Ken Alder is Professor of History and Milton H. Wilson Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University, where he has taught since 1991. He began as Assistant Professor of History, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1997, and to full Professor in 2003. Alder served as Chair of the History Department from 2014 to 2017 and founded and directed the Science in Human Culture program from 1994 to 2021. He earned an A.B. in Honors Physics from Harvard University in 1981 and a Ph.D. in History of Science from Harvard in 1991. Alder has held visiting positions including at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2021-2022), Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (2018), and New York University (2013-2014).

Alder's research examines the transnational history of science and technology in contexts of social and political change, with central themes including the history of measurement of nature and human beings, the potency of material artifacts, forensic sciences from the Renaissance to the genomics era, and the history of artificial beings from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary Chinese manufacturing and genomics. His major publications include Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815 (Princeton University Press, 1997; second edition, University of Chicago Press, 2010), which received the 1998 Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology; The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World (Free Press, 2002), awarded the Davis Prize from the History of Science Society, Dingle Prize from the British Society for the History of Science, and Kagan Prize from The Historical Society; and The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession (Free Press, 2007). These books have been translated into multiple languages, including French, Italian, German, and Japanese, influencing scholarship on science, technology, and their societal intersections. Alder has received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (2010-2011), multiple National Science Foundation Scholar’s Awards, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. He has served on the executive councils of the History of Science Society and Society for the History of Technology.

Professional Email: k-alder@northwestern.edu