1999
Ph.D. in History and Social Study of Science and Technology
Program in Science, Technology, and Society, MIT
1992
Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science
Institute for the History of Natural Science and Technology, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
1985
M.S. in Applied Mathematics
School of Automation and Computer Technology, Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas Industry, Moscow
2009-present
Lecturer
Department of Mathematics, MIT
Independent study courses with Elena Fratto (2012), Clare Kim (2014), Tasha Schoenstein (2017), Mikaela Springsteen (2023), and David Darrow (2024)
1999-2011
Lecturer
Program in Science, Technology, and Society, MIT
STS.003 The Rise of Modern Science
STS.005 Disease and Society in America
STS.010 Neuroscience and Society
STS.035 The History of Computing
2000-2002
Senior Tutor
Department of the History of Science at Harvard University
2009-2013
Visiting Scholar
Department of Mathematics, MIT
2010-2013
The Culture of Abstract Algebra: Conceptual Languages and Working Styles in Representation Theory in the Second Half of the 20th Century,” project funded by the National Science Foundation
2010
"Oral History of the Soviet Space Program: An Annotated Edition," project funded by NASA History Division
2009
"Voices from the Russian Space Program," project funded by NASA History Division
2005-2007
Designing a Cosmonaut: The Technopolitics of Automation in the Soviet Human Space Program,” project funded by the National Science Foundation
2004-2006
Research Associate
Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology
2003-2005
“Trusting the Machine: Onboard Computing, Automation, and Human Control in the Soviet Space Program,” project funded by the National Science Foundation
2001-2003
Dibner/Sloan Postdoctoral Researcher
History of Recent Science and Technology Project at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology
1992-2003
Junior Researcher to Senior Researcher
Institute for the History of Natural Science and Technology, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
1991-97
Research Assistant to Professor Loren R. Graham
Program in Science, Technology, and Society, MIT
translation of Graham's book, Science in Russia and the Soviet Union (Cambridge University Press, 1993), into Russian (published by Ianus-K in 1998)
archival research for Graham's book, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer (Harvard University Press, 1993)
archival research for Graham's project, "Documenting Recent Changes in Russian science"
2021
Winner of the Gardner-Lasser Aerospace History Literature Award for the best original contribution to the field of aeronautical or astronautical non-fiction literature
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
2016
Finalist for the Historia Nova Prize for the best book on Russian intellectual and cultural history
Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation and Academic Studies Press
2007-2008
Fellowship in Aerospace History
American Historical Association
2003
Honorable mention for the Vucinich Book Prize for an outstanding monograph in Russian, Eurasian, or East European studies
Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) and the Stanford University Center for Russian and East European Studies
1999-2001
Dibner postdoctoral fellowship
Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology
1996-98
Dibner graduate fellowship
Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology
2010 The Culture of Abstract Algebra: Conceptual Languages and Working Styles in Representation Theory in the Second Half of the 20th Century (NSF)
2010 Oral History of the Soviet Space Program: An Annotated Edition," (NASA)
2009 Voices from the Russian Space Program (NASA)
2006 Designing a Cosmonaut: The Technopolitics of Automation in the Soviet Human Space Program” (NSF)
2003 “Trusting the Machine: Onboard Computing, Automation, and Human Control in the Soviet Space Program” (NSF)
2000 Short-term travel grant from the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX)
Director of PRIMES (Program for Research in Mathematics, Engineering and Science for High School Students) (2010-present)
Director of Research and Reading Programs for undergraduates and high school students, MIT Mathematics Department: RSI (2012-2021), SPUR (2012-2021), DRP (2014-2021), UROP+ (2014-2021)
Recipient of the 2020 MIT School of Science Infinite Mile Award
Co-lead of CHORUS: Colloquium for the History Of Russian and Soviet Science
Member of Program Committee, SORUCOM (International Conference on the History of Computers and Informatics in the Soviet Union and Russian Federation)
Chair, IEEE Life Members' Prize in Electrical History, Society for the History of Technology (2006-2007)
Author of Bibliography of the History of Russian Science and Technology (2002)
Russian sources advisor for Isis Collected Bibliography
Member of the International Editorial Board of Ideas and Ideals: A Journal of the Humanities and Economics (Novosibirsk, Russia)
Member of the Advisory Board of Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Technology (New York: Routledge, 2004)
Reviewer for Comparative Technology Transfer and Society, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Isis, Journal for the History of Astronomy, Kritika, Russian Review, Slavic Review, Technology and Culture
Reviewer for Cornell University Press, Harvard University Press, MIT Press, Palgrave Macmillan
Reviewer for the National Science Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Soviet Space Mythologies: Public Images, Private Memories, and the Making of a Cultural Identity (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015); Russian translation (New Literary Observer Press, 2024).
