Cyrus Mody

Cyrus Mody
Assistant Professor, History of Science
Rice University
CNS Affiliation
Extramural Collaborator
Research Group: 

Professor Mody teaches the history of science, technology, and engineering in the modern era (~1600 to the present). His research focuses on the physical and engineering sciences in the very modern era (~1970 to the present), with particular emphasis on the creation of new communities and institutions of science in the late Cold War and the post-Cold War periods. His book, Instrumental Community: Probe Microscopy and the Path to Nanotechnology(to be published by MIT Press) explores the co-evolution of an experimental technology (the scanning tunneling microscope and atomic force microscope and their variants) and the community of researchers who built, bought, used, sold, theorized, or borrowed these instruments. Currently, he is working on a history of the communities and institutions of nanotechnology, in collaboration with colleagues at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, and at Rice.

Phone: 
713-348-5207
Research Areas: 
Science and technology studies, communities related to the production and consumption of technological developments