Greg Good

Teaching Fields

Dr. Good taught at WVU from 1983 to 2009. He taught mainly history of science and environmental history. He also started the Cultural Resource Management Certificate program and ran the Public History M.A. program for several years. Dr. Good no longer offers courses, but he is available for students with questions in his areas of specialization.

• Ph.D. University of Toronto, 1982
• M.A. University of Toronto, 1976
• B.S., St. Vincent College, 1974

Dr. Good’s research interests combine his background in historical issues of science and technology in the 18th to 21st centuries and his commitment to big-picture perspectives on the Earth, the environment, and how scientists and science have affected human relationships to these.

Books

Sciences of the Earth: An Encyclopedia of Events, People, and Phenomena (New York and London: Garland Encyclopedias in the History of Science, 1998). 2 vols., 901 pages. 

The Earth, the Heavens, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in the American Geophysical Union series "History of Geophysics," 1994, vol. 5.

Selected Articles

The Astronomers Who Fell to Earth: Or, How the Copernican Revolution was Completed in the Alps, Physis: Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza, 2021, New Series, 56:7-19.

Measuring the Inaccessible Earth: Geomagnetism, In Situ Measurements, Remote Sensing, and Proxy Data, Centaurus, 2011, 53:1-14.

Between Data, Mathematical Analysis, and Physical Theory: Research on Earth’s Magnetism in the 19thCentury, Centaurus, 2008, 50:290-304.

A Shift of View: Meteorology in John Herschel’s terrestrial physics. In Intimate Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History of Weather and Climate, eds. J.R. Fleming, V. Jankovic, and D.R. Coen (New York: Science History Publications, 2006), 35-67.

The Assembly of Geophysics: Scientific Disciplines as Frameworks of Consensus, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 2000, 31:259-292.

The Rockefeller Foundation, the Leipzig Geophysical Institute and National Socialism in the 1930s.Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 1991, 21:299-316.

Scientific Sovereignty: Canada, The Carnegie Institution, and the Earth's Magnetism in the North. Scientia Canadensis, 1990, 14:3-37.

Books in Preparation

The Astronomer who fell to Earth: John Herschel’s Cosmic Earth

Living with a Dangerous Star: The Past and Future of Space Weather and Human Efforts to Understand and Survive It