Profile

Ph.D., Cornell University, 1972

B.A., Syracuse University, 1965

Research Specialties 
  • History of Technology
  • Relations among science, technology and culture
  • History of invention and innovation
  • History of science and technology museums
Projects 

Current Projects:

  • Symposia on innovative cultures, on the evolving role of museums, on the Einstein Year (2005)
  • Preparing book and articles on 20th century "Technocities"

Past Projects:

  • Nobel Voices exhibition, marking 100 years of the Nobel Prize (opened 2001)
  • Science in American Life exhibition (opened 1994)
Awards, Honors, and Special Recognition 

Honoree, 8th Annual A-MAN (African American Male Achievers Network) Recognition Program, UCLA, February 26, 2000.

Professional Affiliations 

Society for the History of Technology

Publications

Inventing for the Environment, co-editor with Joyce Bedi. (Cambridge, Mass..: MIT Press, 2003).

Book of essays resulting from a multidisciplinary conference on the role of invention in mitigating environmental problems.

“Exhibiting Science in Historical Context: the Case of ‘Science in American Life,’” Museum Anthropology, 2003, 26, 1: 37–49.

A cultural study of boundary problems in the development of modern science exhibitions.

“Environmental Planning for National Regeneration: Techno-cities in New Deal America and Nazi Germany,” with Robert Kargon, in Inventing for the Environment (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2003). ed. Arthur Molella and Joyce Bedi, pp. 107–129.
“Science Moderne: Sigfried Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture and Mechanization Takes Command,” Technology and Culture, vol. 43, April 2002, pp.374–389.
Nobel Laureates, Photographed by Peter Badge with Peter Friess and Marc Pachter, (Deutsches Museum Bonn: Bonn). 2001.

Nobel portraits by the German photographer Peter Badge, accompanying the Smithsonian exhibition, Nobel Voices. Includes statements by the laureates and brief essays by various authors.

“Mumford, Lewis,” The History of Science in the United States: An Encyclopedia, ed. Marc Rothenberg (New York: Garland, 2001), pp. 363–364.
"Was uns die Nobelpreisträger sagen: Wie aus Gesprächen eine Ausstellung wurde,” with Peter Friess. Kultur & Technnik, 2001, 4: 18–14.
"Ralph Burmester, Wissenschaft aus erster Hand: 50 Jahre Tagungen der Nobelpreistraeger in Lindau/Bodensee" Co-editor with Wolf Peter Fehlhammer, Peter Friess, and Helmuth Trischler. (Deutsches Museum and Smithsonian Institution, 2000).

A history of the annual meetings of science Nobelists at Lindau, Germany. Prepared to accompany the Nobel Voices exhibition.

“The Electrodynamic World View and the Frontiers of the Scientific Imagination,” Imagination and Sciences, ed. Abdessalam Ben Maissa, Colloquia and Conferences, 2000, no. 90, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, University Mohamed V-Agdal Rabat, pp.37–56.

A study of the creative influences of philosophy on German electrical theory of the 19th century. An exploration of an aspect of the scientific imagination.

Aachener Nobelpreistrager: Physik Im Spannungsfeld Von Wissenschaft Und Gesellschaft Um 1900 (Nobel Prize-Winners From Aachen: Caught In The Conflict Between Science And Society Around 1900) with Peter Friess, Andreas Fickers, Christian Bremen. (Munich: Deutsches Museum), 2000.

Catalog for an exhibition on Nobel Laureates at the University of Aachen, Germany. Considers the effects of National Socialism on German scientists

Research Budgets in an Age of Limits (co-editor, with Klaus-Dirk Henke and Hans-Liudger Dienel) vol. 2 Europaische Schriften zu Staat und Wirtschaft, ed. Klaus-Dirk Henke (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2000).

Collection of articles on effect of declining state budgets on national scientific and research institutions, including the work of museums and other cultural institutions.

“Culture, Technology, and Constructed Memory in Disney’s New Town; Techno-Nostalgia in Historical Perspective,” with Robert Kargon. In Miriam Levin, ed., Cultures of Control (London: Harwood, 2000), pp. 135–150.
“The Modenist Impulse: Culture, Invention and the Environment” Printed text of lecture at Westminster University, London, Wednesday, 5 May 1999.

A study of contradictory tendencies in modernism toward modern science and technology.

“Electromagnetic Induction,” “Perpetual Motion,” in Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society, ed. Rudi Volti, 1999.

Brief articles in the history of electricity and science.

“‘Science in American Life,’ National Identity, and the Science Wars: A Curator’s View,” Curator: The Museum Journal, vol. 42-2, April 1999, pp. 108–116.

A perspective on sponsorship issues in the mounting of a major science exhibition.