His most influential works were the Introduction to the History of Science, which consists of three volumes and 4,296 pages, and the journal Isis.

Shortly after his graduation, on June 22, 1911, Sarton married Elanor Mabel Elwes, an artist and distinguished furniture designer.

Nevertheless, when the invasion occurred, he reported in and was assigned to patrol the nearby railroad intersection, but encountered no German soldiers that night.

In England, Sarton worked in the War Office, but he was unable to support a family of three on his salary.

He left for the United States in search of a position that would enable him to support his family and allow him to complete his dream of writing the History of Science.

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.

[6] His other two students, Louise Diehl Patterson and Helen L. Thomas, finished their PhDs at Harvard under Cohen.

[4] During the preparation of the second volume, he learned Arabic and traveled around the Middle East for part of his research, inspecting original manuscripts of Islamic scientists.

[9] Sarton began working with the school of Spanish Arabists in 1928, then led by Julian Ribera y Tarrago and Miguel Asin Palacios.

Sarton also was interested and wrote articles on Ribera's research on the transition of Eastern music to the West.

Sarton had been inspired for his project by his study of Leonardo da Vinci, but he had not reached this period in history before dying.

"[4] After his death (March 22, 1956, Cambridge, Massachusetts), a representative selection of Sarton's papers was edited by Dorothy Stimson.