Evelynn M. Hammonds

Evelynn M. Hammonds is the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She was the first Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Harvard (2005-2008). From 2008 to 2013 she served as Dean of Harvard College. She is currently Chair of the Department of the History of Science and director of the Project on Race & Gender in Science & Medicine at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard.

Evelynn’s areas of research include the histories of science, medicine, and public health in the United States; race and gender in science studies; feminist theory and African American history. She is the author of Childhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930 (1999). She was co-editor with Jennifer M. Shephard and Stephen M. Kosslyn of The Harvard Sampler: Liberal Education for the Twenty-First Century (2011) and with Rebecca Herzig, The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics (2008; and 2013.) Her current work focuses on the intersection of scientific, medical and socio-political concepts of race in the United States.

Evelynn was named a Fellow of the Association of Women in Science (AWIS) in 2008. She has served on the boards of Spelman College, the Arcus Foundation, the Museum of Science in Boston, and Bates College. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2018 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. She holds honorary degrees from Spelman College and Bates College.