Obituary: David Charles Gooding (1947–2009)

• Published in: Social studies of science Vol. 40; no. 2; pp. 341 - 343
• Main Author: Gorman, Michael E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England Sage Publications 01-04-2010; SAGE Publications; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Deaths; Gooding, David Charles (1947-2009); Personal profiles; Scholars
• ISSN: 0306-3127; 1460-3659
• DOI: 10.1177/0306312710364086

Gorman presents an obituary for David Charles Gooding, a respected scholar who died from chronic lymphocytic leukemia on Dec 13, 2009. Gooding's research on Faraday led him deep into the fine-grained processes involved in the interplay between visualization, experiments, and instrumentation, described initially in his Experiment and the Making of Meaning. Not satisfied with just studying the notebooks, Gooding replicated many of Faraday's critical experiments so he could understand not only what Faraday had done, but also what other paths his work might have taken. Gooding's work on Faraday culminated in a kind of computational simulation that is still unique today.