Barbara J. Becker

Barbara J. Becker received her PhD in history of science from The Johns Hopkins University. Until her retirement, she taught history of science at the University of California, Irvine.

Her research interests include the role of the amateur in the development of nineteenth century professional astronomy, the redefining of disciplinary boundaries in the face of new knowledge and new practice, and the role of controversy in shaping the substance and structure of scientific knowledge.

Her book, Unravelling Starlight: William and Margaret Huggins and the Rise of the New Astronomy (Cambridge: CUP, 2011), is the first scholarly biography of English amateur astronomer, William Huggins (1824-1910). It has been selected by the History of Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society to receive the biennial Donald E. Osterbrock Book Prize for 2015.

She is the editor of Selected Correspondence of William Huggins, (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014), a two volume reference work that makes her annotated transcriptions of over a thousand previously unpublished letters related to Huggins's life and career readily accessible to scholars for the first time.