About
Guy Sechrist is an early-modern English and European Historian of Science, Technology and Medicine. After receiving his PhD from the University of Cambridge, he now serves as a lecturer of History of Science at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville.
His research interests centre around the production of scientific knowledge -specifically as it pertains to the advancements of state economy and power. His investigations have examined the development and use of practical mathematics, the role of instrumentation, and the material practices of the state to highlight how scientific and commercial problems of scale intersect at the crossroads of measurement, calculation, and finance. Further to this, his research interests include the practice of collecting and transporting natural specimens, and the discovery and uses of materia medica.
His doctoral thesis, Gauging A State, was completed at Cambridge in 2022 and investigates the mathematical practice of gauging throughout seventeenth-century England as a means of calculating the state's excise revenue.
He has held research fellowships at Heidelberg University, Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks, and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia -the city he calls home.
Lists of work
(Published & Forthcoming)
1.“’The Infinitely little part’: Isaac Newton and the gaugers”, submitted with the British Journal for the History of Mathematics (Revised and Re-submitted to Benjamin Wardhaugh).
2.Closed Curiosity Cabinets and Sheltered Gardens: the modification of barrels for transporting and preserving naturalia, submitted with Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (Accepted and Re-submitting to Tim Holt).
3.“Nicholas Culpeper’s Directory: Legitimizing the Profession of Midwives in Seventeenth-Century England”, chapter 2 in Sace, Elder, eds. Essays on Race, Gender, and Politics in Global History (Common Ground Publishing, University of Illinois, August, 2017) ISBN: 978-1612299273.
4.An Instrument of Gender: Re-evaluating the Role of the Male-Midwife and the Lying-in Chamber in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England” in CONCEPT: Villanova Graduate Journal, Vol. 40, 87-99. https://concept.journals.villanova.edu/article/view/2192
Works In Progress
1. Lethbridge and the Air-pump: vacuums, airflow, and the solution of salvage diving in seventeenth-century England.
2.Eclipsing Knowledge: discerning between prognostication and scientific calculation during the Enlightenment.
3.Science for Hire: the Royal Society of Arts and the financial impact of ‘Premiums’ on the production of Enlightenment Science.