Voices of the Soviet Space Program: Cosmonauts, Soldiers, and Engineers Who Took the USSR into Space (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002, pb 2004); Japanese edition (University of Nagoya Press, 2023).
Cybernetics Across Cultures: The Localization of the Universal, in Cybernetics for the 21st Century, vol. 1: Epistemological Reconstruction, edited by Yuk Hui (Hanart Press, 2024), pp. 127-152. (PDF)
“The CrowdMath Project” (with Pavel Etingof and Jesse Geneson), in Expanding Undergraduate Research in Mathematics: Making UR More Inclusive, edited by Michael Dorff, Jan Rychtář, and Dewey Taylor (Washington, DC: Mathematical Association of America, 2023), pp. 153-160. (PDF)
“Creative Discomfort: The Culture of the Gelfand Seminar at Moscow University,” in Mathematical Cultures: The London Meetings 2012-2014, edited by Brendan Larvor (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2016), pp. 51-70. (PDF)
“Cyberocrazia o cyburocrazia? Il destino di un’utopia cibernetica nell’Unione Sovietica,” in Elisa Grandi and Deborah Paci, eds., La politica degli esperti. Tecnici e tecnocrati in età contemporanea (Milano: Edizioni Unicopli, 2014). (PDF)
“Artificial Intelligence With a National Face: American and Soviet Cultural Metaphors for Thought,” in The Search for a Theory of Cognition. Early Mechanisms and New Ideas, edited by Stefano Franchi and Francesco Bianchini (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), pp. 173-194. (PDF)
Historical interludes in Pavel Etingof et al., Introduction to Representation Theory (Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 2011). (PDF) (Russian and Japanese editions)
“The Human inside a Propaganda Machine: The Public Image and Professional Identity of Soviet Cosmonauts,” in Into the Cosmos: Soviet Culture and Space Exploration, edited by James T. Andrews and Asif A. Siddiqi (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), pp. 77-106.
“Memories of Space and Spaces of Memory: Remembering Sergei Korolev,” in Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies, edited by Monica Rüthers, Carmen Scheide, Julia Richers, and Eva Maurer (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 85-102.
“Kyberkratie oder Kyberbürokratie in der Sowjetunion” (“Cyberocracy or Cybureaucracy in the Soviet Union”), in Macht und Geist im Kalten Krieg, edited by von Bernd Greiner, Tim B. Müller und Claudia Weber (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2011), pp. 376-395. (PDF)
The Future of Human Spaceflight: Objectives and Policy Implications in a Global Context (with David Mindell, Scott Uebelhart, and Asif Siddiqi) (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2009).
“Creating Memories: Myth, Identity, and Culture in the Russian Space Age,” in Remembering the Space Age, edited by Steven J. Dick (Washington, D.C.: NASA History Division, 2008), pp. 203-236. (PDF)
"Roman Jakobson und die Kybernetisierung der Linguistik in der Sowjetunion," in Die Transformation des Humanen: Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte der Kybernetik, hg. v. Horl, Erich / Hagner, Michael (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2008), S. 229-274 (in German).
"Human-Machine Issues in the Soviet Space Program" in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, edited by Steven J. Dick and Roger D. Launius (Washington, D.C.: NASA History Division, 2006), pp. 107-140. (PDF)>
“From Communications Engineering to Communications Science: Cybernetics and Information Theory in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union” (with David Mindell and Jérôme Ségal), in Science and Ideology: A Comparative History, ed. Mark Walker (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 66-96. (PDF)
“Striving for ‘Optimal Control’: Soviet Cybernetics as a ‘Science of Government,’” in Cultures of Control, ed. Miriam R. Levin (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. 247-64.
