Larry Owens

My research and writing range over the last century and a variety of American topics from the history of engineering, the laboratory as a workplace, mathematical machinery and computers as cultural artifacts, and, most generally, the relationships between science, technology, and culture. As a teacher, I'm happiest in my introductory survey of science and technology in the western world and in upper-division and graduate seminars on comparative scientific traditions and on science and culture in the cold war. Recently, I’ve begun work on a book tentatively titled "The Rise and Fall of the Rocket State: Ballistic Culture in Cold War America."

• "Science ‘Fiction’ and the Mobilization of Youth in the Cold War. Quest: The Spaceflight Quarterly 14 (3) (2007): 52-57.
• "Sam Prescott and the Sanitary Vision at MIT: The Search for the Perfect Cup of Coffee," Technology & Culture 45(4) (2004): 795-807.
• "The Cat and the Bullet: A Ballistic Fable for the Modern World," The Massachusetts Review 45(1) (2004): 178-190.  (Nominated for the 2004 Pushcart Prize)
• "Silo Memories: A Titan II Missile Site ‘Under Construction,’ a talk presented at the History of Science Society annual meeting in Cambridge, MA, November 2004.
• "Science in the United States," in Science in the Twentieth Century (1997), ed. John Krige and Dominique Pestre.
• "Where are We Going, Phil Morse? Changing Agendas and the Rhetoric of Obviousness in the Transformation of Computing at MIT, 1939-1957," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 18(4) (1996): 34-42.(Winner of the IEEE award for the best paper published in 1996 on the history of computing.)
• "Pure and Sound Government: Laboratories, Playing Fields, and Gymnasia in the 19th Century Search for Order," Isis 76 (1985): 182-194. (Winner of the Schuman Prize of the History of Science Society)