Rate My Professor Sigrid Schmalzer

Sigrid Schmalzer is Professor of History in the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned her Ph.D. in History and Science Studies from the University of California, San Diego in 2004. Schmalzer's research specializes in the social, cultural, and political aspects of the history of science in modern China, encompassing topics such as scientific farming, popular science, agricultural technologies, and mass science during the socialist era. Her work also extends to the transnational history of science activism, including the Science for the People movement.

Schmalzer has authored key monographs including The People's Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China (University of Chicago Press, 2008), which received the 2009 Allan Sharlin Award from the Social Science History Association; Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China (University of Chicago Press, 2016), winner of the 2018 Joseph Levenson Post-1900 Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies; and the children's picture book Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean: Remembering Chinese Scientist Pu Zhelong (Tilbury House, 2018), which garnered the 2018 Freeman Book Award for children's literature on East and Southeast Asia, the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award in the children’s category, and recognition as a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People 2019 by the National Council for the Social Studies and the Children’s Book Council. She co-edited Science for the People: Documents from America’s Movement of Radical Scientists, 1969-1989 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2018) and Visualizing Modern China: Image, History, and Memory, 1750-Present (Lexington Books, 2015). Schmalzer serves as editor of the University of Massachusetts Press series Activist Studies of Science and Technology. She organized the 2014 conference "Science for the People: The 1970s and Today" at UMass Amherst, contributing to the movement's revitalization, and holds leadership positions in the Massachusetts Society of Professors, including Co-President. Her scholarship bridges academic history with public engagement through webinars, opinion pieces, and activist initiatives, influencing discussions on science, agriculture, and politics in Chinese and global contexts.