Lillian Hoddeson

Lillian Hartman Hoddeson (born 20 December 1940, in New York City) is an American historian of science, specializing in the history of physics and technology during the 2nd half of the 20th century.

Hoddeson received in 1957 a high school diploma from the Bronx High School of Science, in 1961 a bachelor's degree in physics from Barnard College, and in 1966 a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University with a dissertation on solid-state physics.

She was an assistant professor of physics from 1967 to 1970 at Barnard College and from 1971 to 1976 at Rutgers University.

In 1974–1975 she was a visiting fellow at Princeton University and took Thomas Kuhn's "History of Quantum Mechanics" graduate course.

From 1977 to 1992 she held various academic positions at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, before becoming there an associate professor from 1993 to 2000 and a full professor from 2000 until her retirement.

Since 1978 she has held the position of Fermilab's historian.

Hoddeson is the co-author or editor of several books and has published more than 50 articles in referred journals.

Her publications include a biography of John Bardeen, history of the development of the transistor, history of Fermilab, technical history of the beginning of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and history of the development of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project.

She was married to physicist Gordon Baym from 1981 to 1992.

She was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 2000–2001 and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

In 2012 she received the Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics from the American Physical Society.

She co-authored three important books on the history of particle physics and a 2015 book on the Superconducting Super Collider.