David Kaiser

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 (MIT), head of its Science, Technology, and Society program, and a full professor in the department of physics.[1]

For other people named David Kaiser, see David Kaiser (disambiguation).

David Kaiser
Nationality	American
Education	AB (physics) Dartmouth College, 1993 PhD (physics) Harvard University, 1997 PhD (history of science) Harvard University, 2000
Occupation	Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Website	MIT faculty page

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).[2] He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2010.[1] In March 2012 he was awarded the MacVicar fellowship, a prestigious MIT undergraduate teaching award.[3]

Education

Kaiser completed his AB in physics at Dartmouth College in 1993. He obtained two PhDs from Harvard University. 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."[1]

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, ISBN 0393076369.
• with W. Patrick McCray: (2016). (eds.) Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture. University of Chicago Press.
• (Forthcoming). American Physics and the Cold War Bubble. University of Chicago Press.

External Links

• Interview with David Kaiser  by Stephen McKiernan, Binghamton University Libraries Center for the Study of the 1960s, February 9, 2010

References

1. Kaiser CV, MIT, accessed March 12, 2013; "Short biography", MIT, accessed April 26, 2011.
2. Hugh Gusterson, "Physics: Quantum outsiders", Nature, 476, 278–279, August 18, 2011.
   George Johnson, "What Physics Owes the Counterculture", The New York Times, June 17, 2011.
3. Jesse Kirkpatrick, "Four MacVicar Recipients", The Tech, 132(13).

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.