Robert N. Proctor
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Robert Neel Proctor (born 1954) is an American historian of science and Professor of the History of Science at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, where he is also Professor by courtesy of Pulmonary Medicine. While a professor of the history of science at
Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...
in 1999, he became the first historian to testify against the
tobacco industry The tobacco industry comprises those persons and companies who are engaged in the growth, preparation for sale, shipment, advertisement, and distribution of tobacco and tobacco-related products. It is a global industry; tobacco can grow in any ...
.


Career

Robert N. Proctor graduated from
Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana University and, with ...
in 1976 with a
Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...
in biology. He then took up studies 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 higher le ...
, earning master's and doctoral degrees in
History of Science The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal. Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Meso ...
in 1977 and 1984, respectively. At
Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...
, he and his wife,
Londa Schiebinger Londa Schiebinger (shē/bing/ǝr; born May 13, 1952) is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science, Department of History, and by courtesy the d-school, Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1984. An intern ...
, co-directed the Science, Medicine and Technology in Culture Program for nine years. Proctor has worked on human origins and the history of evolution, including changing interpretations of the oldest tools. His 2003 ''Three Roots of Human Recency'' won the 2004/2005 Award for Exemplary Interdisciplinary Anthropological Research from the American Anthropological Association. In his ''Three Roots'' article he exposed the racism implicit in celebrating "leaving Africa" as a fundamental stage in human evolution (which he mocks as “out of Africa, thank God”); one of the points of this article was to show that anthropological ideas of human origins—including efforts to answer the question "when did humans become human?"—have been scarred by changing notions of race. Race was also the focus of his 1988 book '' Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis'', which identified the Nazi regime as a monstrous effort to create a biomedical utopia. Hitler was celebrated as "the doctor of the German people" and physicians joined the SS in great numbers than any other professional group. Proctor detailed how racial theorists in Nazi Germany were inspired by eugenicists operating in the United States, including men like Madison Grant and Harry Laughlin, and that one reason the Nazis mandated sterilization of "the unfit" and bans on racial intermarriage was to prevent the US from becoming “the world’s racial leader.” As of 2021, his Racial Hygiene has been cited nearly 2000 times, according to Google Scholar. However, Robert Proctor is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking 2012 history of the tobacco industry, "Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition", winner of the Rachel Carson Prize in 2014. His 2008 book "Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance", co-edited with
Londa Schiebinger Londa Schiebinger (shē/bing/ǝr; born May 13, 1952) is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science, Department of History, and by courtesy the d-school, Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1984. An intern ...
, examines the concept of
Agnotology Within the sociology of knowledge, agnotology (formerly agnatology) is the study of deliberate, culturally-induced ignorance or doubt, typically to sell a product, influence opinion, or win favour, particularly through the publication of inaccur ...
", a term coined by linguist
Iain Boal Iain Boal is an Irish social historian of technics and the commons, based as an independent scholar in Berkeley, California and London. Biography He was one of the co-founders of the Retort collective, an association of radical writers, teac ...
in 1992 to describe the study of intentionally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of intentionally inaccurate or misleading scientific data. Proctor is currently writing another book on this topic, ''Agate Eyes: A Lapidary Journey': "By contrast with diamonds or asbestos or granite or the minerals we burn for fuel, the lowly agate is the victim of scientific disinterest, the same kinds of structured apathy I have elsewhere called 'the social construction of ignorance.' Agates seem to fall outside the orbit of geological knowledge, and therefore tend to be regarded — if at all — as geological accidents or oddities not really deserving systematic study." A central theme in Proctor’s work is the history of race and racism, a focus of his career already in the 1970s, when he taught ''The changing concept of race'' with
Nathan Huggins Nathan Irvin Huggins (January 14, 1927 – December 5, 1989) was a distinguished American historian, author and educator. As a leading scholar in the field of African American studies, he was W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of History and of Afro- ...
and Barbara Rosenkrantz in the African American Studies department at Harvard. In 2008, Proctor served as an expert witness in a wrongful death suit against Philip Morris and used the
n-word In the English language, the word ''nigger'' is an ethnic slur used against black people, especially African Americans. Starting in the late 1990s, references to ''nigger'' have been progressively replaced by the euphemism , notably in cases ...
in his testimony, triggering a
mistrial In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, w ...
. Later, in 2019, Proctor again drew scrutiny for repeatedly saying the racial slur aloud when quoting from cigarette advertisements in a guest lecture at
Stanford Law School Stanford Law School (Stanford Law or SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, it is regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world. Stanford La ...
. He responded to this backlash with, "I didn't 'use' the N-word in my lecture, I showed and cited its use in three different brands of cigarettes sold in the middle decades of the twentieth century."


Personal life

He is the longtime partner of fellow historian of science
Londa Schiebinger Londa Schiebinger (shē/bing/ǝr; born May 13, 1952) is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science, Department of History, and by courtesy the d-school, Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1984. An intern ...
, whom he met at Harvard. They have two sons together, named Geoffrey Schiebinger and Jonathan Proctor. Before having children, the couple decided they would have two and each would receive one of their
surnames In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community. Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name, ...
.


Bibliography

* * * * * * * *


Prizes and fellowships

*Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2002-Present *Visiting scholar, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Hamburg, Germany, 1995 *Senior Scholar in Residence, U.S. Holocaust Research Institute, Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., 1994 *Visiting Fellow, Shelby Collum Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton, 1992-1993 *Research grant, National Center for Human Genome Research, National Institutes of Health, 1992-1993 *Penn State Distinguished Scholar Medal Recipient, 1997.


See also

*
Tobacco industry The tobacco industry comprises those persons and companies who are engaged in the growth, preparation for sale, shipment, advertisement, and distribution of tobacco and tobacco-related products. It is a global industry; tobacco can grow in any ...


References


External links


The Agateer
* ttp://www.adl.org/Braun/dim_14_1_nazi_med.asp Nazi Medicine and Public Health Policybr>Rendez-vous with Robert Proctor
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080807180908/http://ije.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/30/1/31 Commentary: Schairer and Schöniger's forgotten tobacco epidemiology and the Nazi quest for racial puritybr>Historical Reconstruction of Tobacco and Health in the U.S., 1954-1994

The man who studies the spread of ignorance
- Gerorgina Kenyon, BBC, 6 January 2016

{{DEFAULTSORT:Proctor, Robert N. 1954 births Living people Harvard University alumni Indiana University alumni Pennsylvania State University faculty Stanford University Department of History faculty Historians of science 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers