Peter Galison

Roles: Director

Peter Galison is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor (his main areas are History of Science and Physics) at Harvard University.  His work explores the complex interaction between the three principal subcultures of physics–experimentation, instrumentation, and theory. His books include: “How Experiments End” (1987), “Image and Logic” (1997), “Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps” (2003) and, with Lorraine Daston, “Objectivity” (2007), and (among others) the co-edited “Architecture of Science”, “Picturing Science, Producing Art”, “Scientific Authorship”, “and Einstein for the 21st Century”.  He has made two documentary films before “Containment”: Ultimate Weapon: The H-bomb Dilemma (2000); and Secrecy (with Robb Moss, about national security secrecy and democracy), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008.  He collaborated with South African artist William Kentridge on the five-screen installation, “The Refusal of Time” (2012).   At present, he is completing a book, “Building Crashing Thinking” (on technologies that re-form the self).