Faculty by Research Areas
Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis
Professor
Ph.D. Cornell University, 1988
617 Carr Hall
Box 118525
Gainesville, FL
32611-8525
Fax: (352) 392-3704
bsmocovi@zoology.ufl.edu
bsmocovi@history.ufl.edu
Research Interests
Studies the history, philosophy and social study of the twentieth
century biological sciences, especially evolutionary biology, systematics,
ecology and genetics. She also studies the history of the botanical sciences
in America.
Much of my research concentrates on gaining a better understanding of
the “evolutionary synthesis” which saw the establishment of the
modern synthetic theory of evolution. I am presently completing a book-length
project that is a biography of the botanical architect of the evolutionary
synthesis G. Ledyard Stebbins as well as a centennial history of the Botanical Society of America.
Students Currently Supervised
Ayne Terceira (PhD)
Herbals and Early Modern Botany
Stewart Kreitzer (PhD)
Science, Ideology and Worldviews in Collision: The Dialogue between John Greene and Ernst Mayr
Matt White (PhD)
The History of Natural History Museums in America
Representative Publications
Smocovitis, V. B. "Pas de Deux: The Biographer and the Living Biographical Subject." Thomas Sôderqvist, ed. The Poetics of Biography in Science, Technology and Medicine, Ashgate Press (2007): 207-219.
Smocovitis, V. B. "One Hundred Years of American Botany: A Short History of the Botanical Society of America" American Journal of Botany 93 (2006): 1-12.
Smocovitis, V. B. "Keeping Up with Dobzhansky: G. L. Stebbins, Plant Evolution and the Evolutionary Synthesis" History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 28 (2006): 11-50.
Smocovitis, V.B. "'It Ain't Over 'til its' Over': Rethinking the Darwinian Revolution," Journal of the History of Biology 38 (2005): 33-49.
Crawford, D. J. and V. B. Smocovitis, eds. The Scientific Papers of G. Ledyard Stebbins (1929-2000). Koeltz Scientific Books, Vienna, Austria 2004.
Smocovitis, V. B., Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996