Everett Irwin Mendelsohn was born on October 28, 1931, in New York City.[3]: 2 He grew up in the Bronx. His father worked for a candy importation company. His mother was a school secretary.[4]
In 1949, he graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School. He then studied biology and history at Antioch College, graduating with a BS in 1953. He then went to graduate school in biology at Harvard as a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows.[5] In 1960, he received a PhD in the history of science.[4]
In 1968, Mendelsohn founded the Journal of the History of Biology and he served as its editor-in-chief for 31 years thereafter.[8] He was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1970.[9] He received the Gregor Mendel Medal from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1991 and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize in 1996.[6] In 1998, the Harvard Graduate Council honored Mendelsohn's work mentoring students by establishing the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award, which is given annually to academics who are judged to have gone above and beyond in mentoring graduate students at Harvard.[10]
In 2007, when Mendelsohn announced his impending retirement, his Harvard colleague Anne Harrington described him as "one of the founders of the social history of science."[2] In 2017, the Journal of the History of Biology established the Everett Mendelsohn Prize in his honor.[8]
Personal life and death
In 1954, Mendelsohn married Mary Maule Leeds. Together they had three children. The marriage ended in divorce. In 1974, he married Mary B. Anderson, an economist and author.[4]
^Harvey, Joy (1999). "History of Science, History and Science, and Natural Sciences: Undergraduate Teaching of the History of Science at Harvard, 1938-1970". Isis. 90 (S): S286. JSTOR238019.
^ ab"Everett Mendelsohn". The Herbert Reynolds Lecture Series. Baylor University. Retrieved November 8, 2021.
^"Historic Fellows". American Association for the Advancement of Science. (Search on last_name = "Mendelsohn".)
