Ullica Segerstråle


Ullica Christina Olofsdotter Segerstråle is a Finnish sociologist and historian of science who is professor of sociology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Her published nonfiction books include Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond and Nature’s Oracle: The Life and Work of W. D. Hamilton, the latter of which is the first biography of evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton. A Guggenheim Fellow in 2002, she was elected a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2012. She is also a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. She holds two M.S. degrees – one in organic chemistry and one in sociology – from the University of Helsinki, as well as an M.A. in communication from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University. Her Ph.D. thesis described the sociobiology controversy of the 1970s, and it subsequently formed the basis of an article published in the first issue of Biology & Philosophy in 1986.

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