Prize Recipient

Lillian Hoddeson
University of Illinois

Citation:

"For her leadership and contributions to writing the history of twentieth-century physics, her pioneering studies of American research laboratories -particularly Bell Labs, Los Alamos and Fermilab- and her perceptive scientific biography of John Bardeen."

Background:

Lillian Hoddeson, Professor of History Emeritus and the Thomas Siebel Chair in the History of Science at the University of Illinois, began her career in physics (AB, Barnard, 1961; PhD, Columbia, 1965).  After a decade of teaching at Barnard and Rutgers, she retrained in the history of science at Princeton and embarked on a study of the beginnings of solid-state physics culminating in Out of the Crystal Maze, the first comprehensive history of solid-state physics, a co-edited product of the International Project on the History of Solid-State Physics, which she helped to establish. Meanwhile, examining the evolution of  “big science,” she co-edited three volumes on the rise of particle physics and coauthored: Critical Assembly, the first technical history of the atomic bomb; Crystal Fire, a history of the transistor; True Genius, a biography of John Bardeen; and Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience.  She is presently completing a co-authored history of the Superconducting Super Collider, a monograph on oral history and human memory, and a book about the inventor Stanford Ovshinsky.

She is a member of the American Physical Society, the History of Science Society, and the Society for the History of Technology. Her major professional honors include: Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Selection Committee:

Elizabeth Garber, Chair; R. Arns; S. Schweber; M. Riodan; G. Good