# Alex Csiszar Professor of the History of Science Director of Graduate Studies ![Alex Csiszar portrait](/sites/g/files/omnuum9516/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2025-06/Csiszar-AI.jpg?h=5dbcfc57&itok=Ji_E76Dy) smartphone [(617) 496-5184]() email laptop\_windows [Personal Website](http://scholar.harvard.edu/csiszar) *Areas of Research: Book History, Media Studies, Philosophy of Science, Science & Technology Studies* Alex Csiszar studies the history of science in modern Europe. He publishes primarily on the history of communications media and information technology in the sciences. His work asks how formats and genres -- newspapers, journals, books, and databases — have evolved in conjunction with changes in how groups come to know things about the natural world, and in the criteria they use to trust the knowledge claims of others. His first book, [*The Scientific Journal: Authorship and the Politicsl of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century* ](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo28179042.html)(2018) follows the rise of the modern scientific journal in Western Europe, focusing on the changing relationship between authorship and scientific identity, transformations in systems of judgement, and developing notions of trust and public accountability. It is the first book to attempt to explain how being an investigator of the natural world came, by the early twentieth century, to be identified closely with being a very particular kind of author. He is currently writing a book titled *Rank and File: From the Literature Seach to Algorithmic Judgment*. See a recent piece on the early history of bibliometrics here: "[Provincializing Impact: From Imperial Anxiety to Algorithmic Universalism](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/725131?journalCode=osiris)." [Personal website](https://scholar.harvard.edu/csiszar) #### Recent Courses: - History of Science 100: Knowing the World: An Introduction to the History of Science - History of Science 97: Sophomore Tutorial - History of Science 1885. Communicating Science - History of Science 1887. Information: History, Politics, Ethics - History of Science 252. Sciences of History - History of Science 282. Genre and Knowledge - History of Science 284. Algorithms - History of Science 2915: Latour and his Interlocutors #### Selected Publications “Blurry Authorship: Originality in Science Before and After Large Language Models.” *Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences* 54, no. 5 (2024): 611-616. \[[Link](https://online.ucpress.edu/hsns/article/54/5/611/203887/Blurry-AuthorshipOriginality-in-Science-before-and)\] “Isis Before HSS: From *Géniologie* to New Humanism.” *Isis* 115, no. 3 (2024): 481-490. \[[Link](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/731550)\] “Provincializing Impact: From Imperial Anxiety to Algorithmic Universalism.” *Osiris* 38 (2023): 103-126. \[[Link](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/725131)\] “Science and the Press.” In *Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press Volume 2*, edited by David Finkelstein (Edinbourgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 457-477. \[[Link](https://academic.oup.com/edinburgh-scholarship-online/book/42878/chapter-abstract/361011355)\] “Gaming Metrics Before the Game.” In *Gaming the Metrics: Misconduct and Manipulation in Academic Research*, edited by Mario Biagioli and Alexandra Lippman. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2020. 31-42. \[[Open Access](https://direct.mit.edu/books/chapter-pdf/273265/9780262356565_cal.pdf)\] “Proceedings and the Public: How a Commercial Genre Transformed Science.” In *Science Periodicals in Nineteenth-Century Britain*, edited by Sally Shuttleworth, Gowan Dawson, Bernard Lightman, and Jonathan R. Topham. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. 103-134. \[[Link](https://academic.oup.com/chicago-scholarship-online/book/31639/chapter-abstract/264876931?redirectedFrom=fulltext)\] *The Scientific Journal: Authorship and the Politics of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century.* Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. \[[Link](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo28179042.html)\] \[[Japanese translation](https://www.unp.or.jp/ISBN/ISBN978-4-8158-1145-7.html)\] “The Catalogue that Made Metrics, and Changed Science.” *Nature* 551 (2017). \[[Link](https://www.nature.com/news/the-catalogue-that-made-metrics-and-changed-science-1.22961)\] “How Lives Became Lists and Scientific Papers Became Data.” *British Journal for the History of Science* 50 (2017): 23-60. \[[Open Access](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/how-lives-became-lists-and-scientific-papers-became-data-cataloguing-authorship-during-the-nineteenth-century/2DA1C4FE6547421E1515A1925D804EB4)\] “Peer Review: Troubled from the start.” *Nature 532* (2016), 306-308. \[[Link](https://www.nature.com/articles/532306a)\] “Objectivities in Print.” In *Objectivity in Science,* edited by F. Padovani, A. Richardson, & J. Y. Tsou. Dordrecht: Springer, 2015. 145-169. “Bibliography as Anthropometry: Dreaming Scientific Order at the fin de siècle.” *Library Trends* 62, no. 2 (2013): 442-455. “Seriality and the Search for Order: Scientific Print and its Problems during the Late Nineteenth Century.” *History of Science* 48, no. 3/4 (September/December 2010): 399-434. \[[Link](https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/hosa/48/3-4)\] **Media** ["Scientific Journals Are Denouncing Trump. That’s Normal.”](https://www.wired.com/story/scientific-journals-are-denouncing-trump-thats-normal/) *Wired.com*, October 10 2020. ["The 1869 conference vibe."](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03851-3) *Nature*, December 18 2019. “[Q and A on the History of Retractions](https://retractionwatch.com/2016/03/14/what-did-retractions-look-like-in-the-17th-century/).” *Retraction Watch*, March2016. - ## People Categories [Director of Graduate Studies](/people-categories/director-graduate-studies) [Core Faculty](/people/core-faculty)