Slava Gerovitch

Research interests
- history of mathematics, cybernetics, and computing
- space history and space policy
- history of Russian and Soviet science and technology
- history and memory; rhetoric and science

Work in progress
My new project, The Culture of Abstract Algebra, addresses the role of algebraic theories as conceptual languages and the interaction of different mathematical styles in representation theory. This project studies how patterns in actual research practice correspond to the following stylistic oppositions: problem-solving and conceptualism; abstraction and tangibility; conceptualization and computation; minimalism and freedom of choice; and speculation and rigor.

Complete CV

What Have We Learned from the Soviet Archives? Uppsala University, Sweden, May 2013

Annual Conference of Japanese Society for the Study of Russian History, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, October 2012

Mathematical Cultures I, De Morgan House, London, September 2012

PhyMSI (Physics Mathematics Summer Institute), Double Affine Hecke Algebras, Luminy, France,  June 2011

Intellectual History of the Cold War, Hamburg Institute for Social Research, Germany, August-September 2010

Sciences of Communication in the 20th Century, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany, March 2010

XXIII International Congress of History of Science and Technology, Budapest, Hungary, July 2009

Cosmic Enthusiasm: The Cultural Impact of Space Exploration on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the 1950s, Basel, Switzerland, January 2009

Thinking and Making Connections: Cybernetic Heritage in the Social and Human Sciences, Nobel Museum and Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden, November 2008

First Plenary Conference of Tensions of Europe, Budapest, Hungary, March 2004

 Courses

STS.010 Neuroscience and Society

18.995 Cultural History of Mathematics

STS.003 The Rise of Modern Science

STS.035 History of Computing

STS.005 Disease and Society in America

"Die sowjetische Kybürokratie" in Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte VI/3 (2012) (in German)

Artificial Intelligence With a National Face: American and Soviet Cultural Metaphors for Thought, in The Search for a Theory of Cognition (Rodopi, 2011)

Historical interludes in Pavel Etingof et al., Introduction to Representation Theory (American Mathematical Society, 2011)

"Kyberkratie oder Kyberbürokratie in der Sowjetunion" in Macht und Geist im Kalten Krieg (Hamburger, 2011) (in German)

Интер-Нет! Почему в Советском Союзе не была создана общенациональная компьютерная сеть Неприкосновенный запас 75 (2011)

The Cybernetics Scare and the Origins of the Internet Baltic Worlds 2 (2009)

InterNyet: Why the Soviet Union Did Not Build a Nationwide Computer Network History and Technology 24 (2008)

From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (MIT Press, 2002)

Die Beherrschung der Welt. Die Kybernetik im Kalten Krieg Osteuropa 59 (2009) (in German)

From Communications Engineering to Communications Science: Cybernetics and Information Theory in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union (with David Mindell and Jérôme Ségal) in Science and Ideology (Routledge, 2003)

Love-Hate for Man-Machine Metaphors in Soviet Physiology: From Pavlov to Physiological Cybernetics Science in Context 15 (2002)

Mathematical Machines of the Cold War: Soviet Computing, American Cybernetics and Ideological Disputes in the Early 1950s Social Studies of Science 31 (2001)

Russian Scandals: Soviet Readings of American Cybernetics in the Early Years of the Cold War The Russian Review 60 (2001)

"The Human Inside a Propaganda Machine: The Public Image and Professional Identity of Soviet Cosmonauts" in Into the Cosmos: Space Exploration and Soviet Culture (Pittsburgh, 2011)

"Memories of Space and Spaces of Memory: Remembering Sergei Korolev" in Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)

"Why Are We Telling Lies?: The Creation of Soviet Space History Myths," The Russian Review 70 (2011)

The Future of Human Spaceflight: Objectives and Policy Implications in a Global Context, with David Mindell, Scott Uebelhart, and Asif Siddiqi (American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2009)

Creating Memories: Myth, Identity, and Culture in the Russian Space Age in Remembering the Space Age (NASA, 2008)

Stalin's Rocket Designers’ Leap into Space: The Technical Intelligentsia Faces the Thaw Osiris 23 (2008)

New Soviet Man Inside Machine: Human Engineering, Spacecraft Design, and the Construction of Communism Osiris 22 (2007)

Human-Machine Issues in the Soviet Space Program in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight (NASA, 2006)

The Future of Human Spaceflight, with David Mindell, Scott Uebelhart, Asif Siddiqi et al. (Space, Policy, and Society Research Group, MIT, 2008)

Computing in the Soviet Space Program: Bibliography, Documents, Essays, Institutions, Interviews