Research Interests
Studies the history, philosophy and social study of the twentieth
century biological sciences, especially evolutionary biology, systematics,
ecology and genetics. She also studies the history of the botanical sciences
in America.
Much of my research concentrates on gaining a better understanding of
the “evolutionary synthesis” which saw the establishment of the
modern synthetic theory of evolution. I am presently completing a book-length
project that is a biography of the botanical architect of the evolutionary
synthesis G. Ledyard Stebbins as well as a centennial history of the Botanical Society of America.
Representative Publications
Smocovitis, V. B. "The 1959 Darwin Centennial Celebration in America.” Clark Elliott and Pnina Abir-Am eds. Commemorations of Scientific Grandeur.
Osiris, 14 (1999): 274-323.
Smocovitis, V.B. "'It Ain't Over 'til its' Over': Rethinking the Darwinian Revolution," Journal of the History of Biology 38 (2005): 33-49.
Smocovitis, V. B. “The Unifying Vision: Julian Huxley, The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Humanism.” Geert Somsen and Harmke Kamminga, eds.
Pursuing the Unity of Science: Ideology and Scientific Practice Between the Great War and the Cold War. Ashgate Press, 2009.
Smocovitis, V. B. “Ernst Mayr (1904-2005) Darwin of the Twentieth Century. Defender of the Faith: A Profile of Ernst Mayr (1904-2005),” Biological Theory
2 (2008): 1-4.
Smocovitis, V. B. “Darwin’s Botany in On the Origin of Species,” Michael Ruse and Robert J.Richards. Eds. The Cambridge Companion to Darwin’s “Origin.”
Cambridge University Press, 2008. Chapter 12, pp. 216-237.
Smocovitis, V. B. "Pas de Deux: The Biographer and the Living Biographical Subject." Thomas Sôderqvist, ed. The Poetics of Biography in Science,
Technology and Medicine, Ashgate Press (2007): 207-219.
Smocovitis, V. B. "One Hundred Years of American Botany: A Short History of the Botanical Society of America" American Journal of Botany 93 (2006): 1-
12.
Smocovitis, V. B. "Keeping Up with Dobzhansky: G. L. Stebbins, Plant Evolution and the Evolutionary Synthesis" History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
28 (2006): 11-50.
Books (monograph and co-edited)
Hollowell, Victoria, V. B. Smocovitis, and Eileen Duggan editors, “’The Lady Slipper and I’” by G. Ledyard Stebbins. Missouri Botanical Garden Press,
2007. With an introduction by Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis.
Crawford, D. J. and V. B. Smocovitis, eds. The Scientific Papers of G. Ledyard Stebbins (1929-2000). Koeltz Scientific Books, Vienna, Austria 2004.
Smocovitis, V. B., Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996