Rate My Professor Brent Purkaple

In his classes at Grand Valley State University, Purkaple emphasizes the importance of recognizing that science, technology, and medicine are stories with a history, pushing students to consider how such recognition influences individual and public perceptions of these areas. He is interested in the utility of the history of science, technology, and medicine for the broader public and has experience applying his professional skills in K-12 education and museum development. As a Ph.D. candidate, he received a Travel Fellowship from the Linda Hall Library in 2018-19 to research Jesuit books on optics, consulting works such as François d’Aguilon’s Opticorum libri sex (1613), Christoph Scheiner’s Oculus (1619 and 1652), Athanasius Kircher’s Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (1646 and 1671), Gaspar Schott’s Magia universalis (1657), Mario Bettini’s Apiaria universae (1642), and others, with attention to their materiality and usage. Purkaple has published book reviews, including “Science, Religion, and the Historiography of the Galileo Affair: On the Undesirability of Oversimplification” in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith and a review of A. Mark Smith’s Measuring Shadows: Kepler’s Optics of Invisibility in Early Science and Medicine 22 (2017).