Gabriel Finkelstein (born 1963) is an historian of science and the biographer of

Emil du Bois-Reymond Emil Heinrich du Bois-Reymond (7 November 1818 – 26 December 1896) was a German physiologist, the co-discoverer of nerve action potential, and the developer of experimental electrophysiology. His lectures on science and culture earned him grea ...

, a German neuroscientist and public intellectual. His research focuses on 19th-century exploration, biology, and historiography.

Career

After studying physics at

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zepha ...

(B.A., 1985) and history at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

(Ph.D., 1996), Finkelstein worked at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

, and

before joining the

University of Colorado Denver The University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) is a Public university, public research university located in downtown Denver, Colorado. It is part of the University of Colorado system. Established in 1912 as an extension of the University of C ...

in 1999. He was promoted to Associate Professor of History in 2006. In 2022 he visited th
Institut des Maladies Neurodégénératives, Université de Bordeaux
as a Fellow. The eight years that Finkelstein spent in France and Germany had a significant influence on his research. His biography of Emil du Bois-Reymond received an Honorable Mention in the History of Science category of the American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence ( PROSE Awards), was named by the American Association for the Advancement of Science as one of the Best Books of 2014, and was shortlisted for the 2014 John Pickstone Prize, awarded biennially by the British Society for the History of Science and considered one of the most prestigious prizes for scholarly books in the field. The biography has also been discussed by ''The Guardian,'' ''The Scientist,'' ''New Books Network'', ''Scientific American,'' ''Il Sole 24 Oro'', and numerous blogs. Additionally, Finkelstein advised

Hubert Sauper Hubert Sauper (born 27 July 1966) is an Austrian documentary filmmaker, director, writer, producer, and actor best known for ''Darwin's Nightmare'' (2004) which was nominated for an Academy Awards, Academy Award. Sauper has lived in the UK, Ital ...

on his documentary film ''

Darwin's Nightmare ''Darwin's Nightmare'' is a 2004 Austrian-French-Belgian documentary film written and directed by Hubert Sauper, dealing with the environmental and social effects of the fishing industry around Lake Victoria in Tanzania. It premiered at the 2004 V ...

'' (2004), which was nominated for an Academy Award. Gabriel Finkelstein is the son of the neurologist Jack Finkelstein and the poet Caroline Finkelstein and nephew of the lawyer David I. Shapiro. His brothe
Adam Finkelstein
breeds queen bees.

Publications (select)

* �
Haeckel and du Bois-Reymond: Rival German Darwinists
” ''Theory in Biosciences'' 138, no. 1 (May 2019): 105–112. * ''Emil du Bois-Reymond: Neuroscience, Self, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Germany.'' Cambridge; London: The MIT Press, 2013. .

OCLC OCLC, Inc. See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the ...

br>864592470
*
Autorité rhétorique: Claude Bernard et Émile du Bois-Reymond
" In ''Les élèves de Claude Bernard : Les nouvelles disciplines bernardiennes au tournant du XX^e siècle'', ed. Jean-Gäel Barbara and Pierre Corvol, 173–192. Paris: Éditions Hermann, 2012. * �
Romanticism, Race, and Recapitulation
” ''Science'' 294, no. 5549 (7 December 2001): 2101–2102. * �
‘Conquerors of the Künlün’? The Schlagintweit Mission to High Asia, 1854–57
” ''History of Science'' 38, pt. 2, no. 120 (June 2000): 179–218.

References

External links

Gabriel Finkelstein's webpage at the University of Colorado Denver
{{DEFAULTSORT:Finkelstein, Gabriel 1963 births American historians Living people