Writer, Editor, Historian
A crisis is good for one thing only, and that’s shattering unhelpful assumptions. As a historian of science as it is practiced in the United States, I thought I already understood that U.S. exceptionalism was a lie, especially when it came to science. My second book, Freedom’s Laboratory, worked out
In 1939, the British crystallographer J. D. Bernal published a remarkable book, The Social Function of Science. With its thorough accounting of scientific institutions, research salaries, career trajectories, educational systems, and national priorities, the book is a landmark publication in the sociology of science. At the time, though, Bernal’s book
Seventy-five years ago this week, the United States became the first, and so far, only, country to use atomic weapons during wartime. The heat, fires, and radiation released by these devastating weapons killed somewhere between 110,000 and 210,000 people, almost all civilians, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The exact total is
If you are not a U.S. historian, you might have missed the spectacle of one of the discipline’s major learned societies making an ass of itself last Friday. People who know the Society for the History of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) better than I do can comment more authoritatively
The logo for this newsletter is a cartoon of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In the early to mid-twentieth century, geneticists used D. melanogaster’s rapid life cycle and tendency to mutate to flesh out their theories of inheritance. The young biologists in T. H. Morgan’s Columbia University fly room spent
I’ve paused writing this week to retry some once-familiar experiences, like “seeing friends,” “having fun,” and “reading for pleasure.” In lieu of my own content, then, this week I’m directing you to a fantastic virtual event put together by the fine folks at the British Society for the History of
Around 4 a.m. on June 21, 2019, I awoke to a loud and insistent series of booms. My bedroom, which faces northwest, filled with a strange yellow light. After briefly wondering whether the nuclear apocalypse had finally arrived, I convinced myself it was yet another in that week’s string of
Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 10, scholars and scientists across the country are stopping their academic work for a #Strike4BlackLives. The strike is envisioned a global day of action for white and non-Black people of color, and a day of rest for Black people, who—on top of their grief—have been deluged with
Today’s newsletter is not about science. It’s about abolition. I hope you’ll keep reading. At some point over the weekend, the protests sparking up across the United States stopped being about justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, or any of the hundreds of other individual Black people killed by police.