“Writing History in the Present Tense: Cold War-Era Discursive Strategies of Soviet Historians of Science and Technology,” in Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War, ed. Christopher Simpson (New York: The New Press, 1998), pp. 189-228. (PDF)
"The Kitchen and the Dacha: Productive Spaces of Soviet Mathematics," Studia Historiae Scientiarum vol. 23 (2024): 657–683. (PDF) (Russian translation)
"'We Teach Them to Be Free': Specialized Math Schools and the Cultivation of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History vol. 20, no. 4 (Fall 2019): 717–754. (PDF)
"Mathematical Research in High School: The PRIMES Experience" (with Pavel Etingof and Tanya Khovanova), in Notices of the AMS, 62 (2015): 910-918. (PDF) (Chinese translation in Mathematical Advances in Translation 35:4 (2016): 348-359; summary in Spanish)
How the Computer Got Its Revenge on the Soviet Union, Nautilus, issue 23: Dominoes (April 9, 2015), print issue No. 8 (May/June 2015) (Chinese translation)
The Man Who Invented Modern Probability: Chance Encounters in the Life of Andrei Kolmogorov, Nautilus, issue 4: The Unlikely (August 22, 2013), print issue No. 2 (2014), (Chinese and Vietnamese translations)
“Parallel Worlds: Formal Structures and Informal Mechanisms of Postwar Soviet Mathematics,” Historia Scientiarum, vol. 22, no. 3 (March 2013): 181-200. (PDF) (Japanese translation in General Staff of Science: An International Joint Study on Russian/Soviet Academy of Sciences, ed. Hiroshi Ichikawa; summary in Russian)
“Die sowjetische Kybürokratie,” Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte, Heft VI/3 (Herbst 2012): 19-25 (in German). (PDF)
“‘Why Are We Telling Lies?’: The Creation of Soviet Space History Myths,” The Russian Review, vol. 70, no. 3 (July 2011): 460-484. (PDF)
“The Cybernetics Scare and the Origins of the Internet,” Baltic Worlds, vol. 2, no. 1 (2009): 32-38. (PDF)
“Die Beherrschung der Welt. Die Kybernetik im Kalten Krieg,” Osteuropa 59, no. 10 (2009): 43-56 (in German). (PDF)
“Stalin’s Rocket Designers’ Leap into Space: The Technical Intelligentsia Faces the Thaw,” OSIRIS, vol. 23: Intelligentsia and Science in Russia and Abroad, edited by Michael Gordin, Karl Hall, and Alexei Kojevnikov (2008): 189-209. (PDF)
“InterNyet: Why the Soviet Union Did Not Build a Nationwide Computer Network,” History and Technology 24:4 (December 2008): 335-350. (PDF) Russian version in Neprikosnovennyi zapas 75 (2011); Spanish version in Cibcom.org (2019)
“‘New Soviet Man’ Inside Machine: Human Engineering, Spacecraft Design, and the Construction of Communism,” OSIRIS, vol. 22: The Self as Project: Politics and the Human Sciences in the Twentieth Century, edited by Greg Eghigian, Andreas Killen, and Christine Leuenberger (2007): 135-157. (PDF)
“Love-Hate for Man-Machine Metaphors in Soviet Physiology: From Pavlov to 'Physiological Cybernetics,'” Science in Context, vol. 15, no. 2 (2002): 339-374 (PDF) (Russian version in Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki, no. 3 (2002): 472-506.)
“‘Russian Scandals’: Soviet Readings of American Cybernetics in the Early Years of the Cold War,” The Russian Review, vol. 60, no. 4 (October 2001): 545-68. (PDF)
“‘Mathematical Machines’ of the Cold War: Soviet Computing, American Cybernetics and Ideological Disputes in the Early 1950s,” Social Studies of Science, vol. 31, no. 2 (April 2001).253-87. (PDF)
“Perestroika of the History of Technology and Science in the USSR: Changes in the Discourse,” Technology and Culture, vol. 37, no. 1 (January 1996): 102-34. (PDF)
“Epilogue: Russian Reflections” (with Anton Struchkov), Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 25, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 487-95. (PDF)
“Cybernetics in the Soviet Union,” in Supplement to the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian, Soviet, and Eurasian History, vol. 7 (Gulf Breeze, Fl.: Academic International Press, 2006), pp. 159-164.
“Automation,” in Encyclopedia of Computer Science, 4th edition (Macmillan Reference/Grove Dictionaries, 2000), pp. 122-26 [reprinted in Concise Encyclopedia of Computer Science (Wiley, 2004), pp. 53-56]. (PDF)
Лорен Р. Грэхэм, Очерки истории российской и советской науки (Москва: Янус-К, 1998) (Russian translation of Loren R. Graham, Science in Russia and the Soviet Union (Cambridge University Press, 1993)). (PDF)
Питер Галисон, Зона обмена: координация убеждений и действий // Вопросы истории естествознания и техники, no. 1 (2004): 64-91 (Russian translation of Peter Galison, “Trading Zone: Coordinating Action and Belief”) (HTML) (PDF)
English translation of Yuri Gagarin et al., “The Soviet Union Must Not Lag Behind the United States in Space” (1965), in Living Through the Space Race, edited by William S. McConnell (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006), pp. 42-48; reprinted as “Socialism is the Best Launching Pad for Space Flights: Soviet Cosmonauts to Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev” (22 October 1965), in Letters of Note: Space, comp. Shaun Usher (Edinburgh, UK: Canongate, 2021), pp. 34-42.
