Alison Winter

Born on 19 November 1965 in New Haven, Connecticut,[1] Winter spent her early childhood in Bonn, Germany, and attended high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her father taught mathematics at the University of Michigan.[2] His influence led her to study the history of science at the University of Chicago beginning in 1983.[3] Winter moved to the United Kingdom for graduate study, where she met Adrian Johns in 1987. The two married in 1992.[4] Winter completed her M. Phil at the University of Cambridge in 1991, followed by a PhD in 1993.[5] She began teaching at the California Institute of Technology in 1994, and returned to Chicago as a faculty member in 2001.[6]

Winter's doctoral dissertation was published by the University of Chicago Press as the book Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain in 1998. The work covered the early history of animal magnetism and Franz Mesmer,[7] as well as its spread throughout England from the 1830s to the 1870s,[8] and focused on the work of John Elliotson.[9] Research for Winter's second book Memory: Fragments of a Modern History was funded by the Guggenheim Fellowship, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and National Science Foundation.[3] Memory was written in eleven chapters that can be read separately,[10][11] as each chapter covers a different topic and several examples relating to memory.[11][12] Alluding to its title,[13][14] Memory sought to help readers "understand the broad historical developments precisely by bringing fragments of memory's history to life."[15] Following its publication by the University of Chicago Press in 2012, Winter received the Gordon J. Laing Award in 2014.[16]

Winter was diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2015,[6] and died of a brain tumor on 22 June 2016, aged 50.[3]