Ann Hibner Koblitz

Ann Hibner Koblitz
Born	1952 Jersey City, New Jersey, USA
Occupation(s)	Historian Educator Academic
Known for	cross-cultural perspectives on Women in science and Director of the Kovalevskaia Fund
Awards	Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize Honorary Doctorate from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College President's Friendship Medal (Vietnam)
Academic background
Alma mater	Princeton University Boston University
Doctoral advisor	Norman Naimark
Academic work
Doctoral students	Mary Jatau Christine Yi Lai Luk Tiffany Lamoreaux Andrea de la Maza Yamrot Teshome

Ann Hibner Koblitz (born 1952) is Professor Emerita of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University. She received her B.A. in history of science from Princeton University (she was in the first class of women admitted as undergraduates) and her Ph.D. in history from Boston University. She studied and did research in the Soviet Union in 1974-75, 1978, 1981-82, 1985, and 1986. In 1984-85 she was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, after which she had temporary teaching positions at Wellesley College, Oregon State University, and the University of Puget Sound. From 1989-98 she taught at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. Since 1998 she has been a professor at Arizona State University.

Koblitz is the Director of the Kovalevskaia Fund that supports women in science in developing countries.

Controversies

In a graduate seminar in 1977 Ann Hibner Koblitz criticized an article by political scientist Samuel Huntington for misusing mathematics in an attempt to buttress his arguments. This led her husband Neal Koblitz to include her critique in an article he wrote on "Mathematics as Propaganda," and this in turn inspired Yale mathematician Serge Lang to lead a campaign against the election of Huntington to the National Academy of Sciences. The journalist Charles Sykes, who describes the episode in detail in his book Profscam, writes that

Samuel Huntington's election to the National Academy of Sciences would probably have been little more than a formality if it had not been for a graduate student named Ann Koblitz. The dispute that would shake the social sciences to their quantitative foundations, that was featured on the front page of The New York Times, in articles in The New Republic, Science, and Discover, and that would convulse the normally insouciant National Academy of Sciences, can be traced back to a single assignment in a graduate seminar on historical methodology at Boston University in 1977.

Despite the vigorous defense of Huntington by Nobel Prize winning economist Herbert Simon, Lang's campaign was successful, and Huntington was twice voted down by the Academy's members.

In the 1980s and 1990s Koblitz was a vocal critic of the gender essentialism of Evelyn Fox Keller, who maintained that modern science is inherently patriarchal and ill-suited for women. Koblitz argued that Keller failed to appreciate the multi-faceted nature of scientific research and the great diversity of experiences of women across cultures and time periods. For example, in the 19th century the first women to earn advanced university degrees in Europe in any field were almost all in the natural sciences and medicine. In an article about the first 20 years of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), the mathematician and former AWM president Lenore Blum wrote

In the mid-1980s, there was a flurry of work by a group of feminist theorists on gender and science. In commentary fairly critical of this work, Ann Hibner Koblitz succinctly summarized the main ideas behind the theory: "Put in its most general guise, the new 'gender theory' says that centuries of male domination of science have affected its content -- what questions are asked and what answers are found -- and that 'science' and 'objectivity' have become inextricably linked to concepts and ideologies of masculinity." She lists eight criticisms of which I will mention only two, namely, that gender theorists "seem unaware of the increasing numbers of women who have had satisfying lives as scientists" and "employ cartoon-character stereotypes of science, scientists, men, and women."

In the 1990s and early 2000s an influential group of archaeologists, led by Steven A. LeBlanc of Harvard, popularized the notion that warfare was endemic among all prehistoric peoples. Koblitz analyzed the writings of this group, compared them to other sources, and concluded that the claim of pervasive warfare among the ancient Hohokam people of present-day central Arizona is a modern "masculinist narrative" that has little support in the archaeological record. After speaking at the Old Pueblo Archaeology Center near Tucson, Arizona, Koblitz was asked to write a version of her Men and Masculinities article for the Center's Bulletin. In that article she wrote:

On the basis of scant evidence, they have created a story of prehistoric militarism that harmonizes well with early 21st-century U.S. political culture. Whether this warlike image has much bearing on the actual lives and pursuits of indigenous Southwest populations of the 11th through 15th centuries is, however, open to doubt.

Books

Koblitz's first book was about the pioneering mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaia, the first woman in modern times to become a professor in a European university. From the review in SIAM News:

Koblitz describes Kovalevskaia's life and work in the context of her political and cultural environment. Kovalevskaia's achievements thus become understood as fruits of a conscious social and intellectual movement, and as a source of inspiration for many, rather than as the extraordinary accomplishments of one isolated individual.

Koblitz's second book, Science, Women and Revolution in Russia, addressed the questions: Why were the first generation of women to receive advanced degrees almost all Russians, and why were they overwhelmingly in the natural sciences or medicine? She argued that the answer to the first question can be found in the social, cultural, and political milieu that followed the Crimean War. The explanations for the preference for the sciences were that that's where their interests lay and that's where the men were most receptive to the entrance of women into their professions. The historian of Russian science Alexander Vucinich wrote:

This book is welcome as the first solid effort to draw a general picture of the multiple ramifications of the ascent of Russian women to professional positions in science. It also contributes to a better understanding of the growing movement in favor of broader participation by women in the full spectrum of professional activities.

Her third book takes a historical and cross-cultural approach to the contentious issue of abortion. Koblitz argues that the need for both pre- and post-conception fertility control has been continuous throughout recorded history, and that women have been remarkably resourceful in finding ways to achieve this. The "Transdisciplinary Book Award" citation describes the book as "a wonderful example of truly transdisciplinary research and the amazing results of breaking down rigid disciplinary borders."

Honors

• In 1985, Koblitz was invited to give the Kenneth O. May Lecture on the History of Mathematics at the University of Toronto.
• In 1990, Koblitz won the History of Science Society's Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize for her article "Science, Women, and the Russian Intelligentsia: The Generation of the 1860s" that appeared in the Society's journal Isis in 1988.
• In 1995, Koblitz received a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana.
• In 2010, the Government of Vietnam conferred a President's Friendship Medal on her.
• In 2015, Koblitz won the "Transdisciplinary Book Award" of the Arizona State University Institute for Humanities Research for her book Sex and Herbs and Birth Control: Women and Fertility Regulation Through the Ages; the award is "presented for a nonfiction work that reflects the finest contemporary humanities-based scholarship on any topic."

Selected works

• "A historian looks at gender and science," International Journal of Science Education, vol. 9 (1987), p. 399-407.
• "Science, women, and the Russian intelligentsia: The generation of the 1860s," Isis, vol. 79 (1988), p. 208-226.
• A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia -- Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary, 2nd ed., Rutgers University Press, 1993.
• Science, Women and Revolution in Russia, Routledge, 2000.
• "Gender and science where science is on the margins," Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, vol. 25 (April 2005), p. 107-114.
• "Male bonding around the campfire: Constructing myths of Hohokam militarism," Men and Masculinities, Vol. 9 (2006), p. 95-107.
• Sex and Herbs and Birth Control: Women and Fertility Regulation Through the Ages, Kovalevskaia Fund, 2014.
• "Life in the fast lane: Arab women in science and technology," Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, vol. 36 (2016), p. 107-117.