Stillman Drake

Stillman Drake (December 24, 1910 – October 6, 1993) was a Canadian historian of science best known for his work on Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). Drake published over 131 books, articles, and book chapters on Galileo. Drake received his first academic appointment in 1967 as full professor at the University of Toronto after a career as a financial consultant. During that time he had begun his studies of the works of Galileo and translated Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1953), parts of four of Galileo's works in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957), and Galileo's The Assayer in The Controversy of Comets (1960), co-authored with C. D. O'Malley.^[1]

Possibly his most significant contribution to the history of science was his defense of Galileo's experiments as documented in his published Two New Sciences and in his manuscript notes. Drake showed how the complex interaction of experimental measurement and mathematical analysis led Galileo to his law of falling bodies. This clearly refuted Alexandre Koyré's claim that experiment played no significant part in Galileo's thought.^{[citation needed]}

In 1984 Drake was awarded the Galileo Galilei Prize for the Italian History of Science by the Italian Rotary Clubs. The jury was composed of Italian epistemologists and science historians .^[2]

In 1988 Drake was awarded the Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society. He spent his entire academic career, beginning in 1967 after working as a consultant, at the University of Toronto's Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.^[1]

Earlier in life, several years after receiving his Bachelor's degree at the University of California at Berkeley (1932), Drake joined several college friends in creating the original version of the board game Empire in 1938.^[3]

Selected works

• (1949) Book of Anglo-Saxon Verse.
• (1953) Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• (1957) Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo. New York: Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0-385-09239-3
• (1973) "Galileo's Discovery of the Law of Free Fall," Scientific American 228(5): 84-92.
• (1974) Two New Sciences, University of Wisconsin Press, 1974. ISBN 0-299-06404-2. A new translation including sections on centers of gravity and the force of percussion.
• (1978) Galileo At Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-16226-5
• (1990) Galileo: Pioneer Scientist. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0802027253. ISBN 978-0802027252.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Jed Z. Buchwald, Noel M. Swerdlow. "Eloge: Stillman Drake, 24 December 1910-6 October 1993". Isis, Vol. 85, No. 4 (Dec., 1994), pp. 663-666.
2. ^ (Italian) [1]
3. ^ Drake's one-page summary of the rules to Empire

Persondata
Name	Drake, Stillman
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Date of birth	December 24, 1910
Place of birth
Date of death	October 6, 1993
Place of death