Herbert, Sandra 1942- (Sandra Lynn Swanson Herbert)

PERSONAL:

Born April 10, 1942, in Chicago, IL; daughter of Emrick Carl (an accountant) and Dorothy (a homemaker) Swanson; married James Charles Herbert (an executive director of academic development), 1966; children: Kristen, Sonja. Education: Wittenberg University, B.A., 1963; Brandeis University, A.M., 1965, Ph.D., 1968.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Cir., Admin. Bldg., 7th Fl., Baltimore, MD 21250. E-mail—herbert@umbc.edu.

CAREER:

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, visiting curator, 1967-68; University of Maryland at College Park, lecturer in history, 1969-72; University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, assistant professor, 1973-78, associate professor, 1978-86, professor of history, 1986—, acting chair, department of history, 1995, Program on Human Context of Science and Technology, director, 2000; University of Cambridge, Christ's Church College, Cambridge, England, distinguished visiting scholar, 2006.

MEMBER:

History of Science Society (member of governing council), American Association of University Professors, American Historical Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science (fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grants from National Science Foundation, 1973-74 and 1980; fellow of National Endowment for the Humanities, 1982-83; Guggenheim fellow, 1983-89; Smithsonian senior postdoctoral fellow, 1989; Geological Society of America's Mary C. Rabbitt Award, Suzanne J. Levinson book award from the History of Science Society, the George L. Mosse Prize from the American Historical Association given for an outstanding work on European history, and the Albion Book Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies, all 2006, all for Charles Darwin, Geologist.

WRITINGS:

(Editor and author of introduction and notes) The Red Notebook of Charles Darwin, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1980.

(Coeditor) Charles Darwin's Notebooks, 1836-1844, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1987.

Charles Darwin, Geologist, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2005.

Contributor to history journals and other periodicals, including Scientific American.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer, historian, and educator Sandra Herbert serves as a professor at the University of Maryland, where she teaches courses on the history of science. She has previously served as a visiting professor at Christ's Church College of the University of Cambridge in England, and spent a year as visiting curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Her main focus of academic and research interest is the life and work of Charles Darwin. She has been awarded a number of grants for her research into Darwin's contributions to science, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation. As a result of her studies, she has written articles for a number of history journals and periodicals, including Scientific American, as well as writing or editing a number of books.

Charles Darwin, Geologist, published in 2005, provides readers with a more balanced look at the life of the scientist who is primarily known for his writings on evolution. Herbert addresses Darwin's earlier scientific efforts, most of which were in the field of geology, and notes that he was honored with a Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society of London, a major award of the time, in 1859. The book not only tracks Darwin's work in the field, but also provides a basis for comparison by including an overview of the other geologists of his day. Paul Lucier, in a review for the American Scientist, commented: "For Herbert, what geology gave to Darwin was a gradualist's sense of time and a global perspective. For historians, what Herbert has presented is a broader view of the science of Charles Darwin." Writing for the Library Journal, Gloria Maxwell praised Herbert's book "for broadening our understanding of Darwin."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Scientist, January 1, 2006, Paul Lucier, "Evolution's Rocky Beginnings," p. 73.

Library Journal, June 1, 2005, Gloria Maxwell, review of Charles Darwin, Geologist, p. 168.