Informal Conversation with Professor Thomas P. Hughes

On behalf of Professor David Mindell, Director of MIT's STS Program, there will be an informal conversation with Professor Thomas P. Hughes and graduate students in ESD and HASTS. Feel free to bring your lunch; coffee and dessert will be provided. Rsvp's appreciated.

Professor Hughes is Professor Emeritus of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and Distinguished Visiting Professor at MIT.

Thomas Hughes did his graduate work in European History at the University of Virginia. He has published books on American and European history with special attention to the history of modern technology, science, and culture.

Networks of Power: Electrification of Western Society, 1880-1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983) and Elmer Sperry: Inventor and Engineer (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971) won the Dexter Prize for outstanding books in the history of technology. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970 (Viking, 1989; Penguin, 1990) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, 1990. With Agatha Hughes, he edited Lewis Mumford: Public Intellectual (Oxford University Press, 1990) and Systems, Experts and Computers (MIT Press, 2000). Rescuing Prometheus (Pantheon Books, 1997) is about managing the creation of large technological systems. His most recent book is Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2004). Among his essays are "Walther Rathenau: System Builder" in Ein Mann Vieler Eigenschaften: Walther Rathenau und die Kultur der Moderne (Klaus Wagenbach, 1990); L'Histoire comme Systemes en Evolution, (Annales, 1998), pp. 839-57; and Designing, Developing, and Reforming Systems (Daedalus, 1998), pp. 215-32.

Professor Hughes is a member of the American Philosophical Society, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. The Society for the History of Technology awarded him the Leonardo da Vinci Medal; the Society for the Social Studies of Science gave him the John Desmond Bernal Award. The Johns Hopkins University named him a member of the Society of Fellows. The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering in 2000 and Northwestern University conferred a Doctorate of Humane Letters in 2001.

He has been a Visiting Professor at the Wissenschaftszentrum (Center for the Study of Social Sciences), Berlin; the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm; Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt; New School for Social Research; Stanford University; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin. Among his fellowships are the Guggenheim and Fulbright. He has been chairman of the Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania; chairman of the NASA History Advisory Committee; chairman of the U.S. National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science; and president of the Society for the History of Technology. He has been a presenter for BBC/NOVA and Swedish National Television. He has been a history consultant for ABC Television. He chaired a National Research Council Committee on "Computing and Communications: Lessons from History" and is a member of the NRC Committee on Technological Literacy. Agatha Hughes (1924-1997) was his long-time editor and adviser.