Nathaniel Charles Comfort is an American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

specializing in the

history of biology The history of biology traces the study of the living world from ancient to modern times. Although the concept of ''biology'' as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from traditions of medicine a ...

. He is an associate professor in the Institute of the History of Medicine at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

. In 2015, he was appointed the third Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

John W. Kluge Center The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress invites and welcomes scholars to the Library of Congress to conduct research and interact with policymakers and the public. It also manages the Kluge Scholars' Council and administers the Kluge ...

. He also serves on the advisory council of

METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) METI International, known simply as METI, is a non-profit research organization that creates and transmits interstellar messages to attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial civilizations. In July 2015, the papers to form METI were filed by ...

. Comfort is best known for his 2001 biography of

Barbara McClintock Barbara McClintock (June 16, 1902 – September 2, 1992) was an American scientist and cytogeneticist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927. There s ...

, ''The Tangled Field: Barbara McClintock's Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control''. He has been praised for his reinterpretation of the response to McClintock's work on controlling elements. His 2012 book ''The Science of Human Perfection'' examines the history of human and

medical genetics Medical genetics is the branch tics in that human genetics is a field of scientific research that may or may not apply to medicine, while medical genetics refers to the application of genetics to medical care. For example, research on the caus ...

in America. He has written about the development of gene editing and its relationship to the United States' eugenics movement. He is working on a history of the genomic revolution in origin-of-life research.

Education

Comfort received a B.A. in marine biology from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1985. He received an M.S. in neurobiology and behavior from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in 1990. After working as a science writer at

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and quantitative biology. It is one of 68 institutions supported by the Cancer Centers ...

, he completed his Ph.D. in history at

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...

in 1997.

Career

Comfort was an associate professor of history and the deputy director at the Center for History of Recent Science at

George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , preside ...

from 1997 to 2003. He joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins faculty in 2003. He is a member of the

History of Science Society The History of Science Society (HSS) is the primary professional society for the academic study of the history of science. It was founded in 1924 by George Sarton, David Eugene Smith, and Lawrence Joseph Henderson, primarily to support the public ...

and the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology. He is on the editorial board of ''History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences''. Comfort published 30 essays and reviews in ''Nature'' 2001–2019, and was one of the few authors selected to celebrate the magazine's 150th anniversary.

Personal

Comfort married molecular biologist

Carol W. Greider Carolyn Widney Greider (born April 15, 1961) is an American molecular biologist and Nobel laureate. She joined the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Distinguished Professor in the department of molecular, cell, and developmental biology ...

in 1993. They have two children. They divorced in 2011.

Publications

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References

External links

Comfort's faculty profile
1962 births Living people 20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers Johns Hopkins University faculty George Washington University faculty 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers {{US-biologist-stub