Benoît Godin (1958–2021)

Abstract

It is with sadness that I must write that Benoît Godin passed away on 5 January 2021. He was a prolific and internationally renowned researcher, known for his original work on the history of measurement statistics in science, technology and innovation; on the history of science and research concepts and models; and on cultures of quantification and metrics. In the last fifteen years of his career, he had turned his attention to the intellectual history of innovation (the idea of innovation and its theology), scrutinizing how the term innovation was used and by which actors, from Greek Antiquity to the present day. In the context of this colossal work, he showed, among other things, that the positive (‘superlative’, he said) connotation of the term is very contemporary, whereas it had rather been used as an anathema throughout history until the late 1960s or early 1970s. After a master’s degree in political science at Laval University in Canada, followed by a doctoral thesis at the SciencePolicy ResearchUnit (SPRU) of theUniversity of Sussex inGreat Britain, defended in 1994, Godin began his career as a Professor at INRS (Institut national de la recherche scientifique, center Urbanisation Culture Société, inMontreal, Canada) in 1993. A creative andprodigious scholar, hewas entirely devoted to research –his only declared hobbieswere listening to baroquemusic and taking longwalkswith his dogs –andpursued that research with the greatest intellectual rigor and honesty. He leaves an impressive contribution to the study of the history of science and innovation, including the history of the perception of science and innovation in economic theory and society. Perhaps out of modesty, he did not consider himself a historian in his own right, although he made landmark contributions to the history of ideas. He has authored numerous publications, including frequent articles in leading STS journals, as well as important monographs. To name a few: Innovation Contested: The Idea of Innovation Over the Centuries (Routledge, 2015); Models of Innovation: The History of an Idea (MIT Press, 2017); Critical Studies of Innovation: Alternative Approaches to the Pro-Innovation Bias (which we co-edited and which was published by Edward Elgar in 2017); The Invention of Technological Innovation. Languages, Discourses and Ideology in Historical Perspective (Edward Elgar, 2019); and his latest book: The Idea of Technological Innovation: A Brief Alternative History (Edward Elgar, 2020). Godin was also heavily involved in the editorial work of a dozen journals. In particular, he was for many years a member of the editorial board of the journal Innovations, Journal of Innovation Economics&Management. Hewas oneof themost committed and activemembers ofMinerva’s editorial board. Benoît Godin loved to bring together researchers fromdifferent backgrounds to embark on intellectual adventures that often aimed to shake up what he considered to be the mainstreamof research. Anunclassifiable researcher, hewas very critical of the field of innovation studies. Moreover, he was relatively distant from STS, even though he published