Bob Hatch received his B.S. in European History (1970, Highest Honors) and his M.A. (1972) and Ph.D. (1978) in History of Science from the University of Wisconsin (Madison). He came to the Humanities Department at the University of Florida in 1978, and the following year joined Department of History. Until recently he served as Interim Director of the Center for the Humanities, Program Coordinator for the Paris Research Center (Summer), Director of the Florence Program (Summer), and President of the Howe Society.
Professor Hatch specializes in the Scientific Revolution (Copernicus to Newton) and more generally, Early Modern European Intellectual & Cultural history. His teaching interests extend from antiquity through the mid-18th century aiming at relations between science, philosophy, classical studies and the broader context of manuscript & print culture, especially communication networks and the much-discussed Public Sphere. He twice received both the Mahon Undergraduate Teaching Award and the Wilensky Graduate Teaching Award, as well as three CLAS Teacher of the Year Awards. In 2002 he was named University of Florida Teacher of the Year and received the Joseph H. Hazen Prize from the History of Science Society (2003) for international contributions to the profession. More recently he was named CLAS International Educator of the Year (2009). He has served on some 100 PhD and MA committees in History, English, Philosophy, Classics, Art History, Romance Languages, Anthropology, Sociology, Mathematics, Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, and Nursing.
Professor Hatch specializes in the Scientific Revolution (Copernicus to Newton) and more generally, Early Modern European Intellectual & Cultural history. His teaching interests extend from antiquity through the mid-18th century aiming at relations between science, philosophy, classical studies and the broader context of manuscript & print culture, especially communication networks and the much-discussed Public Sphere. He has twice received both the Mahon Undergraduate Teaching Award and the Wilensky Graduate Teaching Award, as well as three CLAS Teacher of the Year Awards. In 2002 he was named University of Florida Teacher of the Year and received the Joseph H. Hazen Prize from the History of Science Society (2003) for international contributions to the profession. More recently he was named CLAS International Educator of the Year (2009). He has served on some 100 PhD and MA committees in History, English, Philosophy, Classics, Art History, Romance Languages, Anthropology, Sociology, Mathematics, Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, and Nursing.
Professor Hatch has published articles, chapters, and essays (particularly on Boulliau, Gassendi, and Peiresc) and some 75 reviews in three dozen scholarly journals. He has lectured in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and the Netherlands, and was History of Science Editor of the ECCB for two decades. He has received major grants from NEH, NSF, and the American Philosophical Society among others. As sequel to his first book, The Collection Boulliau (APS 1982), he recently completed Part II of the trilogy, The Boulliau Correspondence, and continues apace with Part III, Boulliau’s Europe: Science & Learning in 17th-Century France. He is also writing a book entitled The Republic of Letters & the Scientific Revolution. Since the outset of his career he has combed international archives in search of letters and manuscripts of Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), and has devoted much of his time since 1992 toward completing an edition of the complete correspondence of Gassendi. As background, see ‘The Gassendi Correspondence: Lettres latines, Opera omina & the ‘Primal Archive,’ Journal for the History of Astronomy 39 (2008), pp. 518-528. The Gassendi Project has unfolded over the decades in tandum with the Boulliau Project, which involves more letters than the combined correspondence of Mersenne and Oldenburg.
Selected publications during the last few years include ‘Clio Electric: Primary Texts & Digital Research’, an invited article designed to launch a new series of Essays inISIS on Digital Humanities (2007); ‘Nature’s Profoundest Secret: First Inklings, Second Guesses, Second Thoughts’ [Background to the Inverse-Square Law of Universal Gravitation], Lehrstuhl fur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Munich, in Algorismus (2007); an invited Historiographical Introduction to the landmarkBiographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers (Springer-Verlag International, Berlin, 2 Vols., 2007); «Singes et Perroquets, ô meilleur de la chair ! Descartes & Gassendi représentant des ‘points & parties’ » [Monkeys & Parrots, O Best of Flesh! Descartes & Gassendi Representing Points & Parts’] in Actes, Colloque Pierre Gassendi, Brepols (2008); a chapter entitled ‘The Republic of Letters: Boulliau, Leopoldo & the Accademia del Cimento,’ (2009), and a chapter entitled ‘Discovering Mira Ceti: Celestial Change & Cosmic Continuity,’ (2010).
Since Spring 2011, Bob has given several invited talks, most dealing with the Republic of Letters, at Stanford University; the University of California (San Francisco); Oxford University; and The Hague (keynote address), The Huygens Institute & Descartes Center. Bob also presented the opening paper and concluding conference summary at the International Hevelius Conference in Gdansk (Poland) sponsored by the Polish Academy of Sciences marking the 400th Anniversery of Hevelius’s birth.
- ‘Inventing the Republic of Letters: Peiresc, Community & the Nascent Public Sphere.’ Invited Paper, The Stanford Project, Mapping the Republic of Letters, Stanford Humanities Center & the Program in the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology, Stanford University, March 2011.
- ‘Getting Gassendi Right: Vision, Afterimages & The Mirror of Nature.’ Invited Paper, Bay Area History of Medicine Colloquium, University of California – San Francisco, March 2011.
- ‘De-Centring the Big Picture: The Scientific Revolution & the Republic of Letters.’ Invited Paper, Cultures of Knowledge: An Intellectual Geography of Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters, Oxford University, 5 May 2011.
- ‘Representing the Republic of Letters: From Transcendent Ideal to Immanent Reality.’ Invited keynote address, International Meeting, Representing the Republic of Letters, The Circulation of Knowledge Project, sponsored by The Huygens Institute & the Descartes Center (Utrecht), The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1 July 2011.
- ‘Hevelius’s Europe: Astronomy, Community & The Republic of Letters.’ Invited Paper, International Meeting, Sponsored by the Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute for the History of Science (Warsaw), and the Gdansk Library, Gdansk (Danzig, Poland), 15-18 September 2011.
- ‘Inventing Mira Ceti (1596-1780): First Inklings, Second Guesses, Second Thoughts.’ Invited Paper, Sponsored by AAVSO, Centennial International Meeting of AAVSO, Cambridge, MA, 7 October 2011.
- Chair & Commentator, ‘Divided Allegiances: Conflict & Compromise in the Republic of Letters from the Thirty Years’ War to the French Revolution.’ 5 November 2011, International Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society, Cleveland.