David Cassidy
Honorary Degree Recipient
- Doctor of Science, Purdue University 1997
Dr. David Cassidy is a Professor in the Natural Science Program at Hofstra University, and is currently the Chair of the Section for History and Philosophy of Science of the New York Academy of Science. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue in Physics in 1976.
Dr. Cassidy's career in the History of Science began with his doctoral dissertation on Werner Heisenberg and he has had an outstanding career as a writer and editor in the history of physics. He served for six years as Associate Editor of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein and has been an editorial consultant for the collected works of Heisenberg, Bohr and Pauli. His book, Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg, published in 1991, has been widely acclaimed and has been translated into about a half dozen foreign languages. For this book he has been awarded a 1992 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award and the 1993 Pfizer Award of the History of Science Society, the latter the highest award in the field. He has subsequently written two more books, Einstein and our World and (with Jeremy Bernstein) Scientists at War: The Farm Hall Transcripts. The latter is a definitive commentary on transcripts of conversations of Heisenberg and his colleagues secretly recorded in England after WWII.
David has had high visibility as an authority on German science through his books, many articles, participation in numerous panel discussions, and interviews with journalists from media such as the New York Times and Scientific American. This coming spring, he will deliver a major address at the meeting of the American Physical Society on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the electron.
Excerpted from the nomination letter by Professors Arnold Tubis and Solomon Gartenhaus and Professor Emeritus Norman Pearlman of Physics, and Professor Vernard Foley of History, and Professor Emeritus Joseph Haberer of Political Science, October 17, 1996