AIP History September Update

History

Newsletter

September 2026

Dennis Overbye at desk — Dennis Overbye at his desk answering reader questions in 2019.

Aidan Gardiner / The New York Times.

Join us in DC on November 4 for an evening with Dennis Overbye

Dennis Overbye reported on science for the New York Times from 1988 until his retirement in 2024 and will join us on Wednesday, November 4 for the Lyne Starling Trimble public event, “Confessions of a Cosmic Affairs Correspondent.” AIP has named Overbye as the 2026 winner of its Andrew Gemant Award, which honors work in the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimensions of physics. He will offer a behind-the-scenes look at some of his reporting and will also engage in an extended conversation about his career. To attend in person, register today!

Video now available: Fara Dabhoiwala on the extraordinary portrait of Francis Williams

SEP 23, 2026

On Sept. 23, Dabhoiwala shared the story, almost lost to history, of a Jamaican prodigy, the British mathematical elite, and the first return of Halley’s comet.

This month from the Ex Libris Universum Library Blog

Wide shot of the Göttingen Physics Institute, taken in 1926.

Hertha Sponer at Göttingen

SEP 01, 2026

NBLA holds photographs from physicist Hertha Sponer’s Göttingen album. A recent project properly situated them as Sponer’s collection, not James Franck’s.

Photo of Amnon Yariv, AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection. 1986

How scientific knowledge moves: Oral histories, Soviet lasers, and innovation research

SEP 17, 2026

Jungkyu Suh’s dissertation uses AIP oral histories alongside quantitative data to study the relationship between science and innovation.

Typing physics: The essential role of typists in intra-scientific communication

SEP 29, 2026

India Bhalla-Ladd discusses the skilled technical typists who prepared physics papers for publication at AIP from 1962 to 1977, most of whom were women.

This month from the AIP History Weekly Edition

New oral histories: Women’s experiences in moving into science

SEP 04, 2026

Interviews with Emily Brodsky, Helen Jackson, Farrah Simpson, and Tiffany Vance illustrate the variety of experiences that have led women into careers in science.

Q&A: Sveinn Jóhannesson and the antebellum “scientific-military state”

SEP 11, 2026

Jóhannesson discusses how his research on the development of the American government led him to realize the significance of mathematics education at West Point.

Kitt Peak rocketry program flight 3.20 launch

The Kitt Peak National Observatory Rocket Program, 1959–1973

SEP 18, 2026

Guest author and AIP grant-in-aid recipient James Lockridge looks at the rare example of a rocket-based space science program run by a ground-based observatory.

Article spotlight: Blum and Choudhuri on magnetohydrodynamics

SEP 25, 2026

A new article reconstructs the early history of the science of plasma flows, illuminating the choices theorists made as they struggled to understand the Sun.

History from Physics Today

Waves crash up against a column of fiery spheres as the sky turns red.

The 80-year nuclear legacy in the Marshall Islands

SEP 10, 2026

M. X. Mitchell interviews Kabua Maddison, a prominent member of the Marshallese diaspora on the ongoing impact of US nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific archipelago.

Newly posted oral histories

Lynn Cominsky, interviewed May 15 and 18, 2026 by Anna Doel
James Gillies, interviewed June 16, 2026 by Barbara Hof
Julia Higgins, interviewed March 19, 2025 by Joseph Martin
Deborah Kelley, interviewed March 16, 2026 by Anna Doel
Ron Larson, interviewed December 11, 2024 by Joseph Martin
Scott Milner, interviewed April 28, 2025 by Joseph Martin
Brent Murray, interviewed March 5, 2025 by Joseph Martin
Michael Rubinstein, interviewed March 28, 2025 by Joseph Martin
Ben Segal, interviewed July 6, 2026 by Barbara Hof

Grant-in-aid and Early-Career Conference deadlines approaching

The next deadline for applications for AIP grants-in-aid in support of research on the history of the physical sciences is November 15, 2026. Applicants may request funding of up to $3,000 for travel to visit archives or conduct oral history interviews or to cover other research expenses. November 15 is also the deadline for applications to participate in the next AIP Early-Career Conference for Historians of the Physical Sciences, which will take place in Toronto, Canada from June 21 to June 25, 2027. Funding to defray travel expenses will be available.

AIP Niels Bohr Library & Archives news

AIP supports University of Maryland’s quantum Wikipedia edit-a-thon

AIP Niels Bohr Library & Archives staff is proud to have provided editing and training support for UMD’s September 30 Wikipedia editing session on focused on articles about quantum science.