I am a historian of science focusing on 19th and 20th century biology. Currently I am working on projects covering the English botanist, historian, and philosopher Agnes Arber (1879-1960) and the Scottish naturalist and classicist D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860-1948).

I earned my Ph.D. from Oregon State University, Corvallis, in 2018 with a dissertation on the influence of the German poet and naturalist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) on twentieth-century botany and morphology. In addition to Goethe, my dissertation covered the debate over New and Old Morphology, Arber, Thompson, the English mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) and the Goethean Scientists George Adams (1894-1963) and Olive Whicher (1910-2006).

In 2012, I completed a M.A. inInterdisciplinary Studies at Oregon State University, with emphases in history of science, philosophy, and English. My thesis covered Goethe’s botany and philosophy of science, the potential for his ideas in natural aesthetics, and his legacy in science education as practiced at the Nature Institute in New York.

I completed a B.A. in Philosophy with a minor in mathematics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2001. During the time between my bachelors and masters, I worked several jobs including vegetable farming, bookkeeping, retail, and in-home staff for persons with disabilities. I spent this time not far from where I grew up along the banks of the Mississippi in northern Illinois, and also in Arizona, New York, California, and eventually Oregon. While in grad school and in between being a teaching and research assistant, I continued taking jobs on farms and with persons with disabilities while also adding blogger and journalist to my list. After completing grad school, I taught high school science while adjuncting at the College of Western Idaho and Boise State University. I currently reside in New York and teach at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs.