"Building, Crashing, Thinking" - Elizabeth McNab Lecture in the History of Science

The Mossman Endowment at McGill University presents the Elizabeth McNab Lecture in the History of Science. Peter Galison, Professor of the History of Science and Physics at Harvard University, will speak on "Building, Crashing, Thinking."

PETER GALISON is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University.  His work explores the complex interaction between the three principal subcultures of physics--experimentation, instrumentation, and theory. His books include: How Experiments End (1987), Image and Logic (1997), Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps (2003) and, with Lorraine Daston, Objectivity (2007), and (among others) the co-edited Architecture of Science, Picturing Science, Producing Art, Scientific Authorship, and Einstein for the 21st Century.  He has made two documentary films: "Ultimate Weapon: The H-bomb Dilemma" (2000), and "Secrecy" (about national security secrecy and democracy), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008.  At present, he is completing a book, Building Crashing Thinking (on technologies that re-form the self) and has just begun a new documentary film project on the long-term storage of nuclear waste.