English translation of Yuri Gagarin to his family, “If You Are to Be, Be the First” (10 April 1961), in Letters of Note: Space, comp. Shaun Usher (Edinburgh, UK: Canongate, 2021), pp. 30-33.
Review of Yvonne Howell and Nikolai Krementsov, eds., The Art and Science of Making the New Man in Early Twentieth-Century Russia, in Isis, vol. 114, no. 4 (2023): 885-886. (PDF)
Review of Maria A. Rogacheva, Soviet Scientists Remember: Oral Histories of the Cold War Generation, in The Russian Review, vol. 79, no. 3 (2020): 511-513. (PDF)
Review of Michael J. Neufeld, ed., Spacefarers: Images of Astronauts and Cosmonauts in the Heroic Era of Spaceflight, in Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol. 48, no. 3 (2017): 362-364. (PDF)
Review of Sergei S. Demidov and Boris V. Lëvshin, eds., The Case of Academician Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin, tran. by Roger Cooke, in Isis, vol. 108, no. 2 (2017): 479-480. (PDF)
Review of Benjamin Peters, How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet, in Russian Review, vol. 76, no. 2 (2017): 388–389. (PDF)
Foreword to Picturing the Cosmos: A Visual History of Early Soviet Space Endeavor, edited by Lina Kohonen (Intellect, 2017). (PDF)
Review of Amir Alexander, Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World, in Notices of the American Mathematical Society 63, no. 5 (2016): 571-574. (PDF)
Review of Michael G. Smith, Rockets and Revolution: A Cultural History of Early Spaceflight, in CritCom, March 19, 2015 (PDF)
Review of Matthew H. Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut, in Technology and Culture 54, no. 3 (2013): 687-689. (PDF)
Review of James T. Andrews, Red Cosmos: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry, in Technology and Culture 52, no. 1 (2011): 408-411. (PDF)
Review of Asif A. Siddiqi, The Red Rocket's Glare: Space Flight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957, in Isis, vol. 106, no. 1 (2011): 193–194. (PDF)
Review of Loren Graham and Irina Dezhina, Science in the New Russia: Crisis, Aid, Reform, in Russian Review, vol. 68, no. 4 (2009): 729-730. (PDF)
Review of Ethan Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars, in Russian Review, vol. 66, no. 3 (2007): 501–545. (PDF)
Review of Deborah Cadbury, Space Race: The Epic Battle Between America and the Soviet Union for Dominion of Space, in The Moscow Times Arts & Ideas Supplement: Context (5-11 May 2006): 4.
Review of Steven Usdin, Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley, in The Times Higher Education Supplement, no. 1 (3 February 2006): 30. (PDF)
Review of Alexander Vucinich, Einstein and Soviet Ideology, in Isis, vol. 95, no. 4 (2004): 739-740. (PDF)
Review of David Mindell, Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing Before Cybernetics, in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 26, no. 1 (January-March 2004): 71-73. (PDF)
Review of Eduard Kolchinsky, ed., Essays on the Lives and Works of the presidents of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, 1725-1917 (English title), in Isis, vol. 94, no. 1 (2003): 125-26. (PDF)
Review of James Harford, Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon, in Isis, vol. 89, no. 2 (1998): 365-66. (PDF)
“Speaking Cybernetically: The Soviet Remaking of an American Science.” Ph.D. dissertation. Program in Science, Technology and Society, MIT, 1999.
“The Dynamics of Research Programs in the Artificial Intelligence Field.” Ph.D. dissertation. Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Moscow, 1991. (PDF)
Мифология советского космоса, пер. А. Писарева и А. Шуваловой (Новое литературное обозрение, 2024).
