Remembering Michael S. Mahoney
Martin Campbell‐Kelly · Perspectives on Science · 2013
Michael S. Mahoney, professor of the history of science at Princeton University, died in 2008. Born in 1939, Mahoney was already a seasoned historian of mathematics when he became one of the arst senior historians to take an interest in the history of computing. He was by no means the arst: for example, individuals such as I. B. Cohen at Harvard University and Derek de Solla Price at Yale University had been interested since the 1960s. Moreover, several institutions were already actively engaged: the Smithsonian Institution, the Charles Babbage Institute (founded 1979), the Computer Museum in Boston, and similar organizations in Europe. A journal, the Annals of the History of Computing, was established in 1979. However, Mahoney’s unique mission was not so much to do the history of computing, as to see it done well. The collection of papers on the history of computing, admirably edited by Thomas Haigh, stands as a memorial to Mahoney. It is arranged in three categories which effectively deane Mahoney’s contributions to the discipline: the shaping of the history of computing; constructing a history of software; and the structures of computation. Haigh has provided an excellent, and by no means uncritical, commentary on the collection. In this essay, I will follow Haigh’s organization.