Debus, Allen G.

Allen George Debus (1926-2009) was a renowned American historian of science who served on the faculty of the University of Chicago Department of History from 1961 until his retirement in 1996.

Debus was born an only child in Chicago, Illinois on August 16, 1926. He was raised in the north-Chicago suburb of Evanston and attended Evanston Township High School from 1940-1944. He studied chemistry and history at Northwestern University earning a B.S. in Chemistry in 1947 with almost enough credits to support a second major in History. He followed this latter path to Indiana University (1947-1949) where he acted as assistant to Professor John J. Murray, who advised him to write his Master’s thesis on chemistry in the English Tudor period. The result was entitled “Robert Boyle and Chemistry in England 1660-1700”. From 1951 to 1956, Debus worked as a research chemist at Abbott Laboratories. In 1956, he returned to graduate work at Harvard University, supervised by I. Bernard Cohen, where he was awarded two Bowdoin Awards in the Natural Sciences. During the same period he conducted research and acted as a teaching assistant at University College, London under the auspices of a joint Fulbright and Social Science Research Council Fellowship and the guidance of Professors Douglas McKie and Walter Pagel. The latter became a long-distance dissertation advisor for Debus’ doctoral dissertation “The English Paracelsians: A Study of Iatrochemistry in England to 1640”, which he completed in 1961.

I.B. Cohen introduced Debus to Professor Cyril Smith of the University of Chicago, who facilitated Debus’ appointment as assistant professor in the department of History under the chairmanship of Prof. William McNeill. He was promoted to associate professor in 1965 after the publication of his book “The English Paracelsians”, a revision of his doctoral dissertation. In addition to teaching, advising and mentoring students and other faculty members, Debus was instrumental in developing and promoting undergraduate and graduate programs and curricula on the history of science and medicine. He developed a three quarter sequence in the history of science spanning from ancient science to the beginning of the 20th century, as well as courses on Renaissance medicine and science and historiography. During this period Debus also resisted administrative efforts by the Department of Philosophy to insert itself into existing programs in the history of science. Debus’ administrative efforts reached their pinnacle with the foundation of the Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Chicago, for which he acted as the first director for two three year terms (1971-1978). In 1978 he was appointed the Morris Fishbein Professor of the History of Science and Medicine, a named position he held until his retirement in 1996, when he became the Morris Fishbein Professor Emeritus of the History of Science and Medicine.

Debus’ research interests included Renaissance and early-Modern science and medicine, alchemy, early medical chemistry and pharmacy, the philosophical groundings of the Scientific Revolution, and Renaissance historiography. He was a very prolific writer, leaving behind a written legacy of over 300 articles and reviews and 20 authored and edited books. His authored and edited volumes include “The English Paracelsians” (1965); “Who’s Who in Science from Antiquity to the Present” (1968); “Science and Education in the 17th Century” (1970); “The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the 16th and 17th Centuries” (1977); “Man and Nature in the Renaissance” (1978); “Robert Fludd and his Philosophical Key” (1979); “Science and History: A Chemist’s Appraisal” (1984); “Chemistry, Alchemy and the New Philosophy 1550-1700” (1987); “Hermeticism and the Renaissance” (1988); “The French Paracelsians” (1991); and “Reading the Book of Nature: The Other Side of the Scientific Revolution” (1998).

During his distinguished professional career, Allen Debus was the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards. Among his many distinctions, he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of science and was an overseas fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge. He has held Guggenheim, Fulbright and Social Science Research Council Fellowships as well as National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowships at the Newberry and Folger Libraries. He was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton and was elected member of the Academy of Sciences in Lisbon, the International Academy of the History of Science and the International Academy of the History of Medicine. He was also awarded the Edward Kremer’s Award of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy (1978), the Pfizer Prize (1978), the American Chemical Society’s prestigious Dexter Award (1987) and the History of Science Society’s Sarton Medal for Lifetime Achievement (1991).

Debus also had a lifelong interest in antique phonographs and phonograph recordings of which he was an avid collector. He also collected antiquarian volumes. He met his wife Brunilda Lopez-Rodriguez while both attended Indiana University. They subsequently worked together at Abbott Laboratories. They had three sons Allen, Richard (who died in 2007) and Karl.

On March 6, 2009, Allen G. Debus died of cardiac arrest at his home in Deerfield, Illinois.