Ilana Löwy (née Zelmanowicz), born in 1948 in

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of cant ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

, is a historian of biomedical sciences and a feminist. She works as a research director at an interdisciplinary and cross-institutional research unit CERMES-3 (''Centre de recherche médecine, sciences, santé, santé mentale, société'', Inserm- CNRS-

EHESS The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (french: École des hautes études en sciences sociales; EHESS) is a graduate ''grande école'' and '' grand établissement'' in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences. The ...

),Personal page
at the www.cermes3.cnrs.fr and is associated with the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King's College London, the Department of the History of Science at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

and Casa de Oswaldo Cruz,

Fiocruz The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation ( Portuguese ''Fundação Oswaldo Cruz'', also known as FIOCRUZ) is a scientific institution for research and development in biological sciences located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; it is considered one of the world's m ...

, Rio de Janeiro.

Biography

Born in a Jewish family in Poland, her parents decided to leave for Israel in 1957. She gained her Msc in microbiology and

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

from

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...

in 1971, and her PhD (''Doctorat D'Etat es Sciences'') from Paris VII University in 1977.

Career

At the beginning of her career, Ilana Löwy worked at the

Institut Pasteur The Pasteur Institute (french: Institut Pasteur) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines f ...

at the Cellular immunity lab. Her interest in the history of science initially evolved around the history of organ transplantation, bacteriology, immunology, virology and tropical medicine. With an increasing interest in human reproduction and cancer, her work covers an extensive study of biomedical analysis and

gender studies Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field ...

. She has extensively published on

Ludwik Fleck Ludwik Fleck (11 July 1896 – 5 June 1961) was a Polish Jewish and Israeli physician and biologist who did important work in epidemic typhus in Lwów, Poland, with Rudolf WeiglT. Tansey (2014) ''Typhus and tyranny'', ''Nature'' 511(7509), 291 ...

, Polish historian and philosopher of medicine. Her current (2017) research focuses on

prenatal diagnosis Prenatal testing consists of prenatal screening and prenatal diagnosis, which are aspects of prenatal care that focus on detecting problems with the pregnancy as early as possible. These may be anatomic and physiologic problems with the health of ...

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...

and

congenital disorder A birth defect, also known as a congenital disorder, is an abnormal condition that is present at birth regardless of its cause. Birth defects may result in disabilities that may be physical, intellectual, or developmental. The disabilities ca ...

Publications

Authored monographs

* ''The Polish School of Philosophy of Medicine: From Tytus Chalubinski (1820–1889) to Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961)'', Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publications (Philosophy of Medicine Series),1990. * ''Between Bench and Bedside: Science, Healing and Interleukin-2 in a Cancer Ward'', Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996 (French translation, ''Cancer des chercheurs, cancer des cliniciens: Trajectoire d'une innovation thérapeutique'', Archives d’Historie Contemporaine, 2002) . * ''Medical Acts and Medical Facts: The Polish Tradition of Practice Grounded Reflections on Medicine and Science'', (in English), Krakow: Polish Academy of Sciences, 2000. * ''Virus, moustiques et modernité: La fièvre jaune au Brésil entre science et politique'', Paris: Archives d’Historie Contemporaine, 2001. (Portuguese translation: ''Virus, mosquitos e modernidade: A febre amarela no Brasil entre ciência e politica'', Rio de Janeiro, Manguinhos, 2005) * ''L'emprise du genre: Masculinité, féminité, inégalité'', Paris: La Dispute, 2006. (Polish translation: ''Okowy Rodzaju'', Bydgoszcz, Epigram, 2012). * ''Pour en finir avec la domination masculine'', Paris: Les Empecheurs de Penser en Rond/ Seuil, 2007. (with Catherine Marry) * ''Preventive Strikes: Women, Precancer and Prophylactic Surgery'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. * ''A Woman's Disease: A History of Cervical Cancer'', Oxford University Press, 2011. * ''Imperfect Pregnancies. A History of Birth Defects and Prenatal Diagnosis'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017, . * ''Tangled Diagnoses: Prenatal Testing, Women, and Risk'', Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2018.www.press.uchicago.edu
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Edited volumes

* Ilana Löwy (ed.), Medicine and Change: Historical and Sociological Studies of Medical Innovation, Paris & Londres: Editions INSERM-John Libbey, 1993. * Jean Paul Gaudillière &I lana Löwy (eds.), ''The Invisible Industrialist: Manufactures and the Production of Scientific Knowledge'', London: Macmillan,1998. * Delphine Gardey and Ilana Löwy (eds.), ''L'invention du naturel: Les sciences et la fabrication du masculin et du feminin'', Paris: Archives d'Histoire Contemporaine, 2000. * Ilana Löwy and Patrick Zylberman (guest eds.), ''The Rockefeller Foundation and Biomedical Sciences'', special issue of ''Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences'', 2000. * Jean Paul Gaudillière and Ilana Löwy (eds.), ''Heredity and Infection: Historical Essays on the Transmission of Human Diseases'', London and New York: Routledge, 2001. * Ilana Löwy and John Krige (eds.), ''Science, Public Health and Images of Disease: Europe, 1945–1995'', Bruxelles: European Commission's Editions, 2001. * Ilana Löwy & Hélène Rouch (eds), ''La distinction entre sexe et genre: Une historie entre biologie et culture'', Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003. * Ilana Löwy (guest ed.), ''Ludwik Fleck: Epistemology and Biomedical Sciences'', special issue of ''Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences'', 2004. * Johannes Fehr, Nathalie Jas and Ilana Lowy (eds.), ''Penser avec Fleck—Investigating a Life, Studying Life Sciences'', Zurich: Collegium Helveticum, 2009. * Ilana Löwy (ed), ''Microscopic Slides: Reassessing a Neglected Historical Resource'', special issue of ''History and Philosophy of Life Sciences'', 2013: 35.

References