Paul E. Ceruzzi is Curator of Aerospace Electronics and Computing at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
His work there includes research, writing, planning exhibits, collecting artifacts, and lecturing on the subjects of microelectronics, computing, and control as they apply to the practice of air and space flight.
Dr. Ceruzzi attended Yale University and the University of Kansas, from which received a Ph.D. in American Studies in 1981. His graduate studies included a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Institute for the History of Science in Hamburg, Germany. Before joining the staff of the National Air and Space Museum, he taught History of Technology at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina.
He is the author or co-author of several books on the history of computing and related topics: Reckoners: The Prehistory of The Digital Computer (1983); Smithsonian Landmarks in the History of Digital Computing (1994, with Peggy Kidwell); A History of Modern Computing (1998); and Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age (1989). The latter book was published in connection with an exhibition of the same name at the National Air and Space Museum. He recently co-edited, with James Trefil and Harold Morowitz, the Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (Routledge, 2001), and he is currently working on a history of Systems Integration firms located in the Washington, D.C. region.
In addition to curating the "Beyond the Limits" exhibition, Dr. Ceruzzi worked on NASM exhibits on "the Global Positioning System: A New Constellation," "Space Race," and "How Things Fly." Elsewhere he served as a consultant on the "Information Age," at the National Museum of American History, and for the opening of the "Heinz-Nixdorf Forum," a museum devoted to the history of information technology located in Paderborn, Germany.