The setting was Allesandra Volta s home town, Como, Italy, and the occasion also served to celebrate the bicentennary of his invention of the battery. HSS members may recall overlapping with this same group in Minneapolis in 1995. Last fall they would have seen such familiar faces as John Heilbron, Roger Stuewer, Dick Burian and James Rutherford, among others. As exemplified in AAAS s Project 2061, science education reform in the past decade has highlighted the importance of history of science in developing student understanding of the nature of science as a process and as an institution in society.
Historians have an important role and potential employment here.
Several junior HSS members have found such positions in recent years. The 1999 Como meeting underscored some of the challenges involved in integrating history into science teaching. Heilbron, in a plenary presentation, emphasized the need to distinguish teaching history of science in history contexts from teaching history of science in science contexts. It is an important distinction for historians to bear in mind. In science classes, the history, while indispensable, becomes background.