Michael Rossi is is a historian of science and medicine at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Capturing Kahanamoku:How a Surfing Legend and a Scientific Obsession Redefined Race and Culture and The Republic of Color: Science, Perception, and the Making of Modern America. His work has appeared in Isis, the London Review of Books, Nature, and Cabinet, among other publications. At the University of Chicago, Rossi is a member of the history department, the Committee on Historical and Conceptual Studies of Science, and the MacLean Center for Medical Ethics