Кухня и дача: продуктивные пространства советской математики // Неприкосновенный запас. № 2 (154) (2024), стр. 148-166. (PDF)
Социальные механизмы развития математического знания: Экспертиза, мода, перевод / После постпозитивизма, научн. ред. и сост. И.Т. Касавин, И.Д. Невважай, Л.В. Шиповалова, Д.С. Артамонов. М.: РОИФН, 2022, с. 585-588. (PDF)
Герович Вячеслав Александрович / Путь в профессию: Институт истории естествознания и техники в воспоминаниях сотрудников, отв. ред. Р.А. Фандо, сост. и ред. С.С. Илизаров. М: Янус-К, 2022, с. 670-674. (PDF)
Кухня и дача: пространства для «математического» образа жизни в СССР / История науки и техники. Музейное дело. Законы природы и нормы общества: Взаимосвязь и взаимовлияние в прошлом и настоящем. Материалы XV Международной научно-практической конференции. Выпуск 14. Сост. Т.А. Глушкова, А.А. Котомина. М.: Политехнический музей, 2022, с. 344-350. (PDF)
«Математический рай»: параллельная социальная инфраструктура послевоенной советской математики // Логос. № 2 (112) (2020), стр. 93-128. (PDF)
Исторические интерлюдии в кн.: Павел Этингоф и др., Введение в теорию представлений (М.: МЦНМО, 2019)
Интер-Нет! Почему в Советском Союзе не была создана общенациональная компьютерная сеть // Неприкосновенный запас. № 75, 2011, стр. 21-42. (HTML)
(с А.Б. Кожевниковым) Международная конференция по истории российской науки и техники "Интеллигенция: российская и советская наука на мировой арене, 1860 - 1960" // Вопросы истории естествознания и техники. № 4, 2005, стр. 202-205. (PDF)
Человеко-машинные метафоры в советской физиологии // Вопросы истории естествознания и техники. № 3, 2002, стр. 472-506. (PDF)
Проблема самоорганизации в исследованиях по кибернетике и искусственному интеллекту (The Problem of Self-Organization in Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence Research) // Концепции самоорганизации в исторической перспективе / Ред. А.А. Печенкин. Москва: Наука, 1994, стр. 125-145. (PDF)
Подробнее о классической и неклассической кибернетических концепциях самоорганизации. Концепции самоорганизации в исследованиях по искусственному интеллекту (On the Classical and Non-Classical Conceptions of Self-Organization in Cybernetics. Conceptions of Self-Organization in Artificial Intelligence Research) // Концепции самоорганизации: Становление нового образа научного мышления / Ред. А.А. Печенкин. Москва: Наука, 1994, стр. 62-82. (PDF)
Кибернетика, синергетика, искусственный интеллект: модели самоорганизации (Cybernetics, Synergetics, Artificial Intelligence: Models of Self-Organization)// Метафизика и идеология в истории естествознания / Ред. А.А. Печенкин. Москва: Наука, 1994, стр. 115-127. (PDF)
Динамика исследовательских программ в области искусственного интеллекта. Автореферат дисс. на соиск. степени канд. филос. наук. Институт философии АН СССР, 1991. (PDF)
Динамика исследовательских программ в области искусственного интеллекта. Дисс. на соиск. степени канд. филос. наук. Институт истории естествознания и техники АН СССР, 1991. (PDF)
Развитие элементаристских представлений в истории искусственного интеллекта // Классическое естествознание и современная наука. Новосибирск, 1991, стр. 51-59.
Критический анализ теории рефлексии В.А. Лефевра // Материалы ХХХIII Всесоюзной научной конференции аспирантов и молодых специалистов по истории естествознания и техники, февраль 1991 г. Часть 2. Москва: ИИЕТ РАН, 1991, стр. 153-154. (PDF)
Область искусственного интеллекта: науковедческий анализ // Синтез знаний: новый этап. IV Чтения памяти академика Б.М. Кедрова. Тезисы Всесоюзной научной конференции, сентябрь 1990 г. Одесса, 1990. (PDF)
Проблема самоорганизации в кибернетике и искусственном интеллекте. Препринт No. 32 (1990). Москва: ИИЕТ РАН, 1990. (PDF)
Развитие идеи самоорганизации в кибернетике и искусственном интеллекте // Материалы ХХХII Всесоюзной научной конференции аспирантов и молодых специалистов по истории естествознания и техники, октябрь-ноябрь 1989 г. Часть 2. Москва: ИИЕТ РАН, 1990, стр. 266-269. (PDF)
Влияние идей философии науки на современные исследования по искусственному интеллекту // Формы представления знаний и творческое мышление. Тезисы докладов и сообщений к Всесоюзному семинару 3-5 октября 1989 года. Часть II. Новосибирск, 1989, стр. 165-167. (PDF)
Человеческое понимание как объект фундаментальных исследований // Методологические проблемы взаимосвязи фундаментальных исследований и разработки интенсивных технологий. Москва-Обнинск, 1987, стр. 232-235.
