Sandra Herbert née Swanson (born April 10, 1942 in Chicago)[1] is an American historian of science with an international reputation as an expert on Charles Darwin.[2] The Geological Society of London awarded her the 2020 Sue Tyler Friedman Medal.[3]
Sandra Lynn Swanson's father was an accountant[1] and both her grandfathers worked at Chicago steel mills.[4] She graduated in 1963 with a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studied from Wittenberg University. At Brandeis University, she graduated in the History of Ideas with an M.A. in 1965 and a Ph.D. in 1968.[5] Her Ph.D. thesis is entitled The Logic of Darwin's Discovery.[6] In 1966 she married James Charles Herbert (born 1941), who received his Ph.D. in 1970 from Brandeis University and became an education executive. Sandra and James Herbert have two daughters.[1] She became a professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and retired in 2009 as professor emerita.[7]
Sandra Herbert was from 2007 to 2008 a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Christ's College, Cambridge.[8] From February 2012 to February 2013 she was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.[9]
Her 2005 book Charles Darwin, Geologist has become the basic reference for Darwin's research on geology.[10] In 2006 the book won the Geological Society of America's Mary C. Rabbitt History of Geology Award,[5] the History of Science Society's Suzanne J. Levinson Prize, the American Historical Association's George L. Mosse Prize, and the Albion Book Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies.[11]
In 2007 Sandra Herbert organized and led an expedition to the Galápagos Islands.[12] There she and her colleagues in July 2007 on Isla Santiago located igneous rocks similar to the samples collected by Darwin. Thereby they gained a better understanding of how Darwin's field observations in geology are related to his research published in Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands (1844).[13]
She was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1982–1983.[14] In 2006 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[15] She is also a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.[16]