Frank W. Stahnisch
Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Stahnisch graduated from Elisabethenschule high school and entered the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt in 1990, where he commenced his undergraduate studies in medicine, philosophy, psychology and sociology. Continuing his studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the Université de Rennes I in France, he received his Master of Science degree in Philosophy of Science from the University of Edinburgh and his Doctorate degree in History of Medicine from the Free University of Berlin. Following to teaching positions held at the Humboldt University of Berlin, the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuernberg and the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, he became a two-year Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University in Montreal. Further Visiting Professorships included the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, the Institute for the History and Ethics of Medicine at the Ruprecht Karls University in Heidelberg, Germany, the Office for History of Science and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley, USA, the Institute for Advanced Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2008, Stahnisch was appointed to the faculty of the University of Calgary in the rank of an Associate Professor, where he has chaired the inter-Faculty and inter-departmental History of Medicine and Health Care Program and acts as co-coordinator (History) of the Calgary History and Philosophy of Science Program. He has continued in these roles as a Full Professor since 2016. In 2015, he also became a Research Fellow of the Calgary Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies (CMSS), and in 2018 of the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education. His doctoral dissertation, which was supervised by Volker Hess at the Institute for the History of Medicine at the Free University of Berlin, was a history of laboratory practices in early 19th century French experimental physiology, an analysis of "Ideas in action: The notion of function and its methodological role in the research program of the experimental physiologist François Magendie (1783-1855)". The manuscript became short-listed for the Young Scholars' Prize of the German Society for the History of Medicine, Science and Technology (DGGMNT), Wittenberg (Germany) in 2002. It was subsequently published with LIT Press in Muenster, Hamburg, London (2003), being one of the first specialized works in German language on experimental practices in modern medical research laboratories. Stahnisch's recent monograph, entitled "A New Field in Mind: A History of Interdisciplinarity in the Early Brain Sciences" and published with McGill-Queens University Press in Montreal, PQ and Kingston, ON, received the Jason A. Hannah Medal in the History of Medicine of the Royal Society of Canada in 2021. The medal recognizes Canadian research in the history of medicine and honours an important publication. As an in-depth and innovative study, the book tracks the emergence and evolution of neuroscientific research from the late nineteenth century to the early postwar period, while including a comparative international and cultural historical perspective on the brain sciences. His historiographical work has won further awards and prizes, including a Feodor Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany), the John J. Pisano Award of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States, the H. Richard Tyler Award of the American Academy of Neurology (USA), the Dimitrije Pivnicki Award in Neuro- and Psychiatric History of McGill University (Canada), a University of Calgary Faculty of Arts' Research Award for Established Scholars, and an Annual Fellowship of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities (Canada). In 2009, he received the inaugural Klaus Reichert Prize for Medical Philosophy through the Aspects of Medical Philosophy Series and the Literary Society of Karlsruhe (Germany). From 2010 to 2011, he was President of the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences (ISHN) and co-organized the first joint meeting of ISHN and Cheiron (The International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences) at the University of Calgary and the Banff Centre for the Arts (June, 2011) in Alberta (Canada). In 2012, Stahnisch was awarded the inaugural Mary Louise Nickerson Fellowship in Neuro-History by the Osler Library of the History of Medicine at McGill University (Canada). Stahnisch's research has been funded, among other inter/national agencies, by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH), the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), The Gerda Henkel Foundation, Associated Medical Services (AMS), Alberta Medical Foundation (AMF), the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation (AHRF), the Calgary Institute for the Humanities (CIH), the Max Planck Society (MPG), Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation (NSHRF), the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
Work in the History of Medicine and Neuroscience
Frank W. Stahnisch is a historian of medicine and neuroscience at the University of Calgary in Canada, where he holds the endowed Alberta Medical Foundation/Hannah Professorship in the History of Medicine and Health Care. His research interests in the history and philosophy of the biomedical sciences cover: the development of modern physiology and experimental medicine, the history of neuroscience and the history of psychiatry, as well as the development of modern medical visualization practices.