Henry Schmidt studies the history of technology, environmental history, and related sciences, mostly in the long nineteenth century. Past work has focused on mathematics, instruments and philosophical method in the Scientific Revolution (via the figure of Robert Hooke); analytic chemistry and vital accounting in Victorian England; and technologies of observation in European meteorological networks up to the interwar period. The latter recent project can be seen in completed form here.

Publications

“Robin Hill’s Cloud Camera: Meteorological Communication, Cloud Classification(link is external),” in The Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Objects and Investigations, ed. J. Nall, L. Taub, F. Willmoth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Selected Awards and Fellowships

S. Lane Faison, Jr. 1929(link is external) Prize

Redhead Prize(link is external), 2016

Rausing Prize(link is external), 2016

Dr. Herchel Smith Fellowship at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, 2014-2016

DAAD Summer Language Grant, 2019

Smithsonian Institution Fellowship(link is external), 2021-2022

Research Fellowship, Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Spring/Summer 2022