Other Publications

Aside from my book, Rational Action: The Sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940–1960 (MIT Press, 2015), I have written a number of scholarly articles, listed below. I also write professionally for FYI, a science policy news service from the American Institute of Physics, and have written informally about the history and historiography of science at my Ether Wave Propaganda blog. I tweet under @GWilliamThomas.

William Thomas, “Calculation and Reckoning: Navigating Science, War, and Guilt,” in “Well, Doc, You’re In”: Freeman Dyson’s Journey Through the Universe, edited by David Kaiser (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2022), pp. 47–69.

William Thomas, “Elitism in Physics: What Happens When the Profession’s Scaffolding Comes Down?” Physics Today 75/9 (2022): 10-11. https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.5072

William Thomas, “Research and Development, Testing, and the Economics of Information, 1937–63,” Economics and Engineering: Institutions, Practices, and Cultures. History of Political Economy 52 (2020) (annual suppl.): 168–190.
https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-8717977

William Thomas, “Scientists’ Imagined Pasts and Historians’ Appreciation of Scientific Thought,” Isis 108/4 (2017): 830–835. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/695605

William Thomas, “Les Études de Controverse et le Récit du Renouveau Méthodologique en STS,” Zilsel No. 2 (2017): 131–147. https://doi.org/10.3917/zil.002.0131

William Thomas, “Bureaucratic Reformism and the Cults of Sir Henry Tizard and Operational Research,” in Scientific Governance in Britain, 1914–79, edited by Don Leggett and Charlotte Sleigh (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 45–62. https://dx.doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9780719090981.003.0003

William Thomas, “Useful History of Operations Research,” OR/MS Today 42/3 (2015): 18-22. https://doi.org/10.1287/orms.2015.03.08

William Thomas, “Decisions and Dynamics: Postwar Theoretical Problems and the MIT Style of Economics,” MIT and the Transformation of American Economics. History of Political Economy 46 (2014) (annual suppl.): 295-314. https://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00182702-2716208

William Thomas, “Research Agendas in Climate Studies: The Case of West Antarctic Ice Sheet Research,” Climatic Change 122 (2014): 299-311https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-0981-3

William Thomas, “The Mathematical Management of Uncertainty in Britain and America in the Second World War and After,” in Des Mathématiciens et des Guerres: Histoires de Confrontations (XIXe-XXe Siècle), edited by Antonin Durand, Laurent Mazliak, and Rossana Tazzioli (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2013), pp. 71-79. https://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/30191

William Thomas, “Strategies of Detection: Interpretive Methods in Experimental Particle Physics, 1930-1950,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 42 (2012): 389-431. https://dx.doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2012.42.5.389

William Thomas, “Operations Research vis-à-vis Management at Arthur D. Little and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s,” Business History Review 86 (2012): 99-122. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007680512000050

William Thomas and Lambert Williams, “The Epistemologies of Non-Forecasting Simulations, Part I: Industrial Dynamics and Management Pedagogy at MIT,” Science in Context 22 (2009): 245-270.  (Will wrote most of this one.) https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0269889709002233

Lambert Williams and William Thomas, “The Epistemologies of Non-Forecasting Simulations, Part II: Climate, Chaos, Computing Style, and the Contextual Plasticity of Error,” Science in Context 22 (2009): 271-310. (Lambert wrote most of this one.)  https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0269889709002221

William Thomas, “The Heuristics of War: Scientific Method and the Founders of Operations Research,” British Journal for the History of Science 40 (2007): 251-274. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007087407009508

William Thomas, “Selling OR: An Historical Perspective” OR/MS Today, October 2004.

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