Faculty Profile

Professor Hammonds is a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. She is currently chair of the Department of the History of Science and Director of the Project on Race & Gender in Science & Medicine at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard. Professor Hammonds was the first Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Harvard University (2005-2008).  From 2008-2103 she served as Dean of Harvard College.

She holds honorary degrees from Spelman College and Bates College. Professor Hammonds’ areas of research include the histories of science, medicine and public health in the United States; race and gender in science studies; feminist theory and African American history. Her most recent book with Rebecca Herzig is, The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics (2008.)

Professor Hammonds’ current work focuses on the intersection of scientific, medical and socio-political concepts of race in the United States. She is a Fellow of the Association of Women in Science (AWIS). Professor Hammonds earned a Ph.D. in the history of science from Harvard University, an S.M. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a B.E.E. in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a B.S. in physics from Spelman College.

She served on President Barack Obama’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities from 2010-2017 and on the President’s Commission on Excellence in Higher Education for African Americans from 2011-2017.  She was a member of the Committee on Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering (CEOSE), the congressionally mandated oversight committee of the National Science Foundation (2009-2014).  In 2017, Prof. Hammonds was appointed to the Committee on Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine (CWSEM) of the National Academies.

She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Bates College and the board of the Arcus Foundation. Prof. Hammonds was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2018 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.