Alex Csiszar is Assistant Professor of the history of science at Harvard University. Prior to that, he was an Andrew Mellon / ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow.
Csiszar graduated from Harvard University in 2010 with a Ph.D. in History of Science. He received an M.A. in English from Stanford University and a B.Sc. in Honors Physics and Mathematics from the University of British Columbia. He grew up in and around Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Csiszar's research focuses include: The history of genres of scientific communication, especially the changing forms, functions, and circulation of scientific journals. This includes the history of scientific priority (and its relationship to other kinds of intellectual property), the history of peer review, the history of the offprint, and the shifting roles of scientific societies. The history of search practices and technologies, including card catalogues, bibliographies, clipping services, and other bureaucratic or technological mechanisms for organizing knowledge. The physical sciences in France during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, especially Henri Poincaré. History of the philosphy of science, including conventionalism and the history of conceptions of classification.
Contact: acsiszar AT fas DOT harvard DOT edu.
Csiszar founded the Book History Writers Group at Harvard University. This interdisciplinary group meets every 2-3 weeks to discuss work in progress. If you are interested in participating in the group, or simply wish to be kept informed about it, please send an email and visit the website. The group is sponsored by the Harvard Humanities Center Seminar in the History of the Book.
In May 2010 Csiszar organized the first iteration of what has become the Harvard-Yale Conference in Book History, an interdisciplinary conference for early career scholars to present their work. The program for this year's conference, which took place at Yale University on May 3, 2012, may be found here.
Talks and lectures
"Classer la connaissance scientifique". Colloque Charles Richet et son temps. Académie nationale de médecine. Paris, FR. November 14, 2013. (upcoming)
"Priority of Publication and Patent Reform in Britain and France, 1824-1848." International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Manchester, UK. July 2013. (upcoming)
“Scientific Publics and Scientific Readers after the Revolution.” Society for French Historical Studies. Boston, MA, April 2013. (upcoming)
“The Invention of Peer Review.” Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Cambridge, MA. March 27 2013.
“The Early History of Peer Review.” Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, PA. March 18 2013.
“'Rot or Not': Scientific Authorship and Editorial Control.” Rutgers University. November 30 2012.
“'Printing for Private Circulation': The Birth of the Offprint.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting. San Diego, CA. November 18 2012.
“Cultures of Discovery and Priorities of Publication in 1840s France and Britain.” 3 Societies Meeting. Philadelphia, PA. July 13 2012.
“On the Emergence of the Scientific Author.” Academia & Publishing Conference. Turin, Italy. May 31 2012.
“In the Air or On the Page? Making Argon Public.” Chemical Heritage Foundation. Philadelphia, PA. April 17 2012.
“Publishing and Science's Publics: Origins of the Journal System.” Maastricht University. Maastricht, NL. March 28 2012.
"From Priority of Discovery to Priority of Publication." Communicating Science and Technology II. Paris, FR. March 9 2012.
“George Sarton, the Virtues of Print, and the Origins of Progress.” Golden Ages: Universal Histories and the Origins of Science. The Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University. December 2011.
“Academies enter the Marketplace for Scientific News.” Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Cleveland, OH. November 2011.
“'Men and Things and Thoughts Also Would Be Catalogued': Reconsidering Foucault on the History of Classification.” Law & Order: Annual Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium. Philadelphia, PA. October 2011.
“The Comptes Rendus and the Marketplace for Scientific News.” SHARP Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C. July 2011.
“Archiving Species in Print circa 1900.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting. Montreal, QC. November 2010.
“Managing Science by Numbers: The Emergence of the Modern Scientific Journal.” Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA. September 2010. (Invited talk.)
“The Order of Nature and the Disorder of Print: Reforming Zoological Periodicals in Late-Victorian Britain.” Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. New Haven, CT. September 2010.
“Regulating the Scientific Machine: Cataloguing Knowledge for Industrial Innovation.” Managing Knowledge in the Technosciences, 1850-2000. Leeds, UK. July 2010.
“The Material Cultures of Communitarian Objectivity: Cataloguing Knowledge in Print in the Late Nineteenth Century.” Objectivity. Vancouver, BC. June 2010
“Material Practices of Unity: The International Catalogue of Scientific Literature.” Des frontières transcendantes en Europe durant la Belle-Epoque. Mons, Belgium. May 2010.
“Archiving Scientific Knowledge in Print circa 1900.” Harvard Graduate Conference on Book History. Cambridge, MA. May 2010.
“Conventions / Catalogues / Collectives: Henri Poincaré and the Organization of Scientific Work.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting. Phoenix, AZ. November 2009.
“‘Men and Things and Thoughts Also Would Be Catalogued’: Imagining Categories at the Fin de Siècle.” History of Modern Sciences Working Group, Harvard University. September 2009.
“Discontents and Entrepreneurs in the Organization of Scientific Information, 1890-1914.” Seriality and Scientific Objects in the Age of Capital and Empire, 1848-1919. Cambridge, UK. April 2009. (Invited contribution.)
“Centralizing the Scientific Machine: Classification and the Catalogue of the Sciences at the End of the Nineteenth Century.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting. Pittsburgh, PA. November 2008.
“Tales from the Archive.” Panel on research methods in history at Harvard University. October 2008.
“From Narrative to Classification and Back Again.” Narrating the World. Current debates in science and literary studies. Harvard Humanities Center, Cambridge, MA. April 2008. (Invited contribution.)
“Joseph Deniker and the Classification of Race and of the Sciences at the fin de siècle.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting. Vancouver, BC. November 2006.
The background image is a detail from a photograph taken at an exhibit on the roof of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Site Mitterand) during Nuit Blanche 2007.