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As an historian
and physician, Robert Martensen’s interests
range widely across medical practice, biomedical
science, and culture. Perhaps that is why
doing historical research at the NIH appeals
to him strongly, as the agency’s range
of inquiry and impact have been huge. Previously,
he has explored the origins of neuroscience
in the Scientific Revolution, the development
of nuclear medicine, and the scientific
transformation of United States medicine
that occurred during the Progressive Era,
among other topics. In 2002 he received
a Guggenheim fellowship to complete his
book, The
Brain Takes Shape: An Early History (Oxford
University Press, 2004).
Educated at Harvard
(B.A.), Dartmouth (M.D.), and the University
of California-San Francisco( M.A. and
Ph.D.), Martensen has held several university
professorships, including service that
involved leading a history of medicine
museum and archive, prior to joining
the NIH in October 2007.
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Selected recent publications
In Press:
The American Way of Illness: Tales from the
Front Lines (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
2008). Intended for general readers confronting
tough questions about how to navigate serious
illness, this book of eight linked tales draws
on Martensen’s experiences of caring for approximately
75,000 patients as an emergency physician.
“American Medical Professionalism:
At Home and In the World,” in Global Bioethics,
ed. John Harris (London: Oxford University Press, 2008).
“Landscape Designers, Doctors,
and the Making of Healthy Urban Spaces in 19th Century
America,” in “Restorative Commons: Making
Healthy Urban Spaces,” ed. Anne Wiesen (Proceedings
of the U.S. Forest Service, special supplement,
2008).
2004-Present:
(with David S. Jones) “Human Radiation Experiments and the Formation of
Medical Physics at the University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley,
1937-1962,” in Useful Bodies: Humans in the Service of Medical Science
in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jordan Goodman, Anthony McElligott, and Lara
Marks (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 81-108.
“Plagues and Patients,” in Clio
in the Clinic: Doctors’ Stories of Using History
in Medical Practice, ed. Jacalyn Duffin (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2005), pp. 56-72.
“Bioethics on the Brain,” Medical
Humanities Review, 2004,18(1): 27-45.
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