Michael J. Crowe Papers

Michael J. Crowe was born March 18, 1936, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Michael P. and Claire (Huesman) Crowe. He attended Rockhurst High School in Kansas City, Missouri, before graduating with a B.A. in Liberal Studies and a B.S. in Science from the University of Notre Dame in 1958. He earned a Ph.D. in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin in 1965 and joined the Program of Liberal Studies at Notre Dame as an assistant professor the same year. In 1968 he became the founding chair of Notre Dame’s graduate program in History and Philosophy of Science. Over the course of his career, Crowe held multiple departmental and university leadership positions and was a leading scholar in the history of modern physical science. In 1993, he founded Notre Dame’s Biennial History of Astronomy Workshops and in 2010 the American Astronomical Society awarded him the Leo Doggett Prize for lifetime contributions to historical astronomy. He published 8 books on various topics, including A History of Vector Analysis (1967) and The Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750-1900 (1988). He retired in 2002 as the Rev. John J. Cavanaugh (Emeritus) Professor in the Humanities.