I am a historian of modern science and technology. I'm interested in all kinds of things, many of which have something to do with the chemical sciences and industries, environmental regulation, computing, data and information, and scientific internationalism.

I am Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of History at Duke University for 2020-21. Since 2019, I have been an Assistant Professor in Duke’s History Department. In 2018-19, I was Visiting Assistant Professor in History and Science & Technology Studies at Boston College; from 2016-2018, I was a postdoctoral Ziff Environmental Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. I'm working on a book (under contract with University of Chicago Press) entitled Compound Words: Chemists, Information, and the Synthetic World.

I have a PhD in History of Science from Princeton University (2016), and I have previously spent a year each as Herdegen Fellow in the History of Scientific Information at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, course developer for an online education startup, and marketeer for a leading purveyor of collectible figurines. Once upon a time, I wrote a thesis about party scenes in Virginia Woolf novels. I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA.

Contact

evan.heplersmith@duke.edu
@ehepler