Benjamin Wilson

Areas of Research: History of Physical Sciences

Benjamin Wilson is Associate Professor of History of Science at Harvard University. His research focuses on the history of modern physics, the relationship between science and national security during the Cold War, and the intersection between ideas and interests in the nuclear age.

Wilson is the author of Strange Stability: How Cold War Scientists Set Out to Control the Arms Race and Ended Up Serving the Military-Industrial Complex (Harvard University Press, 2025), a history of Cold War strategic thinking and science advising.

Wilson’s scholarly articles address topics ranging from the history of technical modeling practices in nuclear deterrence theory to the influence of military priorities on physics research in fields such as quantum and nonlinear optics. He is currently working on a new project about the US nuclear security state’s efforts to study, and accommodate, the long-term and possibly irreversible climatic effects of nuclear war.

Wilson received his PhD from MIT’s Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society. Before that, he received master’s degrees in physics from Yale University and the University of Toronto, and a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics from the University of Saskatchewan. His work has been supported by fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. 

Selected Publications

Books

• Benjamin Wilson, Strange Stability: How Cold War Scientists Set Out to Control the Arms Race and Ended Up Serving the Military-Industrial Complex (Harvard University Press, 2025). (See a review in Nature Physics.) 

Articles and Chapters

• Benjamin Wilson, “Conventional Metaphors: Deterrence, Stability, Control,” in The Cambridge History of the Nuclear Age, ed. Leopoldo Nuti and Christian Ostermann (Cambridge University Press, under review).
• Benjamin Wilson, “Keynes Goes Nuclear: Thomas Schelling and the Macroeconomic Origins of Strategic Stability,” Modern Intellectual History 18, no. 1 (2021): 171–201.
• Benjamin Wilson, “The Consultants: Nonlinear Optics and the Social World of Cold War Science,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 45, no. 5 (2015): 758–804.
• Benjamin Wilson and David Kaiser, “Calculating Times: Radar, Ballistic Missiles, and Einstein’s Relativity,” in Science and Technology in the Global Cold War, ed. Naomi Oreskes and John Krige (MIT Press, 2014), 273–316. 

Public Writing

• Benjamin Wilson, “How Hans Bethe and Richard Garwin served the missile defense system they publicly criticized,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (January 5, 2026).
• Benjamin Wilson, “How a criminology concept became the backbone of the U.S.’s Cold War strategy,” Big Think (November 27, 2025).
• David Kaiser and Benjamin Wilson, “American Scientists as Public Citizens: Seventy Years of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 71, no. 1: 13–25. 

Media

• Quoted, USA Today (January 6, 2026).
• Interviewed, Skipped History podcast (December 12, 2025).
• Interviewed, The Harvard Gazette (November 4, 2025).