Rentetzi, Maria | Greece

Fellow at IAS-STS: 2000/2001

Maria Rentetzi studied physics at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece (1986-1990). In 1994 she received an MA in History and Philosophy of Science from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. She expects to complete the requirements for her second MA in Philosophy from Virginia Tech, USA, before December 2000. She is currently working on her PhD at the Science and Technology Studies Department of Virginia Tech, USA. She has also worked as a high school teacher in physics and the history of science. She was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society, Graz in 2000/2001.

Main academic interests: gender and physics, feminist epistemology, the history of science in secondary education.

Project at IAS-STS:  Women physicists and the material culture of physics: Women's participation in the Institute for Radium Research in Vienna and the gendered production of knowledge

During the first half of the 20th century, the work of women physicists was subject to many constraints, stemming from the subject matter, experimental tools, and the male-centred social system of physics. Nonetheless, women conducting research into radioactivity shaped many of the practices, machines and technologies used in radiation physics and related sub-disciplines. The Institute for Radium Research in Vienna included a remarkable number of women in physics and was an important centre of research into radioactivity between 1920 and 1940. The project is a study of how women physicists related to the material culture of physics at the Institute. It also focuses on the paths taken by some of its women physicists in exile through 1950, employing gender as an analytical category of particular importance for the project.

Selected Publications

Rentetzi, Maria. "From Technological Change to Political Technology of the Body: The Case of Radium Dial Painters" submitted to Technology and Culture for review May 2000

Rentetzi, Maria."A Description and an Evaluation of an Experiment: Teaching History of Science in a Private High School and Elementary School" Contemporary Education 98 (1998):45-53.

Rentetzi, Maria. "The Role of Teaching History of Science in High School" Contemporary Education 94(1997):79-82.

Matta, Pandora and Rentetzi, Maria. "Seeking Other Amazons for Our Utopia", For a Green University 2(1991):19-22

Kafka, Maria and Rentetzi, Maria. "Sexism in Science" Katina 5 (1990):24-25

Rentetzi, Maria. "Women and Army" Katina 3 (1988):16-17.