Pamela H. Smith

Pamela H. Smith is Seth Low professor of history at Columbia University, and the founding Director of the Center for Science and Society and of its cluster project The Making and Knowing Project. Her books and articles examine craft, craftspeople, and practical knowledge. In The Business of Alchemy, she focused on the relationship between economic and alchemical thinking in the seventeenth-century Holy Roman Empire. In The Body of the Artisan, she examined the role of craftspeople in the Scientific Revolution. In numerous edited volumes, she has written about the materials and materiality of art and science, the relationship between making and knowing, and the movement of materials and techniques around the early modern world. In her collaborative research and teaching initiative, The Making and Knowing Project (www.makingandknowing.org), she and the Making and Knowing Team investigate the intersection of craft making and scientific knowing by undertaking laboratory research on the technical and artistic recipes contained in historical documents.