Dr Knoeff is undertaking post-doctoral studies in the history of anatomy in relation to philosophy, theology and (modern) art in the Faculty of Arts, University of Leiden, where she is also setting up a humanities research project on the anatomical collections of the university. She previously engaged in post-doctoral research at Maastricht University, on a project funded by the Dutch Research Council. She holds a doctorate in the History of Medicine from Cambridge University. She did her first degree in Maastricht, where her thesis on the seventeenth-century physician, Jonathan Goddard, was awarded the Research Prize of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1995.
Dr Knoeff’s research interests are in the history of medicine, chemistry and anatomy and the interaction of science and religion in these fields.
Selected recent publications
- Knoeff, R. “Jonathan Goddard (1617-1675), Chemie, Geneeskunde en de Royal Society’, in Gewina 20 (1997) 1-13
- Knoeff, R. ‘The Making of a Calvinist Chemist: Herman Boerhaave, God, Fire and Truth’, in Ambix. 48 (2001) 102-111.
- Knoeff, R. ‘Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738): Calvinist Chemist and Physician’, Amsterdam: Edita (2002)
- Knoeff, R., ‘Over “het konstige toch Verderfelijke Gestel”. Een Cultuur-historische Interpretatie van Bidloo’s Anatomische Atlas’, in Gewina 26 (2003) 189-202
- Knoeff, R., ‘Herman Boerhaave’, in Bunge, W. (et.al.), Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Dutch Philosophers (Bristol: Thoemmes, 2003) 118-124
- Knoeff, R. ‘The Reins of the Soul. The Centrality of the Intercostal Nerves in the Neurology of Thomas Willis and in Samuel Parker’s Theology’, in Journal for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 59 (2004) 413-440
- Knoeff, R., ‘Moral Lessons of Perfection. A Comparison of Mennonite and Calvinist Motives in the Anatomical Atlases of Bidloo and Albinus’, in Cunningham, A. & Grell, O.P. (eds.), Medicine and Religion in Enlightenment Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming in 2006)
- Knoeff, R. & Roberts, L. (eds.) ‘The places of Chemistry in Eighteenth-Century England and the Netherlands’, Special issue of Ambix, Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (forthcoming, 2006)
- Knoeff, R., ‘Chemistry, Mechanics and the Making of Anatomical Knowledge. Boerhaave vs. Ruysch on the Nature of the Glands’, in Ambix (forthcoming in 2006)
