Professor Dr Michael D. Gordin
- Section History of Science and Medicine
- Location Princeton, United States
- Election year 2019
Research
Research priorities: History of Modern Science, Russian History, Scientific Communication, Nuclear History
Michael D. Gordin is an American science historian and slavicist. He studies the history of modern science, with an emphasis on the institutions and infrastructure that lie beneath the production of knowledge. Most of his work falls in three categories, which together emphasize the importance of studying phenomena on the edges of major developments in order to illuminate what is typically taken as the mainstream.
First, he has published three books and many articles that explore the unique development of modern science within Slavic-dominated spaces, ranging from Prague to Vladivostok, but concentrating on European Russia. In conventional accounts of the history of science, the Russian case is either ignored (with partial exceptions like D. I. Mendeleev and his periodic system of chemical elements) or treated as pathological (as in the case of T. D. Lysenko’s campaign against Mendelian genetics). When analyzed transnationally, these cases help illuminate general characteristics that are shared with “Western” science.
Second, he continues to research scientific communication, particularly the effects of language choice on the development of science. As he has documented in Scientific Babel (2015), the striking dominance of global English in communication in the natural sciences is a recent phenomenon, and represents a transformation in the underlying organization of global knowledge-production. He also maintains an interest in the history of constructed languages (Plansprachen).
Finally, he works on the boundary debates between what counts as science and what as pseudoscience, as rational and irrational, and how these arguments trace the boundaries of sociological communities within the sciences.
Michael D. Gordin is an American science historian and slavicist. He studies the history of modern science, with an emphasis on the institutions and infrastructure that lie beneath the production of knowledge. Most of his work falls in three categories, which together emphasize the importance of studying phenomena on the edges of major developments in order to illuminate what is typically taken as the mainstream.
First, he has published three books and many articles that explore the unique development of modern science within Slavic-dominated spaces, ranging from Prague to Vladivostok, but concentrating on European Russia. In conventional accounts of the history of science, the Russian case is either ignored (with partial exceptions like D. I. Mendeleev and his periodic system of chemical elements) or treated as pathological (as in the case of T. D. Lysenko’s campaign against Mendelian genetics). When analyzed transnationally, these cases help illuminate general characteristics that are shared with “Western” science.
Second, he continues to research scientific communication, particularly the effects of language choice on the development of science. As he has documented in Scientific Babel (2015), the striking dominance of global English in communication in the natural sciences is a recent phenomenon, and represents a transformation in the underlying organization of global knowledge-production. He also maintains an interest in the history of constructed languages (Plansprachen).
Finally, he works on the boundary debates between what counts as science and what as pseudoscience, as rational and irrational, and how these arguments trace the boundaries of sociological communities within the sciences.
Career
- since 2013 Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
- 2009-2013 Professor of the history of science, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
- 2007-2009 Professor of the history of science, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
- 2007-2008 Visiting scientist, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), Berlin, Germany
- 2003-2007 Assistant professor of the history of science, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
- 2001-2005 Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
- 1992-2001 Study and PhD in history, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Functions
- since 2018 Member, Scientific Advisory board, NTM Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
- since 2017 Member, Editorial Advisory Board, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
- since 2017 Director, Society o Fellows in the Liberal Arts, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
- 2014-2019 Chair, Editorial Advisory Board, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
- 2013-2017 Member, Publications Committee, History of Science Society, Notre Dame, USA
- 2012-2013 Founding Director, Fung Global Fellows Program, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
- since 2009 Member, Editorial Advisory Board, Metascience
- 2008-2013 Member, Board of Directors, Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science (PACHS), Philadelphia, USA
Projects
- 2019-2020 Project “The Perestroika of Global Science”, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (The Wilson Center), Washington D.C., USA
Honours and Memberships
- 2020 The Derek Price and Rod Webster Prize, History of Science Society, Notre Dame, USA
- since 2019 Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Germany
- 2019-2020 Research Fellow, Kennan Institute, The Wilson Center, Washington D.C., USA
- 2015-2016 Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- 2011 Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, New York City, USA
- 2011 Graduate Mentoring Award, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
- 2007 Roy G. Neville Prize, Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, USA
- 2002 Basic Prize in the History of Science, History of Science Society, Notre Dame, USA