Dominique Pestre

Visiting Scholar

Professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

Residence: August 1, 2012 - June 30, 2013

Profile

I was first trained as a physicist and then as an historian. I mainly am a social and political historian of 19th and 20th Century physical sciences but I have written on more conceptual and philosophical questions, on technical, political and economic dimensions linked to scientific activity, and on quite contemporary topics. I am currently Directeur d’Etudes at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. I have taught in various universities since the 1990s : Harvard, California Institute of Technology, Rome, Zurich, San Paolo, Geneva, Brussels, Lausanne, etc. I have also been fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

My first book was an intellectual and cultural history of physics between 1920 and 1940 – Physique et physiciens en France, 1918-1940 (published in 1984). The idea of the book was to describe the way physics was practiced and taught, and what it meant to be a physicist (in comparing France, Germany and the United States). I then wrote Louis Néel, le magnétisme et Grenoble (published in 1989), a book to try and understand the deployment of science, engineering and innovation in local, territorial contexts (Néel was chosen because he was Nobel-prize winner and played a key role in making Grenoble a high-tech city). In collaboration, I finally contributed to History of CERN, 3 volumes (1987, 1990, 1993). In the dozen chapters I personally wrote, I focused on the political history of the institution and on what it meant to be such a large European endeavour ; on the organization of experimental work in such “big science” places and on research strategies ; on the way decisions for large equipment were taken (from accelerators to bubble chambers), stressing the major differences between CERN and American HEP Labs.

From the 1990s to the mid-2000, I occupied directorial functions in two main research centers in Paris, first in La Villette Science Museum, then in Centre Alexandre Koyré. I also set up graduate and master programs in science studies and history of science. I edited several books – notably Science in the Twentieth Century with John Krige (1997), and Dictionnaire culturel des sciences with N. Wittkowski and JM Levy-Leblond. I also published a book called Heinrich Hertz, L’administration de la preuve (PUF, collection Philosophies, 2002, with Michel Atten) ; for teaching purposes, I wrote an Introduction aux Science Studies (La Découverte, 2006) ; and for EU policy, I presented a report entitled Historical perspectives on Science, Society and the Political, Report to the Science, Economy and Society Directorate (EC, January 2007).

Since the late 1990s I have worked on three programs : science, war and the military – with a book called  Les Sciences pour la guerre, 1940-1960 (EHESS, 2004) in collaboration with Amy Dahan ; science, economy and social life – with a book called Science, Argent et Politique (INRA 2003), presenting the various régimes of science in society and of society in science that existed from the 19th Century to the present ; the government of (techno-)science and through the sciences – with a book to appear in Decmber 2012 at Seuil entitled A contre-sciences. Politique des sciences contemporaines.