Jed Buchwald

Originally intending to be a physicist, he turned to the history of science under the influence of Thomas S. Kuhn in his fourth year as a physics undergraduate at Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry, and received his B.A. in 1971.⁠[1]

He received an M.A. from Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry in 1973 and a PhD in 1974 under Erwin Hiebert; his undergraduate supervisor had been Thomas Kuhn.⁠[2]

His doctoral dissertation examined the development of the electromagnetic field concept in the 19th century.⁠[1]

From 1974 to 1992 he rose from lecturer to professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST), serving as its director in 1991–1992.⁠[2]

In 1985 the University of Chicago Press published his From Maxwell to Microphysics, a study of electromagnetic theory in the last quarter of the 19th century; the British Journal for the History of Science ran John Roche’s review in 1987.⁠[3]

In 1989 the University of Chicago Press published his The Rise of the Wave Theory of Light: Optical Theory and Experiment in the Early Nineteenth Century, 474 pages; Geoffrey Cantor reviewed it in the British Journal for the History of Science in 1990.⁠[4]

He was a Killam Fellow in Canada in 1990–1991.⁠[5]

From 1992 to 2001 he directed the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.⁠[6]

In 1994 he published The Creation of Scientific Effects, which examines Heinrich Hertz’s revolutionary discoveries concerning electric waves and the often problematic relation of theory to experiment that physicists encountered.⁠[6]

In June 1995 he was named a MacArthur Fellow, receiving $285,000 over five years; the foundation cited him for examining the history of science in terms of its great ideas and the figures who generate them.⁠[1]

In 2001 he joined the California Institute of Technology as the Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History.⁠[5]

He recalls that around 1999 or 2000, in an old Paris bookshop, he came upon a bound set of pamphlets about the zodiac taken from the Temple of Dendera in Egypt to France, and invited his MIT graduate student Diane Greco Josefowicz to write a book with him.⁠[7]

In 2010 Princeton University Press published their The Zodiac of Paris, which uses the dispute over the dating of the Dendera zodiacs to illustrate the uses and pitfalls of applying scientific reasoning to problems in the humanities; the Bryn Mawr Classical Review reviewed it in 2011.⁠[8]

In 2012 he and his Caltech colleague Mordechai Feingold published their first joint book, Newton and the Origin of Civilization, a study of Isaac Newton’s revision of ancient chronology.⁠[9]

Reviewing it in Physics Today, the historian J. B. Shank called the book the first serious attempt to unify Newton’s science, his later image and his alchemical and theological studies, and said all future work on the problem should begin with it.⁠[10]

In May 2019 Caltech and The Huntington announced the Research Institute for the History of Science and Technology (RIHST), established that year as a joint program, with him as its first director and Dan Lewis of The Huntington as associate director; from fall 2019 it planned to bring a senior scholar into residence each year.⁠[11]

In August 2020 notes he had found while studying Thomas Young’s archive at the British Library were made public, showing that in the summer of 1814 Young cut the Rosetta Stone inscriptions into strips line by line and rearranged them; he said the notes showed Young approached the decipherment almost “as though it was a mathematical problem.”⁠[12]

On September 15, 2020, The Riddle of the Rosetta, written with Josefowicz, was published, drawing on fresh archival evidence to recount how the English polymath Thomas Young and the French philologist Jean-François Champollion vied to decipher the Rosetta Stone.⁠[13]

Kirkus Reviews noted that the two authors had put a decade’s worth of work into the book.⁠[14]

Reviewing it, Elizabeth Frood called it arguably the most meticulous and thoroughgoing account of Young’s and Champollion’s work, noting its use of unpublished manuscripts including many early drafts.⁠[15]

On October 13, 2020, Princeton University Press published Einstein Was Right: The Science and History of Gravitational Waves, a 264-page volume he edited on the history and science of LIGO’s detection of gravitational waves, with contributors including Kip S. Thorne, Barry C. BarishBarry BarishBarry Barish is an American experimental physicist and Caltech professor emeritus who led the construction of LIGO from 1994 and created the LIGO Scientific Collaboration; he shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics with Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.Open the full entry, Alessandra Buonanno and Harry Collins.⁠[16]

On August 27, 2021, he appeared on episode 214 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing how science progresses, theories of everything, the most beautiful moments in science, Isaac Newton’s career and rivalries, the importance of data, alchemy, and Newton and religion.⁠[17]

The International Academy of the History of Science awarded him its 2023 Alexandre Koyré Medal for lifetime achievement, presented at a ceremony in Paris on March 18, 2024.⁠[7]

In May 2026 the late historian Noel Swerdlow’s The Renaissance of Astronomy appeared in the series he edits, Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences; with Anthony Grafton he organized colleagues to complete bibliographies and missing material, an editing process of four and a half years for a book of more than 1,100 pages.⁠[18]

On September 29, 2026, The Winding Trail to Newton’s Principia Mathematica, written with Feingold, was published; drawing on newly digitized scans of Newton’s early manuscripts, the authors argue that the groundwork for the Principia’s mechanics was already present in the scientific discussion of the time.⁠[9]

As of October 2026 he is a member of the American Philosophical Society and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and edits several book series and journals.⁠[5]

University of Toronto: Official website: https://www.utoronto.ca/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Official website: https://www.mit.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]

California Institute of Technology: Official website: https://www.caltech.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[11]