Pnina Geraldine Abir-Am (; born 1947) is an Israeli and American historian of science whose work has focused on the history of molecular biology and women and gender in science. Educated in Israel, Canada, and England, she has held research and visiting positions at many universities in Israel, Canada, and the United States. Since 2007 she has been a scholar at Brandeis University.
Education and career Abir-Am is a citizen of Israel and the United States. She was an undergraduate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she received a bachelor's degree in chemistry with a minor in biology in 1971. She returned to the Hebrew University for a 1975 master's degree in the history and philosophy of science, summa cum laude, with a thesis on the discovery of the structure of DNA. She completed a Ph.D. at the Université de Montréal in 1984, after a year as a visiting student at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine at the University of London. Her dissertation, The Biotheretical Gathering and the Origins of Molecular Biology in England, 1932–38, was supervised by Camille Limoges.
She was a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1973–1975, 1982–1983, and 1996–1997, a visiting associate professor at Johns Hopkins University from 1991 to 1993, and co-chair of Women's Studies in a joint program of the University of Ottawa and Carleton University from 1996 to 1997. In 1995, as a research associate of the Center for History and Philosophy of Science at Boston University, she was named as a Resident Fellow of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 1995–1996. For 1996–1997, she was a Beckman Center Fellow at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. In 2012–2013, she was the first Resident Scholar in the Oregon State University libraries. Since 2007, she has been a scholar in the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, in the Greater Boston area.
Recognition Abir-Am received the 1988 Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize of the History of Science Society, for a chapter about Dorothy Maud Wrinch ("Synergy or Clash: Disciplinary and Marital Strategies in the Career of Mathematical Biologist Dorothy Wrinch") in her book Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives. She was named as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2023.
Selected publications Abir-Am is the author of research articles including:
Her edited volumes include: Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789–1979 (1987) Creative Couples in the Sciences (1996)
References . Reviews: Joe Cain (1997), Journal of the History of Biology, Rosalie G. Genovese (1997), Isis, Margaret W. Rossiter (1998), The American Historical Review, , Ruth Lewin Sime (1996), Science, ,
. Reviews: Margaret Anderson, Libraries & Culture, Marina Benjamin (1988), History of Science. , Daryl E. Chubin, Richard Davies, and Lisa C. Heinz (1988), Issues in Science and Technology, Jill Conway (1988), "Marginalized positions", Science, Audrey B. Davis (1989), Technology and Culture, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs (1989), History of Education Quarterly, Susan Elizabeth Gerard (1990), Contemporary Sociology, Rita A. Hoots (1989), The Science Teacher, Ruth Hubbard (1990), Science & Society, Joan Mason (1992), "Women in science: breaking out of the circle", Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Londa Schiebinger (1988), "On the margins of science", The Women's Review of Books, Carolyn G. Shapiro (1991), History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Nancy Wilmsen Thornhill (1988), The Quarterly Review of Biology,
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