Ronald L Numbers is Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine and a member of the department of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has taught for three decades. He has written or edited more than two dozen books, including, most recently, Darwinism Comes to America (Harvard University Press, 1998), Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion and Gender (Cambridge University Press, 1999) coedited with John Stenhouse, and When Science and Christianity Meet (University of Chicago Press, 2003) coedited with David Lindberg.

For five years (1989-1993) he edited Isis, the flagship journal of the history of science. He is writing a history of science in America (for Basic Books), editing a series of monographs on the history of medicine, science, and religion for the Johns Hopkins University Press, and coediting, with David Lindberg, the eight-volume Cambridge History of Science. A former Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the International Academy of the History of Science. He is a past president of both the History of Science Society and the American Society of Church History. In 2005 he was elected to a four-year term as president of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science/Division of History of Science and Technology.

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