While not quite one of the founders of the discipline of the History of Science, I. Bernard Cohen was one of the key figures in elevating it to the ranks of scholarship.

I was privileged to have taken a course with Bernard on "scientific revolutions" at the Harvard Extension School, taught some years after his formal retirement. Bernard as a teacher drew upon a incredible wealth of knowledge, able always to find an interesting and salient anecdote from the lives he was discussing in order to offer his students something less dry than a date or a place upon which to hang the elements of the argument being constructed. Newton in particular seemed like a close friend of Bernard's, like someone who had just nipped off to the grocery and would be back in a minute, but let me tell you this amusing story of the time we . . .

I was even more privileged to have known Bernard as I was growing up. I have heard many stories of his aloofness and his aristocratic eccentricity, but the man I knew never once took a six, nine, or fourteen year-old with anything less than the utmost seriousness. I strive to emulate him in this characteristic and I strive to pass on the generosity he never failed to show me.