Evelynn M. Hammonds

Evelynn M. Hammonds is the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science, Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University.  She has been a member of the Harvard faculty since 2002 . She was the first Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Harvard University (2005-2008). From (2008-2013) she served as Dean of Harvard College and Chair of the Department of History of Science (2017-2022). She earned her PhD in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.  She earned a Bachelor’s in physics from Spelman College, a Bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech and the S.M. in Physics from MIT. Prof. Hammonds was a member of the faculty at MIT from 1992 to 2002.  Her research focuses on the history of scientific, medical and socio-political concepts of race, gender and sexuality in the histories of medicine, science and public health in the United States; black feminist and queer theory and the history of disease and race.  She also works on projects to increase the participation of men and women of color in STEM fields. Professor Hammonds is the Director of the Project on Race & Gender in Science & Medicine at the Hutchins Center for African & African-American Research at Harvard. She served on the President’s Initiative on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery and on its’ Advisory Committee. She chaired the University-wide Steering Committee on Human Remains in the Harvard Museum Collections and she sits on the Faculty Executive Committee of the Peabody Museum.

Professor Hammonds is the co-author of the National Academy of Science (NAS) report ( 2021)  Transforming Technologies: Women of Color in Tech. She served two-terms on the Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine (CWSEM) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 2018-2024 and currently sits on the NAS Roundtable on Black Men and Black Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine. For the academic year (2024-2025) she is the interim director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Hammonds is the current president of the History of Science Society. (2024-2026)  She holds honorary degrees from Bates and Spelman Colleges.

Courses:

Race and Public Health Crises: From TB to HIV/AIDS to COVID-19

The Past in the Present: Race/Racism in Science and Health

The Changing Concept of Race in America From Jefferson to Genomics

Introduction to African American History

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Health Disparities and African-Americans

Medical Technologies in Historical Perspective

Books:

Transforming Technologies for Women of Color in Tech, National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Sciences. Evelynn Hammond,s Valerie Taylor and Rebekah Hutton, editors. (2022) 

A History of the National Academy of Medicine: 50 Years of Transformational Leadership, Contributors:  National Academy of Medicine; Laura Harbold DeStefano; Andrea Schultz; Edward Berkowitz; Evelynn Hammonds, Howard Markel, David Rosner, and Rosemary Stevens, Editors. (2022)

 The Harvard Sampler: Liberal Education for the Twenty-first Century,  edited by Jennifer M. Shephard, Stephen M. Kosslyn, and Evelynn M. Hammonds (Harvard University Press, 2011)

Childhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)