Unclaimed
Helga Nowotny
History & Commentary
Austrian sociologist and professor emeritus at ETH Zurich, known for leadership on academic and public-policy boards and scholarship in social studies of science and technology.
Biography
Helga Nowotny (born 9 August 1937) is an Austrian sociologist and professor emeritus of Social Studies of Science at ETH Zurich. She has held numerous leadership roles on academic boards and public-policy councils and is described as an influential European scholar in science studies. Nowotny has authored many publications in the social studies of science and technology.
Her work examines the relationship between scientific curiosity, innovation and society, highlighting how autonomy in scientific inquiry coexists with societal demands for deliverables and risk management. She writes about uncertainty arising from an oversupply of knowledge and frames ambivalence toward technology as a legacy and positive cultural resource of modernity. Her scholarship combines institutional leadership with theoretical contributions to understanding science–society interactions.
Wikipedia contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Excerpt, formatting adapted
Books by Helga Nowotny
Insatiable curiosity
Insatiable Curiosity argues that scientific curiosity drives science and requires autonomy, while innovation tames that curiosity to produce deliverables responsive to societal needs. Nowotny contends that uncertainty arises from an oversupply of knowledge and that accepting modernity's ambivalence offers a way beyond utopian and dystopian polarities.