Louis Gerdelan is a historian of the early modern world, with a particular focus on the British, Spanish, and French empires. His work joins the history of science with intellectual and environmental history. He is currently writing a monograph that examines how knowledge about disasters (with particular reference to earthquakes, storms, and epidemics) developed in the 17th- and 18th-century Atlantic world as a result of the research practices that scholars began to adopt in this period. At the Science History Institute Gerdelan will be concentrating on uncovering the ways in which chemistry, meteorology, and medicine combined within the context of disaster research.
Gerdelan completed his PhD in History at Harvard University in 2021, and has been the recipient of a number of fellowships, including from the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, the Omohundro Institute, and the North American Conference on British Studies. He has published work in the journals Studi Storici and (forthcoming) the Massachusetts Historical Review.