Spencer R. Weart

Spencer R. Weart (born 1942) is the former director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) from 1971 until his retirement in 2009.

Life

Originally trained as a physicist, he is now a historian of science.^[1] He earned his B.A. in Physics at Cornell University in 1963 and a Ph.D. in Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1968. He then did postdoctoral studies at the Hale Observatories and California Institute of Technology, publishing papers on solar physics; from 1971 to 1974 he studied history of science in the University of California, Berkeley. While directing the AIP Center for History of Physics he taught courses at Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University.

Interviews

He conducted oral history interviews of many physical scientists, particularly astrophysicists such as

He has produced numerous historical articles and two children's science books and written or co-edited eleven other books,[4] including the following:

• Scientists in Power (1979). A history of the rise of nuclear science, weapons, and reactors in France.
  ISBN 0-674-79515-6^[5][6]
• as editor with Gertrud Weiss Szilard: Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts (1978). Edited correspondence.
  ISBN 0-262-69070-5^[7]
• Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (1989)
  ISBN 0-674-62836-5^[8]
• as editor with Lillian Hoddeson, Ernest Braun & Jürgen Teichmann: Out of the Crystal Maze: Chapters from the History of Solid State Physics (1992).
  ISBN 0-19-505329-X^[9]
• ISBN 0-300-08298-3
• ISBN 0-674-03189-X
• The Rise of Nuclear Fear (2012).
  ISBN 978-0-674-05233-8