Peter Galison

Peter Louis Galison (born May 17, 1955) is an

American historian and philosopher of science. He is Peter Galison
the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor in history of
science and physics at Harvard University.[1]

Biography
Galison received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., in both
physics and history of science, at Harvard
University.[1] His publications include How Galison at the 2007 History of Science Society
Experiments End (1987), Image and Logic: A Material meeting in Washington, D.C.
Culture of Microphysics (1997), and Einstein's Clocks,
Born May 17, 1955
Poincaré's Maps (2003). His most recent book, co-
New York City, U.S.
authored with Lorraine Daston, is titled Objectivity
Occupation(s) Historian, philosopher
(2007).[2]
Academic background
Before moving to Harvard, Galison taught for several
Education Harvard University (BA, MA,
years at Stanford University, where he was professor of
PhD)
history, philosophy, and physics. He is considered a
member of the Stanford School of philosophy of Academic work
science, a group that also includes Ian Hacking, John Discipline Philosophy, history
Dupré, and Nancy Cartwright.[3] Sub-discipline History of science, philosophy
of science
Galison wrote a film for the History Channel on the
Institutions Harvard University
development of the hydrogen bomb,[4] and has done
work on the intersection of science with other Doctoral Alex Wellerstein
disciplines, in particular art (along with Caroline A. students
Jones, his wife) and architecture. He is on the editorial Notable works Image and Logic (1997)
board of Critical Inquiry[5] and was a MacArthur "Einstein's Clocks,
Fellow in 1997.[6][7] For his "outstanding contributions Poincaré's Maps" (2003)
to the history of physics", Galison received the
American Physical Society's Abraham Pais Prize in Objectivity (2007)
2018.[8]

Philosophical work
In Image and Logic, Galison explored the fundamental rift rising in the physical sciences: whether
singular, visual accounts of scientific phenomena would be accepted as the dominant language of proof,
or whether statistically significant, frequently repeated results would dominate the field. This division,
Galison claims, can be seen in the conflicts amongst high-energy physicists investigating new particles,
some of whom offer up statistically significant and frequently replicated analysis of the new particle
passing through electric fields, others of whom offer up a single picture of a particle behaving—in a
single instance—in a way that cannot be explained by the characteristics of existing known particles.[9]
This image/logic distinction has been applied to explore the development of other disciplines—for
example, archaeology.[10]

His work with Lorraine Daston developed the concept of mechanical objectivity which is often used in
scholarly literature, and he has done pioneering work on applying the anthropological notion of trading
zones to scientific practice.[9][11]

Documentary films
Galison has been involved in the production of several documentary films. The first, The Ultimate
Weapon: The H-Bomb Dilemma, was about the political and scientific decisions behind the creation of the
first hydrogen bomb in the United States, and it premiered on the History Channel in 2000.[4] The second,
Secrecy, which Galison directed with Harvard filmmaker Robb Moss, is about the costs and benefits of
government secrecy, and premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.[12] Also from Harvard, Ruth
Lingford worked on the animation for Secrecy. Galison completed his third documentary film
Containment, also directed with Robb Moss, in 2015.[13] It premiered at the 2015 Full Frame
Documentary Film Festival,[14] and has been shown at film festivals around the world including in Brazil,
Switzerland,[13] and Australia. This documentary investigates governments' attempts to contain a hundred
million gallons of deadly radioactive sludge for 10,000 years: how can people warn future generations
across this immense time span during which languages, cultures and the environment will continually
transform?[13][15]

Galison's fourth documentary, Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know, about the Event Horizon
Telescope, appeared in 2021 on Netflix and Apple TV.[16]

Bibliography
Galison, Peter (1987). How Experiments End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
ISBN 978-0-226-27915-2.
Galison, Peter; Hevly, Bruce (1992). Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research.
Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-2335-0.
Galison, Peter; Stump, David J. (1996). The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and
Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-2562-0.
Galison, Peter (1997). Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-27917-6.
Galison, Peter; Jones, Caroline A. (1998). Picturing Science, Producing Art. New York:
Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-91912-8.
Galison, Peter (2003). Einstein's Clocks and Poincaré's Maps: empires of time (https://archi
ve.org/details/einsteinsclocksp00gali). New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-02001-4.
Galison, Peter; Daston, Lorraine (2007). Objectivity. New York: Zone Books Distributed by
the MIT Press. ISBN 978-1-890951-79-5.
Galison, Peter; Holton, Gerald; Schweber, Silvan S. (2008). Einstein for the 21st Century:
His Legacy in Science, Art, and Modern Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 ISBN 978-0-691-13520-5.

Filmography
The Ultimate Weapon: The H-Bomb Dilemma (2000) Writer/producer, 44 minutes. Premiere:
The History Channel, 2000.
Secrecy (2008) Producer/Director (with Robb Moss), 85 minutes. Premiere: The Sundance
Film Festival (2008).
Containment (2015) Producer/Director (with Robb Moss), 81 minutes. Premiere: Full Frame
Documentary Film Festival, Durham, North Carolina (2015).
Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know (2021) Director, 99 minutes.

