ABSTRACT
Intellectual change has been accompanied by an equally significant social transformation. History of science, once the domain of retired researchers, practicing scientists, and the rare specialist, has developed into an academic discipline, replete with graduate schools, research institutes, public and private patronage, peer-reviewed journals, and professional societies. In the United States, George Sarton, the founding editor of Isis: Revue consamie a l'histoire et a l'organisation de la science, was the discipline's heroic founding figure complete with a compelling personal story. After burying his precious notes, Sarton and his family fled Belgium as the Germans occupied his home during World War I. Following a brief stay in England, Sarton arrived in America, penniless and unemployed. Lecturing parttime at several academic institutions and, beginning in 1916, at Harvard University, Sarton managed to remain solvent. By 1918 he was once again in desperate straits; his appointment at Harvard was scheduled to expire with little chance of renewal, and he confronted a bleak choice: "stop that work or star^."^ Sarton made that impassioned declaration in a final appeal to Robert S. Woodward, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW), one of the first private research institutions in the United States and one of the few patrons that might support Sarton's work in the history of science. Upon arriving in the United States in 1914, Sarton had approached Woodward, only to find the CIW interested in supporting a version of "Whewell's 'History of the Inductive Sciences' for the present," but incapable of funding the work. By Easter 1918, Sarton needed a savior. Woodward easily played the role, offering the unemployed scholar a two year position and, in 1920, a permanent tenured appointment as a Research Associate in the Institution's Department of History. In exchange for space in Harvard's Widener library, Sarton continued to teach a single undergraduate lecture course each year.
