Peter Galison

Peter Galison is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University, where he holds appointments in the Department of Physics and the Department of the History of Science. He directs the Black Hole Initiative, coordinates the History, Philosophy, and Culture working group for the next-generation Event Horizon Telescope, and serves as Science Team Leader for the Black Hole Explorer. Previously, he was the Founding Director of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. As a member of the Event Horizon Telescope team, Galison contributed to the first image of a supermassive black hole, sharing the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. His research examines the complex interplay between experimentation, instrumentation, and theory in twentieth-century physics, the history and philosophy of physics, black holes, scientific visualization, and the embedding of physics in broader cultural contexts.

Galison has produced seminal works including How Experiments End (1987), Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (1997, Pfizer Award winner), Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time (2003), and Objectivity (with Lorraine Daston, 2007). He has edited key volumes such as Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research (with Bruce Hevly, 1992), The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power (with David J. Stump, 1996), The Architecture of Science (with Emily Thompson, 1999), Picturing Science, Producing Art (with Caroline A. Jones, 1998), Scientific Authorship: Credit and Intellectual Property in Science (with Mario Biagioli, 2003), and Einstein for the 21st Century (with Gerald Holton and Silvan S. Schweber, 2008). An acclaimed filmmaker, he directed Ultimate Weapon: The H-Bomb Dilemma (2000), Secrecy (2008), Containment (2015), and Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know (2020). His honors include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1997), Max Planck Prize (1999), and Pais Prize from the American Physical Society (2017). Galison teaches courses such as History and Philosophy of 20th-Century Physics, History and Philosophy of Experimentation, Scientific Visualization: From Galileo to Black Holes, and leads Harvard's Physical Sciences Research Group.