Matthew Jones

Matthew L. Jones is the Smith Family Professor of History at Princeton University. His research focuses on the history of recent information technologies and intelligence as well as the history of science and technology in early modern Europe. Jones earned a Ph.D. in history and science from Harvard University and an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge. Before joining Princeton in 2023, he taught at Columbia University since 2000, most recently as the James R. Barker Professor of Contemporary Civilization in the Department of History. There, he co-developed courses on the history of quantitative reasoning and machine learning from the 1800s to contemporary artificial intelligence.

Jones explores the social, political, and ethical contexts of data collection, surveillance, algorithms, quantitative reasoning, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. He authored The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution: Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, and the Cultivation of Virtue (University of Chicago Press, 2006), which examines virtue cultivation among key early modern scientists, and Reckoning with Matter: Calculating Machines, Innovation, and Thinking about Thinking from Pascal to Babbage (University of Chicago Press, 2016), analyzing the material challenges in developing early calculating devices. In 2023, he co-authored How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms (W.W. Norton & Company) with Chris Wiggins, based on their popular course; the book was named one of The New Yorker's best books of the year. Jones received a 2017-18 Data & Society Fellowship from the Data & Society Research Institute. At Princeton, he teaches The Scientific Revolution, Data & Culture (co-taught with Meredith Martin), and seminars on information, computing, and infrastructure. His scholarship illuminates the historical contingencies of technological systems and their societal impacts.

Professional Email: mljones@princeton.edu