De Young has taught in the Core Curriculum at AUC since 1990. A historian by training, his main focus is the way both science and technology interact with the cultural milieu in which they develop. Concentrating on the medieval period, his interest is the kinematics of scientific ideas – how they are transmitted, assimilated, adopted into new cultural and linguistic settings. Thus, he looks to translations, education and textbooks, and encyclopedias for clues to understand the cross-cultural transmission of ideas. His interests extend to gender relations in modern science, as well as science and the arts (both serious or “high” art and cartoons).