Roberto Lalli
Visiting Scholar (Aug 2022-Jan 2026)
Dr.
Affiliated with Max Planck Research Program (GMPG)
Room 115
Roberto has been a Research Scholar in Department I since 2013; he also works with The Research Program “History of the Max Planck Society” (GMPG). Since 2018 he has been working within the multi-institutional Berlin Center for Machine Learning where he develops approaches for the application of machine-learning techniques to the history of recent sciences. After gaining a MSc in physics in 2006 at the University of Milan, in 2011 he received a PhD in International History at the same university, engaging with comparative approaches to national receptions of modern physical theories. His career continued as a post-doctoral fellow in the History of Modern Physical Sciences at MIT’s Program of Science, Technology, and Society, where he engaged more intensively with the conceptual frameworks and methodologies of science studies.
His research focuses on the social, political, and epistemic aspects of knowledge production in the physical sciences, including its circulation and certification, from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present. Combining elements from a broad range of disciplines, including contemporary transnational history, science studies, and digital humanities, he investigates the dynamics between the diffusion of novel theoretical conceptualizations in their social and political contexts, and the infrastructural developments within their evaluation systems. A parallel line of research concerns the history of science diplomacy during the Cold War and provides a new conceptualization for the activities of the scientists who may be interpreted as non-state agents in the international political arena.
Projects
BIFOLD - BZML
Changing Contexts and Practices of Basic Science during the Twentieth Century
Networks, Network Science, and Knowledge Graphs
Socio-epistemic networks: Modelling Historical Knowledge Processes
The Formation of the Research Field of General Relativity—Social Networks and Semantic Modeling
The Renaissance of General Relativity in the Post-World War II Period
The Role of Institutions and Commissions in Forming Research Agendas: Networks and Mass Digitization
Selected Publications
Lalli, Roberto (2021). “Crafting Europe from CERN to Dubna: Physics as Diplomacy in the Foundation of the European Physical Society.” Centaurus 63 (1): 103–131. https://doi.org/10.1111/1600-0498.12304.
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Lalli, Roberto, Riaz Tony Howey, and Dirk Wintergrün (2020). “The Dynamics of Collaboration Networks and the History of General Relativity, 1925–1970.” Scientometrics 122 (2): 1129–1170. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03327-1.
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Blum, Alexander S., Roberto Lalli, and Jürgen Renn (2018). “Gravitational Waves and the Long Relativity Revolution.” Nature Astronomy 2 (7): 534–543. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0472-6.
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Lalli, Roberto (2016). “‘Dirty work’, but someone has to do it : Howard P. Robertson and the refereeing practices of ‘Physical Review’ in the 1930s.” Notes and Records 70 (2): 151–174. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2015.0022.
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Renn, Jürgen, Dirk Wintergrün, Roberto Lalli, Manfred Laubichler, and Matteo Valleriani (2016). “Netzwerke als Wissensspeicher.” In Die Zukunft der Wissensspeicher : Forschen, Sammeln und Vermitteln im 21. Jahrhundert, ed. J. Mittelstraß and U. Rüdiger, 35–79. München: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft Konstanz.
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Blum, Alexander S., Roberto Lalli, and Jürgen Renn (2015). “The reinvention of general relativity : a historiographical framework for assessing one hundred years of curved space-time.” Isis 106 (3): 598–620. https://doi.org/10.1086/683425.
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Lalli, Roberto (2013). “Anti-relativity in action : the scientific activity of Herbert E. Ives between 1937 and 1953.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 43 (1): 41–104.
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Lalli, Roberto (2012). “The Reception of Miller’s Ether-Drift Experiments in the USA: The History of a Controversy in Relativity Revolution.” Annals of Science 69 (2): 153–214.
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Bookshelf
Media
Presentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities
Invited talk at the Image, Knowledge Gestaltung. An Interdisciplinary Laboratory. Humboldt Universität
Invited talk at the 36th Congress of the Italian Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy (SISFA)
invited talk at the conference Publish or Perish? Scientific Periodicals from 1665 to the Present, Royal Society, London
Space-Time Theories: Historical and Philosophical Contexts, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
Invited talk at the 99th Congress of the Italian Physical Society (SIF), Trieste
SILFS 2014, Triennial International Conference of the Italian Society for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Rome.
6th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science
“An Intellectual Life across Disciplines: Colloquium in Honour of John Stachel’s 85th Birthday,” at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany
Fishbein Workshops for the History of Science and Medicine, at the University of Chicago
Invited talk at the 33th congress of the Italian Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy (SISFA), Acireale
HSS/BSHS/CSHPS 3-Society 2012 Meeting, Philadelphia, PA
HSS Annual Meeting, Cleveland, OH
Fourth conference on the History of Quantum Physics, San Sebastián, Spain
Department of Philosophy, University of Turin