Jed Zachary Buchwald is Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

. He was previously director of the

Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology The Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology (1992–2006) was a research institute established at MIT, and housed in a renovated building (E56) on campus at 38 Memorial Drive, overlooking the Charles River.Charles H. BallMIT to ...

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

. He won a

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and colloquially called the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to typically between 20 and ...

in 1995 and was elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

in 2011.

Education

Buchwald graduated from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

with a Ph.D. in 1974, under supervision of . His dissertation was entitled ''Matter, the Medium, and the Electrical Current: A History of Electricity and Magnetism from 1842 to 1895''.

Works

Buchwald's publications include several full books and edited history-of-science essay collections: * 1985 – ''From Maxwell to Microphysics: Aspects of Electromagnetic Theory in the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century'' * 1989 – ''The Rise of the Wave Theory of Light: Optical Theory and Experiment in the Early Nineteenth Century'' * 1993 – ''Einstein Papers Project'' Vol. 3 (one of nine contributing editors) * 1994 – ''The Creation of Scientific Effects: Heinrich Hertz and electric waves'' * 1995 – ''Scientific Practice: Theories and Stories of Doing Physics'' (editor) * 1996 – ''Scientific Credibility and Technical Standards in 19th and Early 20th Century Germany and Britain'' (editor) * 2000 – ''Isaac Newton's Natural Philosophy'' (editor, with

I. Bernard Cohen I. Bernard Cohen (1 March 1914 – 20 June 2003) was an American historian of science. He taught at Harvard University for 60 years, 1942–2002, becoming the first chair of its Department of the History of Science when it was established in 19 ...

) * 2001 – ''Histories of the Electron: The Birth of Microphysics'' (editor, with Andrew Warwick) * 2005 – ''Wrong for the Right Reasons'' (editor, with Allan Franklin) * 2010 – ''The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy Over an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate Over Religion and Science'' (with Diane Greco Josefowicz) * 2012 – ''Newton and the Origin of Civilization'' (with Mordechai Feingold) * 2020 – ''The Riddle of the Rosetta: How an English Polymath and a French Polyglot Discovered the Meaning of Egyptian Hieroglyphs'' (with Diane Greco Josefowicz) Buchwald is also the general editor of the book series ''Dibner Institute Studies in the History of Science and Technology'' and of the book series ''Archimedes: New Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology'', as well as managing editor of the book series ''Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and the Physical Sciences''. Buchwald, together with

Jeremy Gray Jeremy John Gray (born 25 April 1947) is an English mathematician primarily interested in the history of mathematics. Biography Gray studied mathematics at the University of Oxford from 1966 to 1969, and then at Warwick University, obtaining h ...

, serves as editor-in-chief of the Springer journal ''

Archive for History of Exact Sciences ''Archive for History of Exact Sciences'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal currently published bimonthly by Springer Science+Business Media, covering the history of mathematics and of astronomy observations and techniques, epistemology of scien ...

''.

Personal life

Buchwald's wife Diana L. Kormos-Buchwald is the Robert M. Abbey Professor of History and the director of the

Einstein Papers Project The Einstein Papers Project (EPP) produces the historical edition of the writings and correspondence of Albert Einstein. The EPP collects, transcribes, translates, annotates, and publishes materials from Einstein's literary estate and a multitude ...

at Caltech.

References

External links

Buchwald's home page
at Caltech's Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences
Oral history interview transcript for Jed Buchwald on 29 July 2020, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives

Newton's Dark Secrets
''NOVA'' show on which Buchwald is one of the historians discussing Newton's life and work American historians of science Harvard University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Buchwald, Jed Z. Buchwald, Jed Z. California Institute of Technology faculty MacArthur Fellows Place of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers Members of the American Philosophical Society {{US-sci-historian-stub