Nancy Gillian Siraisi (born 1932) is an American historian of

medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...

, and distinguished professor emerita in history at

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admin ...

, and

City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven senior colleges, seven community colleges and seven pro ...

Life

Siraisi received a B.A. (1953) and an M.A. (1958) from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. (1970) from the City University of New York. She was a professor of history at Hunter College (1970–2003) and the Graduate Center (1976–2003) at the City University of New York. Siraisi is a leading scholar in the history of medicine and science of the Middle Ages and the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...

. Her research has ranged widely across these two distinct fields, from her first book on the university curriculum in medieval Padua to her current work on the role of doctors in history-writing in the Renaissance. Through her numerous publications and professional activities, Siraisi has contributed to the growth of the history of science and medicine while also fostering the continued close interaction of these fields with "mainstream" history, notably through her faithful teaching of general medieval and Renaissance history and her insistence on careful contextualization.

Awards and honors

*1997 Elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

*2003

George Sarton Medal The George Sarton Medal is the most prestigious award given by the History of Science Society. It has been awarded annually since 1955. It is awarded to an historian of science from the international community who became distinguished for "a lifet ...

*2008

MacArthur Fellows Program The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

*2010 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecturer by the American Council of Learned Societies.

Works

*''Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils: Two Generations of Italian Medical Learning'', Books on Demand, 1981,
''The clock and the mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance medicine''
Princeton University Press, 1997,
''Medicine and the Italian universities, 1250-1600''
BRILL, 2001,
''History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning''
University of Michigan Press, 2007,
''Communities of Learned Experience: Epistolary Medicine in the Renaissance''
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013,
''Natural particulars: nature and the disciplines in Renaissance Europe''
Editors Anthony Grafton, Nancy G. Siraisi, MIT Press, 1999, *''Historia: empiricism and erudition in early modern Europe'', Editors Gianna Pomata, Nancy G. Siraisi, MIT Press, 2005,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Siraisi, Nancy 1932 births Living people American medical historians Alumni of the University of Oxford Hunter College faculty Graduate Center, CUNY faculty Graduate Center, CUNY alumni MacArthur Fellows American women historians Historians of science Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America 21st-century American women Members of the American Philosophical Society