ARTICLES
Published
2023
“How Long until Armageddon?” Asterisk, no. 3 (June 2023). [web]
“Afterword: Hidden Beauty,” Continuity & Change 38 (2023), 99-104.
“Einstein, armes nucléaires et pacifisme,” with Diana Kormos Buchwald, tr. Harry Bernas. Raison présente, no. 225 (2023): 57-67.
“Darwin and Natural Science,” in Anna A. Berman, Tolstoy in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022): 222-229..
2022
“Einsteinian Language: Max Talmey, Benjamin Lee Whorf, and Linguistic Relativity,” British Journal for the History of Science 55 (2022): 145-165.
“A Century of Science Boycotts,” Nature 606 (2 June 2022): 27-29.
“One Must Imagine Faust Happy,” The Point, no. 27 (Spring 2022): 103-111.
“Weird Science,” Los Angeles Review of Books (14 March 2022). [Published in German as “Seltsame Wissenschaft,” Merkur (1 August 2022).]
“The Consolidation of the Nuclear Age.” In Mark Philip Bradley, ed., The Cambridge History of America and the World, 4 v., Volume 4: 1945 to the Present, ed. David C. Engerman, Max Paul Friedman, and Melani McAlister (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022): IV: 80-101.
“Lysenkoism,” Encyclopedia for the History of Science (February 2022).
“Fringe Theories Stack,” Aeon (10 February 2022).
2021
“Who Are You Calling a Pseudoscientist?,” Times Higher Education Supplement (24 June 2021). [web]
“The Quest to Tell Science from Pseudoscience.” Boston Review (23 March 2021).
“How Not to Determine Nonsense,” IAI News, no. 94 (10 March 2021).
2020
“The Forgetting and Rediscovery of Soviet Machine Translation,” Critical Inquiry 46 (Summer 2020): 835-866.
“When National Styles Were Stylish,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 50, no. 1-2 (2020): 11-16.
“Identifying Einstein,” Aeon (2 April 2020).
“When Einstein Was Bohemian,” Scientific American (11 February 2020).
2019
“The Other Demarcation Problem,” Isis 110, no. 4 (December 2019): 766-769.
“Tolstoy Sees Foolishness, and Writes: From On Life to Fruits of Enlightenment, and Back Again,” in Inessa Medzhibovskaya, ed., A Critical Guide to Tolstoy’s On Life: Interpretative Essays (DeLand, FL: Tolstoy Studies Journal, 2019): 105-138..
“Zhores Medvedev and the Battle for Truth in Soviet Science,” Aeon (6 February 2019).
“Ordering the Elements.” Science 363, no. 6426 (1 February 2019): 471-473. [Translated into German by Marcus B. Carrier as “Die Elemente ordnen,” Mitteilungen der Fachgruppe Geschichte der Chemie26 (2020): 43-49.]
2018
"The Walker and the Wake: Analysis of Non-Intrinsic Philological Isolates," with Joshua T. Katz, in Sean Gurd and Vincent W. J. van Gerven Oei, eds., ’Pataphilology: An Irreader(n.p.: Punctum Books, 2018): 61-92.
"Paper Tools and Periodic Tables: Newlands and Mendeleev Draw Grids," Ambix 65, no. 1 (February 2018): 30-51.
"On Detlev Blanke: Beyond Esperanto," Esperantologio/Esperanto Studies 8 (2018): 47-49.
"The Chemist as Philosopher: D. I. Mendeleev's 'The Unit' and 'Worldview,'" in Eric Scerri and Guillermo Restrepo, eds., From Mendeleev to Oganesson: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on the Periodic Table (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018): 266-278.
"Wissenschaftssprache und Exil: Physiker zwischen Englisch und Deutsch in der NS-Zeit," tr. Carsten Fiedler, in Sabine Fiedler and Cyril Brosch, eds., Flucht, Exil, Migration: Sprachliche Herausforderungen (Leipzig: Leipzigeruniversitätsverlag, 2018): 105-118.
"Lysenko Unemployed: Soviet Genetics after the Aftermath," Isis 109, no. 1 (2018): 56-78. [Winner of the 2020 Derek Price/Rod Webster Prize of the History of Science Society.]
2017
“Introduction: Hegemonic Languages and Science," Isis 108, no. 3 (2017): 606-611.
