Emilie Savage-Smith (born 20 August 1941) is an American-British historian of science known for her work on science in the medieval Islamic world and medicine in the medieval Islamic world.
Education and career Savage-Smith was born on 20 August 1941, in the US, and became a dual citizen of the UK and US in 2003. She was an undergraduate at DePauw University, graduating in 1962, and completed her Ph.D. in 1969 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her doctoral dissertation, Galen on Nerves, Veins and Arteries, was a critical edition of book 16 of Galen's De usu partium corporis humani, including a translation from the Arabic edition of Hunayn ibn Ishaq.
She is retired as Professor of the History of Islamic Science at the University of Oxford, where she continues to be Fellow Archivist of St Cross College, Oxford and a senior research consultant for the Bodleian Library. She is the president of the Society for the History of Medieval Technology and Science. Before moving to the Oriental Institute at the University of Oxford she was a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the Gustave E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies and in the Medical History Division of the Department of Anatomy.
Books Savage-Smith is the author or coauthor of: Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo (with Yossef Rapoport, University of Chicago Press, 2018) Medieval Islamic Medicine (with Peter E. Pormann, Edinburgh University Press, 2007) Medieval Views of the Cosmos (with Evelyn Edson, Bodleian Library, 2004) Science, Tools & Magic. (two volumes) (with F. R. Maddison, Oxford University Press, 1997) Islamicate Celestial Globes: Their History, Construction, and Use (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985) Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory Device (with M. B. Smith, Undena Press, 1980)
Additionally, she has contributed as an editor or translator to multiple other books including critical editions of works from the medieval Islamic world, edited volumes, and catalogues of collections.
Recognition Savage-Smith was named a Fellow of the British Academy in 2010. She became a corresponding fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2020.
In 2014, DePauw University gave her an honorary doctorate. In 2016, the Scientific Instrument Society chose Savage-Smith as their Gerard Turner Memorial Lecturer and gave her the Turner Medal. A workshop in honour of her career and contributions to the history of Islamic science, Health, Magic and Stars: Workshop on the history of Islamic science, was held at Oxford in 2019.
Her book Medieval Islamic Medicine was one of three 2008 winners of the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize.
References WorldCat catalog entry for Galen on Nerves, Veins and Arteries, retrieved 2021-02-04
Reviews of Islamicate Celestial Globes: Donald R. Hill (1988), Technology and Culture, , David A. King (1990), Isis, Paul Kunitzsch (1988), Journal for the History of Astronomy, Mara Miniati (1987), Nuncius, Reviews of Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory Device: Herbert Eisenstein (1983), Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Josef van Ess (1982), Die Welt des Orients, , Bernard R. Goldstein (1981), Isis, David A. King (1982), Archaeoastronomy, , Paul Kunitzsch (1983), Die Welt des Orients, Reviews of Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Zayde Antrim (2019), Imago Mundi, Nicola Boothby (2019), Maps in History, Anna Caiozzo (2020), Cahiers de Recherches des Médiévales et Humanistes, Susana Calvo Capilla and Azucena Hernández Pérez (2020), Anales de Historia del Arte, Sarah Davis-Secord (2020), Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Jean-Charles Ducène (2020), Medieval Encounters, Kyle T. Evered (2019), Historical Geography, Barbara Harrison (2020), Cartographic Perspectives, Benjamin B. Olshin (2020), Terrae Incognitae, Sameer Rahim (2019), Apollo, Daniel Martin Varisco (2020), Peregrinations, Reviews of Medieval Islamic Medicine: Anna Akasoy (2007), Asian Medicine, Guy Attewell (2009), Annals of Science, Hinrich Biesterfeldt (2009), Die Welt des Islams, Charles Burnett (2009), Journal of Islamic Studies, Emilia Calvo (2008), Suheyl, Nils Fischer (2008), Sudhoffs Archiv, Ivan Garofalo (2008), Gesnerus, Ingrid Hehmeyer (2007), Isis, , Abdul Nasser Kaadan (2011), Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, Oliver Kahl (2008), Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Carsten Schliwski (2009), Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Daniel Martin Varisco (2008), American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, M. K. K. Yearl (2008), Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Reviews of Medieval Views of the Cosmos: Bruce Eastwood (2007), International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Mónica Herrera-Casais (2007), Suheyl, Robert Hoyland (2005), The Medieval Review, Naomi Reed Kline (2006), Speculum,
Reviews of Science, Tools and Magic:
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