Early life George Alfred Leon Sarton was born to Léonie Van Halmé and Alfred Sarton on August 31, 1884, in
Ghent, Belgium. However, within a year of his birth, Sarton's mother died. Sarton attended school first in his hometown before later attending school for a period of four years in the town of
Chimay. Sarton enrolled at the
University of Ghent in 1902 to study philosophy, but found that the subject did not correspond with his interests and subsequently ceased his studies. In 1904, after a period of reflection, he re-enrolled in the university to study the natural sciences. During his time at the University of Ghent Sarton received several honors. In 1908, the four Belgian universities gave him a gold medal for chemistry, and the city of Ghent gave him a silver laurel for a memoir he wrote. He graduated with his doctorate in 1911 with a thesis in
celestial mechanics, titled "Les Principes de mécanique de Newton". He worked for the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace and lectured at
Harvard University, 1916–18. While at
Harvard University, Sarton lectured in philosophy in the academic year of 1916–1917, and in history of science in the academic year of 1917–1918. He supervised just two PhD students in Harvard's history of science program to completion, the first such PhDs in America:
Aydin M. Sayili and
I. Bernard Cohen. His other two students, Louise Diehl Patterson and
Helen L. Thomas, finished their PhDs at Harvard under Cohen.
Research travels Sarton intended to complete an exhaustive nine-volume
history of science entitled Introduction to the History of Science. Sarton began working with the school of Spanish Arabists in 1928, then led by
Julian Ribera y Tarrago and
Miguel Asin Palacios. Sarton acknowledged that Julian Ribera was the leading Spanish Arabist. Sarton also was interested and wrote articles on Ribera's research on the transition of Eastern music to the West. Sarton later associated his interest in scientific diffusion with Ribera's interest in the transmission of music because in medieval times, music was commonly associated with mathematics and a part of the
quadrivium. Sarton believed that the Islamic contribution to science was the most "progressive" element in medieval learning and was outraged when Western medieval studies ignored it. ==History of Science Society==