Slava Gerovitch

Bio

Slava Gerovitch received his M.S. in applied mathematics from the Moscow Oil & Gas Institute in 1985, Ph.D. in philosophy of science from the Institute for the History of Natural Science and Technology in Moscow in 1992, and Ph.D. in history and social study of science from MIT's Science, Technology and Society Program in 1999. Dr. Gerovitch's research interests are history of mathematics, cybernetics, astronautics, and computing. His book, From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics, received the honorable mention for the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize for an outstanding monograph in Russian studies. His most recent books are Voices of the Soviet Space Program: Cosmonauts, Soldiers, and Engineers Who Took the USSR into Space and Soviet Space Mythologies: Public Images, Private Memories, and the Making of a Cultural Identity, the winner of 2021 Gardner-Lasser Aerospace History Literature Award and a finalist for the 2016 Historia Nova Prize for the best book on Russian intellectual and cultural history. He is an associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.

Dr. Gerovitch co-founded MIT PRIMES (Program for Research in Mathematics, Engineering and Science) in 2010, latter adding the Computer Science section (2012), PRIMES-USA (2013), PRIMES Circle in Math (2013), MathROOTS (2015), PRIMES STEP (2015), CrowdMath (2016), PRIMES-Switzerland (2017), PRIMES Circle in Computer Science (2022), and Yulia's Dream for students from Ukraine (2022). He also served as program director for the Math Department's research and reading programs for undergraduates and high school students: RSI and SPUR (2012-2021), and DRP and UROP+ programs (2014-2021). He is a recipient of the 2020 MIT School of Science Infinite Mile Award.

Dr. Gerovitch has been lecturing at MIT since 1999. His most recent class is Cultural History of Mathematics.