Demythologizing Science: Reijer Hooykaas on Hero Worship as “Undesirable” and “Disdaining”

For historians of science, the question of how to write about ‘heroes’ in science is related to other methodological questions: What is science? What is ‘good’ science and therefore a ‘good’ scientist? What phenomena are worthy of study? What is the relationship between an individual and his or her context? The issue of ‘heroes’ specifically occasioned a watershed between many early twentieth-century historians of science and earlier generations of (lay) historians. Reijer Hooykaas (1906-1994) was among this new generation of historians. I describe and explain the changing ways in which, broadly speaking, twentieth-century historians of science have conceived of ‘heroes’ in science. I use Hooykaas as a looking glass through which to describe the broader historiographical developments.