Professor Shaul Katzir
Shaul Katzir is an associate professor at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University. He has served as its director for the past six years.
His interests and teaching range from ancient Greek to twentieth century science and technology in their social, philosophical, cultural and practical contexts, and reach also the historiography of Nazi Germany. His work combines technical expertise in physics, conceptual analysis and deep understanding of cultural contexts. It pays close attention to a wide range of historical details, including physical, mathematical, technical, biographical, social, and cultural ones. The focus of Katzir’s research is in the history of the physical sciences and of physics-based technologies (especially those related to electricity and electronics) and their interactions in the 19th and 20th centuries. The main themes of his research include the relationships between science and technology, the role of and interactions between traditions and styles of research and their developments, explanatory (molecular) theory versus phenomenological and general approach like those employing symmetry and energy, precise experimentation, measurements and measurement standards, in particular of time. He has published extensively in leading venues of the history of science, technology and the modern West.
Katzir earned an MA (1996) and a PhD (2003) at the Cohn Institute. Before returning to Tel Aviv university as a faculty member, he had received research fellowships among others from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, the ERC with the Gerda Henkel foundation (Marie Curie fellow), and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in which he is a regular visitor.
At Clare Hall he will pursue his project on the phenomenon of multiple inventions – inventions of a similar device or technique independently by separate individuals or groups.
Select publications
Books:
* Sonar to Quartz Clock: Technology and Physics in War, Academy and Industry, Oxford University Press, 2023.
* The Beginnings of Piezoelectricity: A study in mundane physics, Dordrecht: Springer, 2006 (“Boston studies in the philosophy of science,” 246), Paperback edition 2010.
* The Greek Scientific Traditions and its Development in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Ra’anana: Lamda, in press, (a Hebrew textbook for an Open university course ).
Papers:
Edited volume:
* Interactions of Interwar Physics: Technology, Instruments, and Other Sciences, special issue of Science in Context, 31(3) (2018).
Articles:
* “The use of the conservation of living force before Helmholtz”, Annals of Science, 80 (2023): 337-356.
* “Employment Before Formulation: Uses of Proto-Energetic Arguments,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 49 (2019): 1-40.
* “Time standards for the twentieth century – telecommunication, physics and the quartz clock, ” The Journal of Modern History, 89 (2017): 119–150.
* “‘In war or in peace:’ The technological promise of science following the First World War,” Centaurus, 59 (2017): 223-237.
Further links
https://english.tau.ac.il/profile/skatzir
