplinary Book Award" of the Arizona State University Institute for Humanities Research for her book ''Sex and Herbs and Birth Control: Women and Fertility Regulation Through the Ages''.[
]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Koblitz, Ann Hibner
1952 births
American women academics
20th-century American historians
Arizona State University faculty
Living people
People from Jersey City, New Jersey
21st-century American historians
American women historians
Princeton University alumni
Boston University College of Arts and Sciences alumni
Institute for Advanced Study people
Wellesley College faculty
Oregon State University faculty
University of Puget Sound faculty
Hartwick College faculty
21st-century American women writers
20th-century American women writers
Historians from New Jersey