The Belgian-born American historian of science George Sarton (1884-1956) founded the history of science in America.

George Sarton was born in Ghent on Aug. 31, 1884, the son of one of the directors and chief engineers of the Belgian national railroad system. Sarton studied philosophy at the University of Ghent and then turned to science, winning his doctorate in mathematics in 1911. He had, however, already become known as an author and scientist for his published novels and poems and his award-winning essay on chemistry (1908). Sarton emerged from his training with admiration for the insights of Auguste Comte and Henri Poincaré and a conviction that the basis of scientific philosophy was the history of science.

Sarton married an English artist, Eleanor Mabel Elwes, in 1911. In March 1913 he published the first issue of Isis, a journal of the history of science. At the beginning of World War I he fled to...