Prof Nicolas Rasmussen

Research Summary

Research areas include history, sociology, and policy issues related to medical and biological sciences; history of drug abuse, of the pharmaceuticals industry, and of clinical research; environmental history, especially relating to twentieth century agricultural science and technology.

Teaching

Current and recent courses taught:

ARTS1301: Cosmos and Culture: Introduction to the History of Science
ARTS2303: On Drugs: Pharmaceuticals and the 20th Century
ARTS3242: Environmental History
Life Science in the 20th Century: The Molecular Revolution (not currently taught)
Agriculture and Civilisation in Environmental Perspective (not currently taught)

Consultation Times
Nick is available for consultation at the following times:
Wednesdays 2-4 and by appointment

Publications

Books:

Nicolas Rasmussen, Gene Jockeys: Life Science and the Rise of Biotech (Johns Hopkins University Press, in press)

———. On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine (New York University Press, 2008)

———. Picture Control: The Electron Microscope and the Transformation of Biology in America, 1940-1960 (Stanford University Press, 1997)


Refereed Research Articles

Jessica Parr and Nicolas Rasmussen, “Making Addicts of the Fat : Obesity, Psychiatry, and the ‘Overeaters Anonymous’ Model of Self-Help Weight Loss in the Postwar United States”, in J. Netherland, ed., Advances in Medical Sociology, Vol 14: Critical Perspectives on Addiction (Emerald, 2012), 181-200.

Nicolas Rasmussen, "Weight Stigma, Addiction Science, and the Medication of Fatness in mid-20th Century America",Sociology of Health and Illness 34: 880-95 (2012) hyperlink

---. "Goofball Panic: Barbiturates, ‘Dangerous’ and Addictive Drugs, and the Regulation of Medicine in Postwar America", in J. Greene and E. Watkins eds., Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 23-45.

———. "Medical Science and the Military: The Allies’ Use of Amphetamine during World War II", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 42(2): 205-233 (2011)

———. "Maurice Seevers, the Stimulants and the Political Economy of Addiction in American Biomedicine", BioSocieties 5(1): 105-123 (2010), doi: 10.1057/biosoc.2009.7

Nicolas Rasmussen, Kirby Lee, and Lisa Bero, "Association of Trial Registration with the Results and Conclusions of Published Trials of New Oncology Drugs", Trials 10(1):116 (2009), doi:10.1186/1745-6215-10-116

Nicolas Rasmussen, "America’s First Amphetamine Epidemic, 1929-1971: A Quantitative and Qualitative Retrospective", American Journal of Public Health 98: 974-985 (2008)

———. “Making The First Anti-Depressant: Amphetamine In American Medicine, 1929-1950”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 61: 288-323 (2006)

———. "The Commercial Drug Trial in Interwar America: Three Types of Clinician Collaborator", Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75: 50-80 (2005)

———. "The Moral Economy of the Drug Company-Medical Scientist Collaboration in Interwar America", Social Studies of Science 34: 161-186 (2004)

———. "Of 'Small Men', Big Science, and Bigger Business: The Second World War and Biomedical Research in America", Minerva 40 (2): 1-32 (2002)

———. "Steroids in Arms: Science, Government, Industry, and the Hormones of the Adrenal Cortex in the United States, 1930-1950", Medical History 46: 299-324 (2002)

———. "Innovation in Chemical Separation and Detection Instruments: Reflections on the Role of Technology in the History of Science", in P. Morris ed., From Classical to Modern Chemistry: The Instrumental Revolution (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2002), 251-258

———. "Evolving Scientific Epistemologies and the Artifacts of Empirical Philosophy of Science: A Reply Concerning Mesosomes”, Biology and Philosophy 16: 627-652 (2001)

———. "Plant Hormones in War and Peace: Science, Industry, and Government in the Development of Herbicides in 1940s America", Isis 92: 291-316 (2001)

———. "Biotechnology Before the 'Biotech Revolution'", in C. Reinhart ed., Chemical Sciences in the 20th Century (Wiley-VCH, 2001), 201-227

Nicolas Rasmussen and Alan Chalmers, "How Much Do We Need To Know About Electrons To Do Science with an Electron Microscope? On Theory in the Use of Instruments", in J. Buchwald and A. Warwick eds., Histories of the Electron: The Birth of Microphysics (MIT Press, 2001), 467-502

———. "The Forgotten Promise of Thiamin: Merck, Caltech Biologists, and Plant Hormones in a 1930s Biotechnology Project", Journal of the History of Biology 32: 245-261 (1999)

———. "Mapping the Cell: The Advent of the Thin Section and the Discovery of the ER", Nature Cell Biology 1 (4): E99-E101 (1999)

———. "What Moves When Technologies Migrate? : 'Software' and Hardware in the Transfer of Biological Electron Microscopy to Postwar Australia", Technology and Culture 40: 47-73 (1999)


———. "Instruments, Scientists, Industrialists, and the Specificity of 'Influence:' The Case of RCA and Biological Electron Microscopy", in I. Loewy and J.-P. Gaudillere eds., The Invisible Industrialist (MacMillan, 1998), 173-208

———. "The Midcentury Biophysics Bubble: Hiroshima and the Biological Revolution in America, Revisited", History of Science 35: 245-293 (1997)

———. "Cell Fractionation Biochemistry and the Origins of Cell Biology", Trends in Biochemical Sciences 21: 319-321 (1996)

———. "Making a Machine Instrumental: RCA and the Wartime Beginnings of Biological Electron Microscopy", Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 27: 311-349 (1996)

———. "Mitochondrial Structure and the Practice of Cell Biology in the 1950s", Journal of the History of Biology 28: 1-49 (1995)

———. "Freund's Adjuvant and the Realization of Questions in Postwar Immunology", Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 23: 337-366 (1993)

———. "Fact, Artifacts, and Mesosomes: Practicing Epistemology with the Electron Microscope", Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 24: 227-265 (1993)

Nicolas Rasmussen and Paul B. Green, "Organogenesis in Flowers of the Homeotic green pistillate Mutant of Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum)", American Journal of Botany 80: 805-813 (1993)

Nicolas Rasmussen, "The Decline of Recapitulation in Early 20th Century Biology: Disciplinary Conflict and Consensus on the Battleground of Theory", Journal of the History of Biology 24: 51-89 (1991)

———. "A New Model of Developmental Constraints as Applied to the Drosophila System", Journal of Theoretical Biology 127: 271-299 (1987)


Reference Works:


Nicolas Rasmussen, “Amphetamine Epidemics”, in Pamela Korsmeyer and Henry Kranzler, eds., Encyclopedia of Drugs, Alcohol & Addictive Behavior, 3rd Ed. (MacMillan, 2008)

———. "Molecular Biology", in Stanley Kutler ed., Dictionary of American History, 3rd Ed (Scribners, 2003)

Nicolas Rasmussen and Peter Hawkes, "The Electron Microscope", in R. Bud, S. Johnston, and D. Warner eds, Instruments of Science: An Historical Encyclopedia (London: Garland, 1997), 386-389

Affiliations and Memberships

Management Group Member, Healthy Scepticism International (www.healthyscepticism.org)
Editorial Board Member, Historical Records of Australian Science
Member, Human Research Ethics Committee (Social Sciences), UNSW

Other Information

NO RELATION to the Danish football striker, French Jazz musician, or Scientologist of the same name

Personal Links

Homepage for On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine

Interests

History of molecular, cell, and developmental biology;
History of biotechnology;
Industry, academic science, and industrial policy;
History of psychiatric medicine;
Pharmaceuticals and public health;
Drug abuse and public health;
20th C American history;
Experimental life sciences and epistemology