Ilana Löwy

Ilana Löwy (née Zelmanowicz), born in 1948 in Łódź, Poland, is a historian of biomedical sciences and a feminist. She works as a research director at an interdisciplinary and cross-institutional research unit CERMES-3 (Centre de recherche médecine, sciences, santé, santé mentale, société, Inserm-CNRS-EHESS), and is associated with the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King's College London, the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro. Born in a Jewish family in Poland, her parents decided to leave for Israel in 1957. She gained her Msc in microbiology and biochemistry from Tel Aviv University in 1971, and her PhD (Doctorat D'Etat es Sciences) from Paris VII University in 1977. At the beginning of her career, Ilana Löwy worked at the Institut Pasteur at the Cellular immunity lab. Her interest in the history of science initially evolved around the history of organ transplantation, bacteriology, immunology, virology and tropical medicine. With an increasing interest in human reproduction and cancer, her work covers an extensive study of biomedical analysis and gender studies. She has extensively published on Ludwik Fleck, Polish historian and philosopher of medicine. Her current (2017) research focuses on prenatal diagnosis, genetics and congenital disorders. The Polish School of Philosophy of Medicine: From Tytus Chalubinski (1820–1889) to Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publications (Philosophy of Medicine Series),1990. Between Bench and Bedside: Science, Healing and Interleukin-2 in a Cancer Ward, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996 (French translation, Cancer des chercheurs, cancer des cliniciens: Trajectoire d'une innovation thérapeutique, Archives d’Historie Contemporaine, 2002) . Medical Acts and Medical Facts: The Polish Tradition of Practice Grounded Reflections on Medicine and Science, (in English), Krakow: Polish Academy of Sciences, 2000.