Biographical

Built in 1967 by RCA, the David Sarnoff Library contains a museum, an archive, a library, and this website. Besides Mr. Sarnoff's papers and memorabilia, the Library's holdings include 25,000 photographs and thousands of notebooks, reports, publications, and artifacts related to the histories of RCA Laboratories and RCA. At this site you will find exhibits, timelines, galleries, links, and references.

A brief overview of this Web site that compares what we knew in 1900 to what we know today

Professor Riskin received her B.A. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and taught at Iowa State University and at MIT before coming to Stanford. Her research interests include Enlightenment science, politics and culture, and the history of scientific explanation. She is the author of Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2002), and is currently writing a book on the history of artificial life since the seventeenth century, as inseparably connected with the history of notions of consciousness and selfhood. The book's working title is The Android's I: A Joint History of Consciousness and Artificial Life. She recently did a radio interview about this work-in-progress, which you can hear at http://www.wbez.org/audio_library/od_radec03.asp#02. In October 2003, she hosted a Workshop on the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life at Stanford: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/ALworkshop/.

Eötvös Loránd munkái és méltatása (Válogatás Eötvös Loránd tudományos és tudománypolitikai munkáiból, Eötvös Loránd és Eötvös József levelezése, versek, kinevezési dokumentumok, Eötvös Loránd méltatása, bibliográfiák)

Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and the founder (2001) and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts in the co-construction of identity http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/techself. The Initiative looks at a range of technologies including robotics, psychopharmacology, video games, and simulation software and their effects on human development. Dr. Turkle has written numerous articles on psychoanalysis and culture and on the "subjective side" of people's relationships with technology, especially computers. She received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University, and is a licensed clinical psychologist. She is the author of Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution (Basic Books, 1978; MIT Press paper, 1981; second revised edition, Guilford Press, 1992);The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (Simon and Schuster, 1984; Touchstone paper, 1985; second revised edition, MIT Press, forthcoming); and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon and Schuster, November 1995; Touchstone paperback, 1997).

Timothy Lenoir is professor of history and chair of the Program in History and Philosophy of Science. Lenoir is the author of The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology, Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel, 1982; paperback edition by the University of Chicago Press, 1989, which examines the development of non-Darwinian theories of evolution, particularly in the German context during the nineteenth century. His other books include: Politik im Tempel der Wissenschaft: Forschung und Machtausübung im deutschen Kaiserreich, Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 1992; Instituting Science: The Cultural Production of Scientific Disciplines, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, a volume which examines the formation of disciplines and the role of public institutions in the construction of scientific knowledge; an edited volume, Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication, appeared in spring 1998 from Stanford Press.

Utilizing over 800 scanned documents, photographs, audio clips and video excerpts, this website narrates the breathless details of the pursuit of the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. Scattered throughout the project are images of a number of very important and extremely rare items, all of which are held within The Valley Library's Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, and many of which have not been previously displayed. Also featured are two original documents hitherto unknown to scholars interested in this period. It is expected that this website will serve as a primary reference point for individuals interested in the history of DNA -- both researchers and lay people alike.

Current Research
The Structures of Computation: Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, 1950-70 traces the efforts to develop a mathematical model of computation that adequately represents the possibilities and limits of the digital electronic stored-program computer. Beginning with the initial models, the Turing machine and the switching circuit, the book recounts the origins of formal language theory, computational complexity, and formal semantics. It looks beyond the conceptual history to examine the formation of theoretical computer science both as a recognized discipline in its own right and as a field of mathematics. The book thereby constitutes a dual case study of the historical problems of mathematization and of the formation of new scientific disciplines. Some of the themes are explored in my recent articles on history of computing.

In asking who were the greatest physicists, we were deliberately vague about whether we were referring to the past 100 years, the past millennium, or simply all of time. If we had restricted ourselves to the 20th century, we would have overlooked Newton and Galileo, all the great physicists of the 19th century, and the discovery of X-rays, radioactivity and the electron in the late 1890s. And if we had restricted ourselves to the past millennium, we would have ignored Aristotle, Archimedes and others.

Sharon is interested in the dynamics of environmental and technological controversies and has special interest in the social aspects of engineering, environmental politics, the rhetoric of sustainable development, the philosophies behind environmental economics, and trends in environmentalism and corporate activism/public relations. Most recently she has broadened her research interests to include the promotion of the work ethic, market solutions to social problems anda critique of neoliberalism.