“The Problem With Pseudoscience," EMBO Reports 18, no. 9 (2017): 1482-1485.
“The Trials of Arnošt K.: The Dark Angel of Dialectical Materialism," Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 47, no. 3 (2017): 320-348.
2016
“The Dostoevsky Machine in Georgetown: Scientific Translation in the Cold War,” Annals of Science 73, no. 2 (2016): 208-223.
"Crab Nebulous," in Wendy Doniger, Peter Galison, and Susan Neiman, eds., What Reason Promises: Essays on Reason, Nature, and History (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016): 206-214.
"The Unseasonable Grooviness of Immanuel Velikovsky," in David Kaiser and W. Patrick McCray, eds., Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016): 207-237.
“Espiritismo ruso: Ciencia y conocimiento público,” tr. Annette Mülberger, in Annette Mülberger, ed., Los límites de la ciencia: Espiritismo, hipnotismo y el studio de los fenómenos paranormales (1850-1930) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2016): 247-282.
2015
“Science, Technology, and Medicine,” in Deborah A. Martinsen and Olga Maiorova, eds., Dostoevsky in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015): 114-121.
"Myth 26: That a Clear Line of Demarcation Has Separated Science from Pseudoscience," in Ronald L. Numbers and Kostas Kampourakis, eds., Newton's Apple and Other Myths about Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015): 219-225.
"'What a Go-A-Head People They Are!': The Hostile Appropriation of Herbert Spencer in Imperial Russia," in Bernard Lightman, ed., Global Spencerism: The Communication and Appropriation of a British Evolutionist (Leiden: Brill, 2015): 13-34.
"Hydrogen Oxygenovich: Crafting Russian as a Language of Science in the Late Nineteenth Century," History of Science 53, no. 4 (December 2015): 417-437.
"Introduction: The Languages of Scientists," with Kostas Tampakis, History of Science 53, no. 4 (December 2015): 365-377.
"Foreword," in Jenny Andersson and Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, eds., The Struggle for the Long-Term in Transnational Science and Politics: Forging the Future (New York: Routledge, 2015): xi-xv.
"Chemical Linguistics," Chemistry World (24 June 2015). [web]
"Tongue-Tied Nation," The Chronicle Review (27 March 2015): B4-B5. {web]
"Absolute English," Aeon Magazine (4 February 2015). [Chinese translation, 29 July 2019.]
2014
"Evidence and the Instability of Biology," American Historical Review 119, no. 5 (December 2014): 1621-1629.
“The Soviet Science System,” The Point, no. 8 (Summer 2014): 118-127. [web]
“Preface,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 44, no. 1 (2014): 1-2.
2013
“The Table and the Word: Translation, Priority, and the Periodic System of Chemical Elements,” Ab Imperio, no. 3 (2013): 53-82.
2012
“Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765),” in Steve Norris and Willard Sunderland, eds., Russia’s People of Empire: Life Stories from Eurasia, 1500 to the Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012): 70-79.
“Abgrenzung und Demokratie: Die politischen Valenzen der Wissenschaftsgrenze,” tr. Joachim Schulte, in Michael Hagner, ed., Wissenschaft und Demokratie (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2012): 70-87.
“The Textbook Case of a Priority Dispute: D. I. Mendeleev, Lothar Meyer, and the Periodic System,” in Jessica Riskin and Mario Biagioli, eds., Nature Engaged: Science in Practice from the Renaissance to the Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012): 59-82.
“Where Are the Pseudohistory Wars?” History News Network (31 December 2012).
“A Repository for More than Anecdote: Fifty Years of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” with Erika Lorraine Milam, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 42, no. 5 (November 2012): 476-478.
“Separating the Pseudo from Science,” The Chronicle Review (17 September 2012). [Abridged and translated into Finnish by Anna Ovaska as “Miten erottaa ‘pseudo’ ‘tieteestä,’” Niin & Näin 4, no. 75 (2012): 12-15.]
“History of Science Society Annual Meeting, 2011: The Program,” with Matthew L. Jones, Isis 103 (2012): 356-357.
“Translating Textbooks: Russian, German, and the Language of Chemistry,” Isis 103 (2012): 88-98.