Компьютеризация гуманитарных наук и проблема понимания: методологические вопросы // Современная математика: методологические и мировоззренческие проблемы. Часть 1. Москва-Обнинск, 1986, стр. 155-157.
“Mathematics as a ‘Way of Life’ in the Late Soviet Union,” SPARK! Mini-Talks From the Davis Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 31 March 2025. (video)
“We live in a prison”: Informal international contacts of Soviet mathematicians; conference The Sputnik Factor. Scientific and Technological Global Competition, Collaboration and Circulation of Knowledge in the post-Sputnik years, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, 19 May 2023.
Playing the System: Soviet Mathematicians’ Strategies of Circumvention; conference “Minority science” in the short 20th century: Imagining science from the margins of academia, Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Academy of Science of the Czech Republic, Prague, 1 April 2023.
Metaphoric revolutions: Human-machine analogies in the history of science; “Future Unknown” International Education Forum (virtual), China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China, 1 April 2023.
Cybernetics Across Cultures: The Localization of the Universal; Art, Technology and Philosophy Symposium (II) Cybernetics for the 21st Century (virtual), Media Lab of Guangdong Times Museum, China, 4 November 2022.
Социальные механизмы развития математического знания: Экспертиза, мода, перевод; Третий Международный Конгресс Русского общества истории и философии науки (РОИФН) После постпозитивизма (virtual), 9 сентября 2022 (in Russian).
Кухня и дача: Пространства для «математического образа жизни» в СССР; XV Международная научно-практическая конференция «История науки и техники. Музейное дело» (virtual), 9 декабря 2021 (in Russian)
Математические школы позднесоветского периода: от научной утопии к интеллектуальному оазису; Семинар Большого проекта "Социальная антропология институтов позднего СССР", НИУ ВШЭ в Санкт-Петербурге (virtual), 19 ноября 2021 (in Russian)
Человек – машина? Борьба метафор в истории науки; New Nature exhibit of the Recycle Group at Центральный выставочный зал «Манеж», Санкт-Петербург (virtual), 10 August 2021 (in Russian) (YouTube video)
The Kitchen and the Dacha: Productive Spaces of Soviet Mathematics; 26th International Congress of History of Science and Technology, Prague (virtual), 27 July 2021
Кухня и дача: Пространства для «математического образа жизни» в СССР; CHORUS: Colloquium for the History Of Russian Science, May 27, 2021 (in Russian)
The Human Inside a Propaganda Machine, Univeristà di Padova, Italy, 28 October 2020
The Production of Knowledge in the USSR, Chicago, 10-11 June 2019
“Explosive Math: Soviet Mathematicians, the Bomb, and the International Community during the Cold War”; Transnational Perspectives on Soviet Cutting-Edge Technology, Bern, 31 Jan – 1 Feb 2019
“CrowdMath: Massive Research Collaboration among High School and College Students” (with Julia Braverman and Anna Mirny); Enabling Mathematical Cultures, Oxford, UK, December 7, 2017 (PDF)
“That-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named: Remembering Secrecy in the Soviet Space Program”; Cultures of secrecy in Soviet life, Zurich, Switzerland, January 27, 2017 (PDF)
“A Marginal Elite: Soviet Physical-Mathematical Schools and the Cultivation of the New Superfluous Man”; ASEEES annual meeting, Washington, D.C., November 19, 2016
“Will Mathematics Save the World? The Strugatsky Brothers and the Ethos of Soviet Math Schools”; International conference, Scientific Utopias in the Soviet Union: Fiction, Science, and Power (1917-1991), Paris, September 23, 2016
“Cosmonauts inside a Propaganda Machine”; Revealing the Cosmonaut symposium at the exhibit Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age, Science Museum, London, February 5, 2016
“‘Socially and mathematically, it was a paradise’: Private Worlds of Soviet Mathematics in the 1970s”; HSS annual meeting, Boston, November 22, 2013
“Parallel Worlds: Formal Structures and Informal Mechanisms of Postwar Soviet Mathematics”; ASEEES annual meeting, Boston, November 22, 2013
"'Writing Across the Lines': A Parallel Social Infrastructure in Soviet Mathematics in the 1970s"; MIT's Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS) 25th Anniversary Symposium, MIT, November 9, 2013
“The Gelfand Century, 1913-2013”; Gelfand Centennial Conference: A View of 21st Century Mathematics, August 29, 2013 (video)
"Soviet Mathematics during the Cold War: A Parallel Social Infrastructure and Idealistic Ethos"; International Conference Dark Matters: Contents and Discontents of Cold War Science, Barcelona, Spain, May 31, 2013 (video)
