Jed Z. Buchwald is Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

. He was previously director of the

Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology The Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology (1992–2006) was a research institute established at MIT, and housed in a renovated building (E56) on campus at 38 Memorial Drive, overlooking the Charles River.Charles H. BallMIT to ...

MIT 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 m ...

. He won a

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

in 1995 and was elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 2011. Buchwald graduated 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 high ...

with a PhD in 1974. His dissertation was entitled ''Matter, the Medium, and the Electrical Current: A History of Electricity and Magnetism from 1842 to 1895''.

Works

Buchwald's publications include several full books and edited history-of-science essay collections: * 1985 – ''From Maxwell to Microphysics: Aspects of Electromagnetic Theory in the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century'' * 1989 – ''The Rise of the Wave Theory of Light: Optical Theory and Experiment in the Early Nineteenth Century'' * 1993 – ''Einstein Papers Project'' Vol. 3 (one of nine contributing editors) * 1994 – ''The Creation of Scientific Effects: Heinrich Hertz and electric waves'' * 1995 – ''Scientific Practice: Theories and Stories of Doing Physics'' (editor) * 1996 – ''Scientific Credibility and Technical Standards in 19th and Early 20th Century Germany and Britain'' (editor) * 2000 – ''Isaac Newton's Natural Philosophy'' (editor, with

I. Bernard Cohen I. Bernard Cohen (1 March 1914 – 20 June 2003) was the Victor S. Thomas Professor of the history of science at Harvard University and the author of many books on the history of science and, in particular, Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin. C ...

) * 2001 – ''Histories of the Electron: The Birth of Microphysics'' (editor, with Andrew Warwick) * 2005 – ''Wrong for the Right Reasons'' (editor, with Allan Franklin) * 2010 – ''The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy Over an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate Over Religion and Science'' (with Diane Greco Josefowicz) * 2012 – ''Newton and the Origin of Civilization'' (with Mordechai Feingold) * 2020 – ''The Riddle of the Rosetta: How an English Polymath and a French Polyglot Discovered the Meaning of Egyptian Hieroglyphs'' (with Diane Greco Josefowicz) Buchwald is also the general editor of the book series ''Dibner Institute Studies in the History of Science and Technology'' and of the book series ''Archimedes: New Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology'', as well as managing editor of the book series ''Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and the Physical Sciences''. Buchwald, together with

Jeremy Gray Jeremy John Gray (born 25 April 1947) is an English mathematician primarily interested in the history of mathematics. Biography Gray studied mathematics at Oxford University from 1966 to 1969, and then at Warwick University, obtaining his Ph.D ...

, serves as editor-in-chief of the Springer journal ''

Archive for History of Exact Sciences ''Archive for History of Exact Sciences'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal currently published bimonthly by Springer Science+Business Media, covering the history of mathematics and of astronomy observations and techniques, epistemology of scienc ...

''.

Personal life

Buchwald's wife Diana Kormos Buchwald is the director of the

Einstein Papers Project The Einstein Papers Project (EPP) produces the historical edition of the writings and correspondence of Albert Einstein. The EPP collects, transcribes, translates, annotates, and publishes materials from Einstein's literary estate and a multitude ...

at Caltech.

References

External links

Buchwald's home page
at Caltech's Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences
Oral history interview transcript for Jed Buchwald on 29 July 2020, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives

''NOVA'' show on which Buchwald is one of the historians discussing Newton's life and work American historians of science Harvard University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Buchwald, Jed Z. Buchwald, Jed Z. California Institute of Technology faculty MacArthur Fellows Place of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers {{US-sci-historian-stub