References
1. "Peter Louis Galison" (https://www.amacad.org/person/peter-louis-galison). American
Academy of Arts & Sciences. 2023-08-24. Retrieved 2023-08-24.
2. "Book | Peter Galison – Department of the History of Science, Harvard University" (https://ga
lison.scholar.harvard.edu/publications/publication-types/book). galison.scholar.harvard.edu.
Retrieved 2023-09-06.
3. Cartwright, Nancy (1999). The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. ix. ISBN 0-521-64336-8.
4. "Ultimate Weapon: The H-Bomb Dilemma" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2558526/). IMDB.
Retrieved November 2, 2024.
5. "Critical Inquiry Editorial Staff" (https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/info/editors/).
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu. University of Chicago IT Services. Retrieved 2024-11-02.
6. "Peter L. Galison" (https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-1997/peter-l-galison).
www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2023-09-06.
7. Honan, William H. (1997-06-17). "MacArthur Foundation Chooses Grant Winners" (https://w
ww.nytimes.com/1997/06/17/us/macarthur-foundation-chooses-grant-winners.html). The
New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0362-4331). Retrieved
2023-09-06.
8. "Peter Galison named recipient of the American Physical Society's 2018 Abraham Pais
Prize" (https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/news/peter-galison-named-recipient-american-physical
-societys-2018-abraham-pais-prize). histsci.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2023-09-10.
9. Rentetzi, Maria (September 2000). "Reviewed Work: Image and Logic: A Material Culture of
Microphysics by Peter Galison" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4027958). The British Journal
for the History of Science. 33 (3): 369–371.
10. Marwick, Ben (15 October 2019). "Galisonian logic devices and data availability: revitalising
Upper Palaeolithic cultural taxonomies" (http://osf.io/v8dej/). Antiquity. 93 (371): 1365–1367.
doi:10.15184/aqy.2019.131 (https://doi.org/10.15184%2Faqy.2019.131). S2CID 211672039
(https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:211672039).
11. Schmidt, Sophie C.; Marwick, Ben (28 January 2020). "Tool-Driven Revolutions in
Archaeological Science" (https://doi.org/10.5334%2Fjcaa.29). Journal of Computer
Applications in Archaeology. 3 (1): 18–32. doi:10.5334/jcaa.29 (https://doi.org/10.5334%2Fjc
aa.29).
12. "Press & Industry — Sundance Film Festival" (https://web.archive.org/web/2007120717560
8/http://www.sundance.org/festival/press_industry/releases/2008_films_in_competition.asp).
2007-12-07. Archived from the original (http://www.sundance.org/festival/press_industry/rele
ases/2008_films_in_competition.asp) on 2007-12-07. Retrieved 2019-04-12.
13. "Containment (2015)" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4503606/). IMDB. Retrieved
November 2, 2024.
14. "Containment" (https://www.fullframefest.org/film/containment/). Full Frame Documentary
Film Festival. Retrieved November 2, 2024.
15. Mathiesen, Karl (2015-06-05). "Sheep, Mexican farmers and Shinto priests vie for green film
award" (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2015/jun/05/sheep-mexican-farmers
-and-shinto-priests-vie-for-green-film-award). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 (https://searc
h.worldcat.org/issn/0261-3077). Retrieved 2024-11-03.
16. "Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know" (https://www.blackholefilm.com).
blackholefilm.com. Retrieved May 26, 2022.

External links
Galison's history of science homepage (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsdept/bios/galison.ht
ml)
Galison's physics homepage (http://physics.harvard.edu/people/facpages/galison.html)
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20060628142055/http://www.physics.harvard.edu/peo
ple/facpages/galison.html) 2006-06-28 at the Wayback Machine
Article about Galison from the New York Times (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsdept/bios/gal
ison-nytimes.html)
Interview with Galison about his Einstein book (http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay-ein
steins-time.htm) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20150312163833/http://www.aip.org/
history/einstein/essay-einsteins-time.htm) 2015-03-12 at the Wayback Machine
Galison appointed University Professor Harvard Gazette (https://web.archive.org/web/20060
203151726/http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2006/01/24-uniprof.html)
Peter Galison (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2871432/) at IMDb
SECRECY (http://www.secrecyfilm.com/) — homepage for previous Galison and Moss
documentary
CONTAINMENT (http://www.containmentmovie.com/) — homepage for latest Galison and
Moss documentary
2015 Video Interview with Peter Galison (http://manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/pet
er-galisons-interview) by Atomic Heritage Foundation Voices of the Manhattan Project
Galison's "Removing Knowledge" (https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2580255/Re
moving%20Knowledge.pdf?sequence=2)

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