David Kaiser

For the historian and professor at the Naval War College, see David E. Kaiser.

David Kaiser is an American physicist and historian of science. He is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and department head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's program in Science, Technology, and Society. He is also a senior lecturer in the Department of Physics.^[1][2]

He 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). He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, in 2010.^[1]

Kaiser completed his AB in physics at Dartmouth College (1993), and obtained two PhDs from Harvard University, one in physics (1997) and one in the history of science (2000).^[1]

Works

• Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics. University of Chicago Press. 2005. ISBN 9780226422671. http://books.google.com/books?id=_wz9JZvBt78C&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22David+Kaiser%22#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• (ed.) Pedagogy and the Practice of Science: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. MIT Press. 2005. ISBN 9780262112888. http://books.google.com/books?id=qqqQ8pTdxfEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=David+Kaiser#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• (ed.) Becoming MIT: Moments of Decision. MIT Press, 2010. ISBN 9780262113236
• How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival. W. W. Norton. 2011. ISBN 9780393076363. http://books.google.com/books?id=i59PHb9XhJcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=How+the+Hippies+Saved+Physics:+Science,+Counterculture+and+the+Quantum+Revival.#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• American Physics and the Cold War Bubble. University of Chicago Press, forthcoming.
• "Short Cuts", The London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 16 · 25 August 2011

Reviews

• Todd Wilkinson (July 19, 2011). "How the Hippies Saved Physics, by David Kaiser". The Christian Science Monitor. http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2011/0719/How-the-Hippies-Saved-Physics-by-David-Kaiser. 
• Wisnioski, Matthew. "Let's Be Fysiksists Again", Science, vol 332, issue 6037, 24 June 2011.
• Johnson, George. "What Physics Owes the Counterculture", The New York Times, June 17, 2011.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c} Kaiser, David. "Lecture: How the Hippies Saved Physics", WGBH PBS, April 28, 2010; qualifications discussed at the start of the lecture.
   • "Short biography", MIT, accessed April 26, 2011.
2. ^ Faculty website, MIT, accessed April 26, 2011.

Further reading

• "How the Hippies Saved Physics (Excerpt)", Scientific American, June 27, 2011.
• Gusterson, Hugh. "Physics: Quantum outsiders", Nature, 476, 278–279, August 18, 2011.
• Kaiser, David. "Lecture: How the Hippies Saved Physics", WGBH PBS, April 28, 2010.