“Unveiling the Construction of Truth: Archives and the Soviet Space Program”; International Conference What Have We Learned from the Soviet Archives?, Uppsala University, Sweden, 11 May 2013
“Innovation under Socialism: Formal Structures and Informal Mechanisms of Postwar Soviet Mathematics,” Annual Conference of Japanese Society for the Study of Russian History, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, 5 October 2012
“Creative Discomfort: The Culture of the Gelfand Seminar at Moscow University”; Mathematical Cultures I conference, De Morgan House, London, 10-12 September 2012 (video)
“Soviet Cosmonauts in a Propaganda Machine: The Human Side of a Public Icon”; Understanding the Soviet Space Race workshop, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, 27 April 2012
“Cyberocracy or Cybureaucracy? Cybernetics and the End of Utopia in the Soviet Union”; Intellectual History of the Cold War, Hamburg Institute for Social Research, Germany, August-September 2010
“Computing under Stress: Astronauts as Computer Users”; Microsoft Research New England Colloquium, June 2010
“Measuring Poetry: Andrei Kolmogorov’s Mathematical Poetics”; Sciences of Communication in the 20th Century, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany, March 2010
“The Feedback of Fear: American and Soviet (Mis)Perceptions of the Other Side's Cybernetics Agenda”; XXIII International Congress of History of Science and Technology, Budapest, Hungary, July 2009
Memories of Space and the Spaces of Memory: Remembering Sergei Korolev”; Cosmic Enthusiasm: The Cultural Impact of Space Exploration on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the 1950s, Basel, Switzerland, January 2009
“Cybernetic Translations: The Allure and the Menace of Cyberspeak,” keynote address; Thinking and Making Connections: Cybernetic Heritage in the Social and Human Sciences, Nobel Museum and Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden, November 2008
“Memory, Identity, and Culture in the Space Age”; Remembering the Space Age: Conference on the 50th Anniversary of the Space Age, sponsored by NASA and NASM Division of Space History, Washington, D.C., October 2007
“Engineering Truth: Memory, Identity, and Culture in the Soviet Space Program”; University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Slavic Department, March 2007
“The Engineers Who Came in From the Cold: Stalin’s Rocket Designers Face Khrushchev’s Thaw”; AAASS annual meeting, Washington, D.C., November 2006
"The Technopolitics of Automation and Human Control in the Soviet Piloted Space Program"; Technical University of Eindhoven, April 2005
“Human-Machine Issues in the Soviet Manned Space Program”; NASA workshop on “Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight,” Washington, D.C., March 2005
“The New Soviet Man in a Man-Machine System: The Technical Intelligentsia, Automatic Control, and the Space Race”; conference on “Intelligentsia: Russian and Soviet science on the world stage, 1860-1960,” University of Georgia, October 2004
“Integrating Humans and Machines for Spaceflight: American and Soviet Approaches” (with David Mindell); SHOT annual meeting, Amsterdam, October 2004
“InterNyet: Why the Soviet Union Did Not Build a Nationwide Computer Network in the 1960s”; Tensions of Europe conference, Budapest, Hungary, March 2004
“Trusting the Machine: The Technopolitics of Automation in the Soviet Space Program”; American Historical Association 2004 annual meeting, Washington, D.C., January 2004
“The Human Link”: Defining the Function of Cosmonauts in Early Soviet Spaceflight, 1961-1965”; the 2003 annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia
“Human-Machine Interaction in the Soviet Space Program: The Cybernetic Context”; MIT, Mechanical Engineering Department Seminar, April 2003
“Human-Machine Issues in the Soviet Space Program: An Interactive History on the Web,” History and Sociology of Science Workshop, University of Pennsylvania, January 2003
Toward an Interactive History of Science and Technology: Reflections on the Dibner/Sloan Web Project; LXV plenum of the Russian National Committee of the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Moscow, May 2002
"Soviet Cybernetics and Computer-based Objectivity in the Khrushchev Era"; Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 2000
"'Russian Scandals': Soviet Readings of American Cybernetics in the Wake of the Cold War"; Russian/East-European History Workshop, Harvard University, March 2000
