L. Pearce Williams

Who is L. Pearce Williams?

Leslie Pearce Williams is the emeritus John Stambaugh Professor of the History of Science at Cornell University's Department of History. He was one of the founders in the mid-1980s of Cornell's program in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, which later became part of the Department of Science & Technology Studies. Besides publishing a number of books, he has written three Encyclopædia Britannica articles. His birth name is Leslie Greenberg. He is the brother of Charles Williams, the long-time business manager of the Cornell Alumni News.

He graduated from Cornell in 1948.

Williams was an outspoken conservative during the campus unrest era of the 1960s. He was a leading advocate of maintaining ROTC on the Cornell campus, of compulsory physical education, and of removing Dale Corson as Cornell President because of an alleged decline in academic standards.

Williams along with E. A. Burtt and twenty-three other Cornell University professors was a volunteer faculty member of Ithaca Neighborhood College.