Cathryn Leigh Carson is a

historian of science The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal. Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopo ...

, known for her biography of

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent serie ...

. She holds the Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

Education and career

Carson earned a bachelor's degree in history and philosophy of science in 1990 from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

. She moved to

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

for graduate study, and completed her doctorate there in 1995. Her dissertation was ''Particle physics and cultural politics : Werner Heisenberg and the shaping of a role for the physicist in postwar West Germany''. She joined the Berkeley history department in 1996. Carson was editor-in-chief of the journal '' Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences'' from 2008 to 2013.

Book

Carson is the author of a biography of

, ''Heisenberg in the Atomic Age: Science and the Public Sphere'' (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Recognition

In 2014, Carson was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was given the Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science in 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carson, Cathryn Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American historians of science American women historians University of Chicago alumni Harvard University alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Historians from California 20th-century American historians Fellows of the American Physical Society 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American women writers