Pietro Corsi (born 20 July 1948) is an Italian historian of science and emeritus Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oxford.
Biography From 1967, Pietro Corsi studied at the Faculty of Philosophy, The University of Pisa, and was also a pupil of the Class of Letters, The Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa. Under the supervision of Francesco Barone and Gilberto Bernardini, he worked on selected issues in the history of science. In particular, he completed yearly theses on the works of Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, and the historiographic conceptions elaborated by Alexandre Koyré. His final thesis reconstructed the relationship between epistemology and the history of science in France, from Henri Poincaré to Alexandre Koyré. From 1971 to 1981, Corsi occupied research positions at the Faculty of Philosophy, The University of Pisa; the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, The University of Oxford; the King's College, The University of Cambridge (1981–1982). In 1981 Corsi obtained a D. Phil in the History of Science from the Queen's College, Oxford. From 1983 to 1987 he was assistant professor at the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University. In 1987, Corsi was appointed associate professor of the history of science at the University of Cassino, Italy, and full professor in 1997. On special leave from 1997 to 2015, he has been in succession director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris (1997–2001); professor of the history of science at the Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne (1999–2006); Directeur d'études cumulant at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (2000–2018); director of the Centre d'histoire des sciences et des techniques, La Cité des sciences et de l'industrie, Paris (2001–2005). From 2006 to 2015 he has been chair professor of the history of science, The University of Oxford. In 1991, Corsi was awarded the Palmes Académiques by the French government, and in 2016 he was the Marc–August Pictet medallist of the Société de Physique et d'histoire naturelle of Geneva. Corsi has collaborated with various history of science journals, such as Annals of Science, The British Journal for the History of Science and the Journal of the History of Biology. From 1982 to 2016, he was at various times member of the editorial board of Nuncius, Isis-Journal of the History of Science Society, Histoire du CNRS, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, Centaurus, HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science. Together with Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, he established KOS, the first journal entirely devoted to the complex roles of images in the history of science (1983–1987). From 1983 to 1986 he was Editor-in-chief the US edition of the Italian art magazine FMR. In 1992, with the help of Benedetta Craveri, Roberto Calasso, Furio Colombo, and Umberto Eco, Corsi launched the Italian language edition of The New York Review of Books, La Rivista dei Libri, of which he was Editor-in-Chief (1992–2010). Corsi has been involved in several major exhibitions as scientific secretary or member of the scientific committee. In 1989 he authored La fabbrica del pensiero: dall’arte della memoria alle neuroscienze, organized by the Museo Galileo – Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence. The main body of the exhibition was also shown in Paris, Cité des sciences et de l'Industrie, and Madrid, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, whereas an itinerant version visited scores of towns in Italy, France, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, and the United States. The exhibition catalogue was printed in Italian and French by Electa, Milan and the English language edition was published by Oxford University Press US under the title The Enchanted Loom. Chapters in the History of Science. The exhibition explored the relationship between the sciences of the brain and of the mind and wider cultural dimensions (the visual arts, philosophy, the social sciences, computer science) from the Renaissance to the theory of neural Darwinism put forward by Gerald Edelman. A follow up exhibition, Drugs and the Brain, circulated widely throughout schools and abuse-prevention agencies in Italy and Europe. Corsi has also served on the scientific committees of Tous les savoirs du monde, displayed on the occasion of the opening of the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand in Paris (1996), and l'Âme au corps, authored by Jean Clair and Jean-Pierre Changeux (Paris, Grand Palais, 1994). From 1994 to 2004, Corsi has been the "Editor for science, 1600–2000" of the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, under the General Editorship of Colin Matthew (67 vol.) and since 2014 is the Editor for Science of the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Corsi has also experimented with Internet Technologies in the history of science: the website devoted to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, his works and heritage, opened in 1998, followed in 2002 by the website Lavoisier, Buffon (2004), and a website devoted to the history of geological cartography in Italy and France (2004).
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