David I. Kaiser is an American physicist and historian of science. He is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(MIT), head of its Science, Technology, and Society program, and a full professor in the department of physics.
Kaiser is the author or editor of several books on the history of science, including ''Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics'' (2005), and ''How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival'' (2011). He was elected a Fellow of the
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...
in 2010.
[ In March 2012 he was awarded the MacVicar fellowship, a prestigious MIT undergraduate teaching award.][Jesse Kirkpatrick]
"Four MacVicar Recipients"
''The Tech'', 132(13).
Education
Kaiser completed his AB in physics at Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
in 1993. He obtained two PhDs from 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 higher le ...
. The first was in physics in 1997 for a thesis entitled "Post-Inflation Reheating in an Expanding Universe," the second in the history of science in 2000 for a thesis on "Making Theory: Producing Physics and Physicists in Postwar America."[Kaiser CV]
MIT, accessed March 12, 2013
MIT, accessed April 26, 2011.
Books
*(2005). ''Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics''. University of Chicago Press.
*(2005). (ed.) ''Pedagogy and the Practice of Science: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives''. MIT Press.
*(2010). (ed.
''Becoming MIT: Moments of Decision''
MIT Press.
*(2011)
''How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival''
W. W. Norton, .
*with W. Patrick McCray
W. Patrick McCray (born 1967) is a historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He researches, writes about, and teaches the history of science and the history of technology.
Life
McCray grew up in rural southwestern Pennsylvania a ...
: (2016). (eds.
''Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture''
University of Chicago Press.
*(Forthcoming)
University of Chicago Press.
References
External links
with David Kaiser
by Stephen McKiernan, Binghamton University Libraries Center for the Study of the 1960s, February 9, 2010
Further reading
Faculty website
MIT, accessed April 26, 2011.
*Kelly, Cynthia C
Video interview with David Kaiser
Voices of the Manhattan Project, 2014.
*Kaiser, David
"Lecture: How the Hippies Saved Physics"
WGBH PBS, April 28, 2010.
*Kaiser, David
"Short Cuts"
''The London Review of Books'', 33(16), August 25, 2011.
*Wilkinson, Todd
"''How the Hippies Saved Physics'', by David Kaiser"
''The Christian Science Monitor'', July 19, 2011.
*Wisnioski, Matthew
"Let's Be Fysiksists Again"
''Science'', 332 (6037), June 24, 2011.
Living people
21st-century American physicists
American historians of science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Dartmouth College alumni
Harvard University alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)
MIT Center for Theoretical Physics faculty
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