"Speaking Cybernetically: The Discourse of Objectivity in the Post-Stalin Era"; the 1999 annual meeting of the History of Science Society, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 1999
"From Analog to Digital via Ideological: Computing and the Anti-Cybernetics Campaign in the Soviet Union in the Early 1950s"; the 1999 annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology, Detroit, Michigan, October 1999
"Science in Transition from Stalin to Khrushchev: The Case of Cybernetics"; Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, Boston University, May 1999
"From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: Soviet Cybernetics as a Vehicle of Reform and a Bandwagon"; Science, Technology and Society Program Colloquium, MIT, April 1999
"Computing and the Anti-Cybernetics Campaign in the Soviet Union in the Early 1950s"; Colloquium on Cold War Science and Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, February 1999
"A Vision of the Future: Soviet Cybernetics As an Interdisciplinary Project and a Social Movement"; Joint Seminar for the History and Philosophy of 20th Century Science, Harvard University, November 1998
"Speaking Cybernetically: A Great Scientific Fashion of the Khrushchev Era"; Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 1997
"Negative Feedback: The Anti-Cybernetics Campaign in the Soviet Union"; the 1996 annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology, London, England, August 1996
"Conceptual Bilingualism vs. Translation: An Example of Russian and American Strategies for Cross-Cultural Communication"; conference on "Culture, Conflict, and Difference," Princeton University, October 1995
"The Man-Machine Metaphor and Ideological Disputes in Soviet Science in the 1950s"; Joint Atlantic Seminar in the History of Biology, MIT, April 1994
"Artificial Intelligence with a National Face: A Comparative Study of American and Soviet Cognitive Styles"; the 1993 annual meeting of the History of Science Society, Santa Fe, New Mexico, November 1993
The things we forgot to remember: The other space race (BBC, May 30, 2005)
The shuttle era over, questions abound as NASA turns to Soyuz capsules, by Tu Thanh Ha, The Globe and Mail (July 22, 2011)
Computer Networks in the Soviet Union (interview), Serious Science (January 21,2014)
Planetarium Inspires New Cosmonauts, by Matthew Bodner, The Moscow Times (February 23, 2014)
Construction of the Soviet Cosmonaut (interview), Serious Science (March 5, 2014)
Informal Social Institutions in Soviet Mathematics (interview), Serious Science (August 21, 2014)
Умолчание об авариях часто оправдывали секретностью, Независимая газета (12 апреля 2016) (in Russian)
NASA's Unexplained Files S04E02: Rise of the Planet Killer (TV series episode), Science Channel (September 6, 2016)
NASA's Unexplained Files S04E05: Curse of the Full Moon (TV series episode), Science Channel (September 27, 2016)
NASA's Unexplained Files S04E07: Mystery of the Invisible Planet (TV series episode), Science Channel (October 11, 2016)
NASA's Unexplained Files S04E08: Mars's Deepest Secret (TV series episode), Science Channel (October 18, 2016)
Why Thousands of American Parents Are Sending their Kids to 'Russian Math' by Carey Goldberg, WBUR (April 13, 2017)
NASA's Unexplained Files S06E02: Aliens vs. Stalin at Area 51 (TV series episode), Science Channel (April 18, 2019)
NASA's Unexplained Files S06E04: Pluto's Evil Twin (TV series episode), Science Channel (May 2, 2019)
NASA's Unexplained Files S06E06: Secrets of the Alien Signals (TV series episode), Science Channel (May 16, 2019)
Что машины не могут делать? или AI 2020 (док. фильм; реж. Ефим Резников, 2020)
The Man Who Fell From Space, by Sean Braswell, OZY (November 27, 2020)
The Wired Cold War, interview by Sean Guillory, University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (December 4, 2020)
Бог из машины (док. фильм; реж. Родион Чепель, 2021)
Gagarin and the lost Moon, BBC (April 10, 2021)
Мифы советского космоса, Центр "Макор" (April 12, 2021)
How Russia's Yuri Gagarin Became the First Man in Space Thanks to 'Steampunk' Contraption, by Aristos Georgiou, Newsweek (April 12, 2021)
The Soviet Union Leaps Forward: The 60th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's Space Flight, Kennan Institute (April 13, 2021)
Why the Soviets didn’t start a PC revolution, interview by Vilius Petkauskas (May 29, 2021)
История науки и история космонавтики, STARTALK (December 14, 2021)
История компьютеров в СССР, Meduza (February 9, 2022)
In Ukraine, Mathematics Offers Strength in Numbers, by Siobhan Roberts, The New York Times (September 12, 2023)
Память о космической эре, беседа Дениса Сивкова, Неприкосновенный запас 4(150) (2023): 59-75