Rate My Professor Brian Ogilvie

Brian W. Ogilvie is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he has served since 1997, advancing from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor in 2003 and full Professor in 2016. He chaired the History Department from September 2016 through August 2023 and currently serves as Interim Chair of the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies for 2025-26. In addition, Ogilvie held positions as Graduate Program Director (2007-2010), Director of the UMass Oxford Summer Seminar (2009-2012), Associate Chair and Scheduling Officer (2015-2016), and Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Initiative in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts (2010-2014). He earned his B.A. in History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine (1990, with honors), M.A. (1992), and Ph.D. (1997, with honors) from the University of Chicago. He studied at Cambridge University as a member of Trinity College and held a Predoctoral Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (1995-1996).

Ogilvie's scholarship centers on the history of science and ideas in early modern Europe, c. 1450-1800, with a focus on natural history, biodiversity, ecology, insects, and invertebrates, as well as the history of scholarship, witchcraft, and religion. He authored The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2006; paperback 2008; Simplified Chinese translation, Peking University Press, 2021), which received an Honorable Mention in the History of Science category from the Association of American Publishers (2006) and was shortlisted for the Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society (2007). Key publications include “Visions of ancient natural history” in Worlds of Natural History (Cambridge University Press, 2018), “Maxima in minimis animalibus: Insects in natural theology and physico-theology” in Physico-theology: Religion and Science in Europe, 1650-1750 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), and “Willughby on insects” in Virtuoso by Nature (Brill, 2016). His current projects are Nature's Bible: Insects in European Art, Science, and Religion from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and a cultural history of butterflies. Ogilvie has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2004-05), Institut d’Études Avancées de Paris (2012), Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall (2004-05), and Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (2003, 1995-96). He chaired the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize Committee of the History of Science Society and co-program chaired its 2016 annual meeting, and has collaborated on international research networks including the Leverhulme Trust project on Francis Willughby.