Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Teaching Officers

Liba Taub

Liba Taub

Reader
Director and Curator of the Whipple Museum

Research interests: History of scientific instruments and the preservation of material relating to scientific heritage; early science and mathematics, particularly physics, meteorology and astronomy

Liba Taub is a co-investigator on the AHRC-funded project Diagrams, Figures and the Transformation of Astronomy, 1450–1650.

Selected publications

  • On Scientific Instruments (edited and introduced), special issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Volume 40, Issue 4, pages 337-438 (December 2009) ('On Scientific Instruments', 337-343)
  • Authorial Voices in Greco-Roman Technical Writing (edited and introduced with Aude Doody, Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, AKAN-Einzelschriften Band 7, 2009)
  • 'Cosmology and Meteorology', in Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, ed. James Warren (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 105-124
  • Aetna and the Moon: Explaining Nature in Ancient Greece and Rome (Oregon State University Press, 2008)
  • '"Eratosthenes sends greetings to King Ptolemy": Reading the contents of a "mathematical" letter', Mathematics Celestial and Terrestial. Festschrift für Menso Folkerts zum 65. Geburtstag. Eds. Joseph W. Dauben, Stefan Kirschner, Paul Kunitzsch und Richard Lorch. Halle (Saale): Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, Acta Historica Leopoldina 54 (2008): 285-302
  • 'Presenting a "Life" as a Guide to Living: Ancient Accounts of the Life of Pythagoras', in The History and Poetics of Scientific Biography, ed. Thomas Söderqvist, Ashgate (2007), pp. 17-36
  • The Whipple Museum of the History of Science: Instruments and Interpretations, to Celebrate the 60th Anniversary of R.S. Whipple's Gift to the University of Cambridge (edited and introduced with Frances Willmoth, Cambridge University Press, September 2006)
  • 'Are orreries "Newtonian"? A consideration of the material, textual and pictorial evidence', in The Whipple Museum of the History of Science: Instruments and Interpretations (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 403-426
  • 'Preserving nature? Ecology, tourism and other themes in the national parks', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C; Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37, 3 (September 2006): 602-611
  • Ancient Meteorology (Routledge, 2003; Greek translation, Enalios, 2008)
  • 'Instruments of Alexandrian Astronomy: The Uses of the Equinoctial Rings', in Science and Mathematics in Ancient Greek Culture, ed. C.J. Tuplin and T.E. Rihll (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 133-149
  • 'On the Role of Museums in History of Science, Technology and Medicine', Endeavour 22 (2), (1998): 41-43
  • 'Heroes of Microscopy and Museology', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30, 4 (1999): 729-44
  • 'Evolutionary Ideas and "Empirical" Methods: The Analogy between Language and Species in Works by Lyell and Schleicher', British Journal for the History of Science 26 (June 1993): 171-193
  • 'The Historical Function of the Forma Urbis Romae', Imago Mundi 45 (1993): 9-19
  • Ptolemy's Universe: The Natural Philosophical and Ethical Foundations of Ptolemy's Astronomy (Chicago: Open Court, 1993)