Inside my Macbook Pro.

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I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. I study the history of mathematics and computing in the twentieth century United States, with a particular interest in how different academic communities treated the computer as a scientific instrument and negotiated a place for it in their knowledge-making infrastructure. My first book project documents transformations in the production and understanding of mathematical proof precipitated by the introduction of computing. I am also working on a history of computer memory, a history of early facial recognition software and a history of how academic computer science became a discipline.

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contact:

sadick at sas dot upenn dot edu

@mysdick

faculty webpage

The Alan Turing Centenary Research Project: Minds, Mechanism, and Mathematics

For the July 2012 - June 2015, I was a Turing Fellow within the Turing Centenary Research Project: Mind, Mechanism, and Mathematics funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The research project aims to explore big questions born out of Turing's important and manifold work. The project is part of a larger celebration of Alan Turing's life and work surrounding the centenary of his birth - June 23, 2012. The Alan Turing Year has generated and continues to generate a wide variety of events, performances, and publications.

Harvard Horizons 2013

I was excited to be a member of the first cohort of Harvard Horizons Scholars. Each of us gave a presentation about our work at a symposium on May 6, 2013. You can watch mine here.

inside a Symbolics Inc. 3645, 36-bit L-Machine (1985) from The Rhode Island Computer Museum. Photograph copyright Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.