David Kaiser (science historian)

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David Kaiser (born February 14, 1971 ) is an American historian of science . He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Kaiser studied physics at Dartmouth College with a bachelor's degree in 1993 (summa cum laude) and received a PhD in physics from Harvard University in 1997 ( post-inflation reheating in an expanding universe ). In 2000, a dissertation in the history of science followed ( Making Theory: Producing physics and physicists in post-war America ). While working on his dissertation, he was a teaching fellow at Harvard. In 2000 he became Assistant Professor , 2004 Associate Professor and 2011 Professor ( Germeshausen Professor ) of the History of Science at MIT and Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT.

He is best known for his book on theoretical physics in the USA after the Second World War, illustrated by the triumphant advance of the Feynman diagrams , Drawing theories apart . The book received the 2007 Pfizer Award . His book How the hippies saved physics tells how the discussion about the interpretation of quantum mechanics in the context of the esoteric counterculture was revived at the end of the 1960s (at the same time as the important Bell inequality ), but also the further history ( quantum entanglement ). It was voted Book of the Year by Physics World in 2012.

Kaiser is also involved in a research group with Alan Guth on cosmology of the early universe (and the history of general relativity) and the history of US Cold War physics.

He is editor of Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences . In 2010 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . In 2006 he received the Harold E. Edgerton Award from MIT.

Fonts

  • Drawing theories apart: the dispersion of Feynman diagrams in postwar physics, University of Chicago Press 2004, pp. 879-922
  • with Kenji Ito, Karl Hall Spreading the tools of theory: Feynman diagrams in the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union , Social studies of Science, Volume 34, 2005
  • Nuclear democracy: political engagement, pedagogial reform and particle physics in postwar America , Isis, Volume 93, 2002, pp. 229–268
  • How the hippies saved physics: science, counterculture, and the quantum revival, Norton 2011
  • Published in: Becoming MIT: moments of decision, MIT Press 2010
  • with Peter Galison, Michael Gordin (editor): Science and society: the history of modern physical science in the twentieth century, 4 volumes, Routledge 2001
  • Editor: Pedagogy and the practice of science: historical and contemporary perspectives, MIT Press 2005

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He also received the Leroy Apker Award from the American Physical Society for Best Student (Undergraduate Physics)
  2. ↑ For example Guth, Kaiser Inflationary cosmology: exploring the universe from the smallest to the largest scales , Science, Volume 307, 2005, p. 884
  3. ^ For example Kaiser The physics of spin: Sputnik politics and american physicists in the 1950s , Social Research, Volume 73, 2006, p. 1225, Kaiser The atomic secret in red hands? American suspicions of theoretical physicist during the early cold war , Representations, Volume 90, 2005, pp. 28-60, reprinted in Cathryn Carson, David Hollinger (editor) Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial studies and reflections , Berkeley 2005
personal data
SURNAME Kaiser, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian of science
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1971