Associate Professor of History, on leave for the 2024–2025 academic year
David K. Hecht is a historian of science, focusing on the modern United States. His particular interest is in public images of science, and he has published on the phenomenon of "scientific celebrities." His first book, Storytelling and Science: Rewriting Oppenheimer in the Nuclear Age, was published 2015 (University of Massachusetts Press), and he is currently researching a second book project on the intersections between nuclear and environmental history. Other scholarly interests include the history of energy, as well as the role that popular rhetoric about science plays in reinforcing (and sometimes challenging) the status quo. His courses include "The Nuclear Age," "The History of Energy," "Image, Myth, and Memory," and "Science on Trial." In 2011 he was awarded the Sydney B. Karofsky prize, Bowdoin's annual teaching prize for junior faculty.
Teaching Areas: History of Science; 20th Century United States; The Cold War
"Rachel Carson and the Rhetoric of Revolution," Environmental History, Volume 24, Issue 3, July 2019, Pages 561–582.
“Pseudoscience and the Search for Truth.” In Pseudoscience: the Conspiracy Against Science, Eds. Allison B. Kaufman and James C. Kaufman. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018, 3-20.
Storytelling and Science: Rewriting Oppenheimer in the Nuclear Age. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015)
“How To Make a Villain: Rachel Carson and the Politics of Anti-Environmentalism,” Endeavour 36 (December 2012): 149-155.
“Constructing a Scientist: Expert Authority and Public Images of Rachel Carson,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 41 (Summer 2011): 277-302.
“A Nuclear Narrative: Robert Oppenheimer, Autobiography, and Public Authority,” Biography 33 (Winter 2010): 167-184.
“The Atomic Hero: Robert Oppenheimer and the Making of Scientific Icons in the early Cold War,” Technology and Culture 49 (October 2008): 943-966.
