Prize Recipient

David C. Cassidy
Hofstra University

"For his foundational studies on the history of quantum mechanics and his nuanced examinations of physics in Germany and the United States, with special attention to the scientific work, personalities, and dilemmas of Heisenberg and Oppenheimer."

David C. Cassidy is Professor at Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY. He was previously Assistant Professor of history of science at the University of Regensburg, Germany, and Associate Editor of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. He received the BA and MS degrees in physics at Rutgers University, and the PhD at Purdue University (1976) in physics in a joint program with the Department of History of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a postdoctoral fellow in history of science at the University of California-Berkeley and a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Stuttgart, Germany.

His publications include Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg; Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the Bomb; J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century; A Short History of Physics in the American Century; and, with Gerald Holton and James Rutherford, the textbook Understanding Physics. His one-act play “Farm Hall” was presented in a staged reading during the March 2013 APS meeting.

Dr. Cassidy is the recipient of the Pfizer Award of the History of Science Society, the Science Writing Award of the American Institute of Physics, and an honorary doctorate from Purdue University. He is a member of the International Academy of History of Science and a former chair of the APS Forum on the History of Physics and the New York Academy Sciences section on History and Philosophy of Science.

Gloria Lubkin, Chair; R.H. Stuewer; C.L. Carson; S. Seth; G. Good