Peter Galison Peter Galison

Peter Galison is a physicist, historian of science, and filmmaker at Harvard University, where he is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor. In 1997, he was named a MacArthur Fellow; in 2017 he won the American Physical Society’s Abraham Pais Prize; and with his Event Horizon Telescope colleagues, Galison shared in the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for the first image of a black hole. He is the author of several books, including How Experiments End; Image and Logic: A Material History of Microphysics; Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps; and (with L. Daston) Objectivity. Galison partnered (as dramaturg) with South African artist William Kentridge on a multi-screen installation, “The Refusal of Time” (2012) and an associated chamber opera. His documentary film (with Pamela Hogan, 2000) probed the moral-political debates over the H-bomb: Ultimate Weapon: The H-bomb Dilemma. He and Robb Moss co-directed Secrecy (2008), on national security secrecy, which premiered at Sundance. The two also co-directed Containment, (2015), about the need to guard radioactive materials and warn the 10,000-year future. Galison’s current film, to be released in 2020, is on black holes: “The Edge of All We Know.”