“The Weekday Chemist: The Training of Aleksandr Borodin,” in Jed Z. Buchwald, ed., A Master of Science History: Essays in Honor of Charles Coulston Gillispie, Archimedes 30 (Berlin: Springer, 2012): 137-164.
“Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907),” in Robin Findlay Hendry and Andrea I. Woody, eds., Philosophy of Chemistry, vol. 6 of The Handbook of the Philosophy of Science (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2012): 79-87.
“How Lysenkoism Became Pseudoscience: Dobzhansky to Velikovsky,” Journal of the History of Biology 45, no. 3 (2012): 443-468.
2011
“‘True GRIT’: Rationalität, nukleare Abrüstung und Semantik,” tr. Felix Kurz, in Bernd Greiner, Tim B. Müller, and Claudia Weber, eds., Macht und Geist im Kalten Krieg: Studien zum Kalten Krieg, v. 5 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2011): 498-516.
“Seeing Is Believing: Professor Vagner’s Wonderful World,” in Lorraine J. Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck, eds., Histories of Scientific Observation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011): 135-155.
2010
"Introduction: Utopia and Dystopia beyond Space and Time," with Helen Tilley and Gyan Prakash, in Michael Gordin, Helen Tilley, and Gyan Prakash, eds., Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010): 1-17.
2009
“Die Periodentafel oder Atombilder wider Willen,” in Charlotte Bigg and Jochen Hennig, eds., Atombilder: Ikonografien des Atoms in Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit des 20. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2009): 43-50.
“U.N. Shifts Strategy for Nuclear Arms Control,” Los Angeles Times (13 October 2009).
“To Catch a Bug,” Cabinet, no. 34 (Summer 2009): 89-95.
“Points Critical: Russia, Ireland, and Science at the Boundary,” Osiris 24 (2009): 99-119.
“Running in Circles: The Heidelberg Kruzhok and the Nationalization of Russian Chemistry,” in Grégoire Mallard, Catherine Paradeise, and Ashveen Peerbaye, eds., Global Science and National Sovereignty: Studies in Historical Sociology of Science (New York: Routledge, 2009): 40-62.
2008
“Was There Ever a ‘Stalinist Science’?” Kritika 9 (2008): 625-639.
“Introduction: Intelligentsia Science Inside and Outside Russia,” co-authored with Karl Hall, in Michael D. Gordin, Karl Hall, and Alexei B. Kojevnikov, eds., Intelligentsia Science, special issue of Osiris 23 (2008): 1-19.
“The Heidelberg Circle: German Inflections on the Professionalization of Russian Chemistry in the 1860s,” in Michael D. Gordin, Karl Hall, and Alexei B. Kojevnikov, eds., Intelligentsia Science, special issue of Osiris 23 (2008): 23-49.
“Eremeev, Pavel Vladimirovich,” in George N. Ryne, ed., The Supplement to the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian, Soviet and Eurasian History, 19 (Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 2008): 204-205.
2007
“Okhota za prizrakov: Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev i spiritizm [Chasing Ghosts: Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev and Spiritualism]”, tr. E. A. Pravilova and I. A. Khristoforov, Istoricheskie zapiski 10, no. 128 (2007): 251-289.
“Science after the Party,” Departures (October 2007).
“Without Parallels?: Averting a Schweberian Dystopia,” in Jürgen Renn and Kostas Gavroglu, eds., Positioning the History of Science (Berlin: Springer, 2007): 65-68.
“D. I. Mendeleev: Reflecting on His Death in 1907,” Angewandte Chemie 46 (2007): 2758-2765.
2006
“‘Le Premier Cercle’: le Kruzhok de Heidelberg et la nationalisation de la chimie russe,” Sociologie du Travail 48 (2006): 286-307.
“Facing the Music: How Original Was Borodin’s Chemistry?” Journal of Chemical Education 83 (April 2006): 561-565.
“Arduous and Delicate Task: Ekaterina Dashkova, the Academy of Sciences, and the Taming of Natural Philosophy,” in Sue Ann Prince, ed., The Princess and the Patriot: Ekaterina Dashkova, Benjamin Franklin, and the Age of Enlightenment (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2006): 3-22.
2005
“Beilstein Unbound: The Pedagogical Unraveling of a Man and His Handbuch,” in David Kaiser, ed., Pedagogy and the Practice of Science: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2005): 11-39. [Japanese translation by Masanori Kaji, Kagakushi Kenku, Journal of the Japanese Society for the History of Chemistry 32 (2005): 217-234.]
