Michael Dan Gordin (born November 3, 1974) is an American science historian and

Slavist Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic peoples, Slavic areas, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Sla ...

. Born in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, Gordin studied at

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 ...

with a bachelor's degree in 1996 and a doctorate in 2001. From 2003 he was at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, where he is now a professor. He has done research on the early development of the natural sciences in Russia in the 18th century, biological warfare in the Soviet Union, the relationship of Russian literature to the natural sciences,

Lysenkoism Lysenkoism (russian: Лысенковщина, Lysenkovshchina, ; uk, лисенківщина, lysenkivščyna, ) was a political campaign led by Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko against genetics and science-based agriculture in the mid-20th cen ...

Immanuel Velikovsky Immanuel Velikovsky (; rus, Иммануи́л Велико́вский, p=ɪmənʊˈil vʲɪlʲɪˈkofskʲɪj; 17 November 1979) was a Jewish, Russian-American psychoanalyst, writer, and catastrophist. He is the author of several books offering ...

and pseudosciences, the early history of the

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

s and the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

in Prague, history of global scientific languages, and the life of

Dmitri Mendeleyev Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (sometimes transliterated as Mendeleyev or Mendeleef) ( ; russian: links=no, Дмитрий Иванович Менделеев, tr. , ; 8 February Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S._27_January.html" ;"title="O ...

and the history of the

periodic table The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the (chemical) elements, is a rows and columns arrangement of the chemical elements. It is widely used in chemistry, physics, and other sciences, and is generally seen as an icon of ch ...

. In 2019 he became a member of the

German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded ...

Selected publications

*A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table, Basic Books 2004, 2nd edition, Princeton University Press 2018 *Five days in August : how World War II became a nuclear war, Princeton U. Press 2007 * Red cloud at dawn : Truman, Stalin, and the end of the atomic monopoly, Farrar, Straus, Giroux 2009
The textbook case of a priority dispute : D. I. Mendeleev, Lothar Meyer, and the periodic system
in: Jessica Riskin, Mario Biagioli (eds.), Nature engaged, Palgrave Macmillan 2012, pp. 59–82 *How Lysenkoism became pseudoscience : Dobzhansky to Velikovsky, Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 45, 2012, pp. 443–468 *with Paul Erickson, Judy Klein, Lorraine Daston, Rebecca Lemov, Thomas Sturm: How reason almost lost its mind : the strange career of Cold War rationality, University of Chicago Press 2013 * Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. *The Pseudoscience Wars:

and the Birth of the Modern Fringe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. *as editor with Peter Galison, David Kaiser: Routledge History of the Modern Physical Sciences, 4 vols., Routledge 2001 *as editor with Karl Hall, Alexei Kojenikov: Intelligentsia Science: The Russian Century, 1860–1960, 2008 *as editor with Helen Tilley, Gyan Prakash: Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility, Princeton, 2010 * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gordin, Michael D. 1974 births Living people Harvard University alumni Princeton University faculty American historians of science 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers 21st-century American historians Members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina 20th-century American male writers