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Alex Wellerstein History of Science, Harvard University |
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Alex Wellerstein
Department of the History of Science
Harvard University
Science Center 371
Cambridge, MA 02138
E-mail: wellerst@fas.harvard.edu
Education
| 2004– | Harvard University Ph.D. candidate, History of Science Dissertation: Knowledge and the Bomb: Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, 1939-2008. Prospectus approved April 2007, projected completion date Spring 2010. Advisors: Peter Galison, Sheila Jasanoff, Mario Biagioli. General examination fields. Fall 2006. History of the modern physical sciences (Peter Galison) Science, politics, and STS (Sheila Jasanoff) Modern biology and society (Sarah Jansen) Modern United States history (Ernest May) |
| 1999–2002 | University of California, Berkeley B.A., High Honors, History (emphasis in History of Science). Bachelor's thesis: Compulsory Sterilization in California, 1909-1950. Advisor: Richard von Mayrhauser. Spring 2002. Honors thesis: Berkeley and the Bomb: Discourse, Nuclear Weapons, and the University of California. Advisor: Cathryn Carson. Fall 2002. |
Research
I am a sixth-year graduate student in the Ph.D. program in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. I will be graduating in Spring 2010 assuming everything goes as planned.
My general research interests are in the history of Cold War technology, and in the history of heredity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A more detailed description of my research projects, talks, and publications can be found here.
My dissertation, Knowledge and the bomb: Nuclear secrecy in the United States, 1939-2008, is a history of attempts to control nuclear technology through the control of knowledge. My work looks at the overall dynamics of secrecy policies as they unfolded over the course of the latter half of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first. For more information, click the link. I will be finishing my dissertation by May 2010. My final year of writing and research is being assisted by a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Early Career Fellowship Program.
For my work on the patenting policies of the Manhattan Project, I was a guest on NPR in March 2008 (story) and I was interviewed on the PBS show "History Detectives" in June 2009 (video).
Teaching
At Harvard I have been a teaching fellow (section leader), a course coordinator ("head teaching fellow"), and an advisor to four undergraduate senior theses. At MIT I have been a grader. I am a two-time recepient of the CUE Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard. I have given three guest undergraduate lectures at Harvard and MIT. Along with general history of science tutorials, my teaching experience has been in the history of modern physics and the history of biology.
Other work
I have worked, both inside and outside of the university setting, as a web developer, graphic designer, and database programmer, for some ten years now. As a graduate student I have been a research assistant for a half-dozen professors at three different universities (Harvard, UC Berkeley, and MIT). For the academic year of 2007-2008, I was the Edward Teller Graduate Fellow in Science and Security Studies for the Office of History and Heritage Resources at the U.S. Department of Energy, working to help develop their historical resources on the web. I was also a researcher for the documentary film Secrecy by Peter Galison and Robb Moss, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008.
Hobbies, etc.
I also have a rather large postcard collection of California state mental hospitals that accounts for a significant percentage of my server traffic. I started collecting these some time back as part of my work on the history of forced sterilization in California in the early-twentieth century.
I have also created a little site to showcase interesting nuclear images that I have collected over the course of my research. Above all I try to have fun with what I do.
Personal
I am originally from Stockton, California, though before moving to Massachusetts I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for a number of years. I am married to Ellen Bales, who recently graduated with a Ph.D. in the History of Science at UC Berkeley. Ellen's work is on the history of risk assessment in the twentieth century, looking at radon as a health threat in the contexts of both early Cold War uranium mining and the late- old War suburban household. Ellen and I have a wonderful yellow dog (Shelley) and live in an adorable house in the city of Medford, Massachusetts. My father is a public defender and my mother not long ago retired from California Department of Justice. My sister recently graduated from UC Irvine. (She is also the one who took the photo at the top of this page.)
This site
The flashing images used at the top of this page and on the home page have all been taken from various research projects of mine. For more information about the design of this site itself, click here.
Last updated June 2009.