2004
“The Short Happy Life of Mendeleev’s Periodic Law,” in Dennis H. Rouvray and R. Bruce King, eds., The Periodic Table: Into the 21st Century (Baldock, Hertfordshire: Research Studies Press, Ltd., 2004): 41-90.
“Chemistry in Russia and the Soviet Union,” in George N. Ryne, ed., The Supplement to the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian, Soviet and Eurasian History, Vol. 5 (Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 2004): 213-220.
“Navodia mosty: Eiler, Kulibin i tekhnicheskoe znanie [Bridging: Euler, Kulibin, and Technical Knowledge (in Russian)],” authorized translation by E. Kanishcheva, Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie (New Literary Review), no. 66 (2004): 180-197.
2003
“Beilstein Unbound: Unraveling the Handbuch der Organischen Chemie,” Chemical Heritage 21, no. 4 (Winter 2003/4): 10-11, 32-36.
“A Modernization of ‘Peerless Homogeneity’: The Creation of Russian Smokeless Gunpowder,” Technology and Culture 44 (2003): 677-702.
“Measure of All the Russias: Metrology and Governance in the Russian Empire,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4 (2003): 783-815.
“Mendeleev, Dmitrii Ivanovich,” in J. L. Heilbron, ed., The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): 508-509.
“‘Ideologically Correct’ Science,” co-authored with Walter Grunden, Mark Walker, and Zuoyue Wang, in Mark Walker, ed., Science and Ideology: A Comparative History (London: Routledge, 2003): 35-65.
“The Science of Vodka [letter to the Editor],” The New Yorker (13 January 2003): 7.
2002
“The Organic Roots of Mendeleev’s Periodic Law,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 32 (2002): 263-290.
2001
“Loose and Baggy Spirits: Reading Dostoevskii and Mendeleev,” Slavic Review 60 (2001): 756-780.
“‘Ideologisch korrekte’ Wissenschaft: Französische Revolution, Sowjetunion, Nationalsozialismus, Japan im Zweiten Weltkrieg, McCarthy-Ära, Volksrepublik China,” co-authored with Walter Grunden, Mark Walker, and Zuoyue Wang, in Uwe Hoßfeld and Rainer Brömer, eds., Darwinismus und/als Ideologie (Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 2001): 29-69.
2000
“No Smoking Gun: D. I. Mendeleev and Pyrocollodion Gunpowder,” in Troisièmes Journées Scientifiques Paul Vieille: Instrumentation, expérimentation et expertise des matériaux énergétiques (poudres, explosifs et pyrotechnie) du XVIe siècle à nos jours (Paris: A3P, 2000): 73-96.
“Atomic Weapons” and “Dialectical Materialism,” in Arne Hessenbruch, ed., The Reader’s Guide to the History of Science (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000): 55-56, 175-176.
“The Importation of Being Earnest: The Early St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences,” Isis 91 (2000): 1- 31. [Excerpted as “The Early St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences,” in Malcolm Oster, ed., Science in Europe, 1500-1800: A Secondary Sources Reader (Basingstoke: Palgrave and the Open University, 2002): 233-242.]
1999
“Stanovlenie Sankt-Peterburgskoi Akademii nauk v kontekste razvitiia evropeiskoi traditsii vlasti (The Establishment of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in the Context of the European Tradition of Power),” in Rossiiskaia Akademiia nauk: 275 let sluzheniia Rossii (The Russian Academy of Sciences: 275 Years of Service for Russia) (Moscow: Ianus-K, 1999): 238-258. (In Russian.)
1998
“Making Newtons: Mendeleev, Metrology, and the Chemical Ether,” Ambix 45 (1998): 96-115.
1997
“The Anthrax Solution: The Sverdlovsk Incident and the Resolution of a Biological Weapons Controversy,” Journal of the History of Biology 30 (1997): 441-480. [Abridged and translated into Japanese by A. Setoguchi as “Tansokin Ronso no Kaiketsu,” Jinbuchi no Aratana Sogo ni Mukete, Dai-Nikai Hokokusho [Tetsugakuhen 1] (Towards a New Synthesis of Humanities Studies, Second Report, Philosophy 1), (Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, March 2004): 123-147.]