Trevor Owens
Chief Research Officer at the American Institute of Physics. Working on the history of science, libraries and archives, and social science research. Fan of bike rides, small dogs, and vegetarian cuisine.
- Help Close the Discoverability Gap: Join the Wikipedia Edit-a-thon for Women in Science -> www.aip.org/library/ex-l...
- “A brief guide to science outreach” by Don Lincoln in @physicstoday.bsky.social brings together practical guidance and compelling examples for scientists and engineers who want to engage more intentionally in outreach. physicstoday.aip.org/features/a-b...
- Reposted by Trevor OwensWe talk a lot about our collections, but how are they actually being used?
- References in graduate student research are a powerful way to see the impact of an archive. This initial look at some of the 160 theses & dissertations referencing @aip.bsky.social's Niels Bohr Library & Archives shows part of how our collections advance scholarship. www.aip.org/library/ex-l...
- References in graduate student research are a powerful way to see the impact of an archive. This initial look at some of the 160 theses & dissertations referencing @aip.bsky.social's Niels Bohr Library & Archives shows part of how our collections advance scholarship. www.aip.org/library/ex-l...
- Listened to the first episode of this season and I’m very much looking forward to the rest of them.
- Fun photos of the month post from Karina Cooper on the Niels Bohr Library and Archives blog on 100 years of physics and television. www.aip.org/library/ex-l...
- I’m excited to share this opportunity for an early-career social scientist on the @aip.bsky.social research team. Please share with anyone interested in putting social science research skills to work to empower positive change in the physical sciences. workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/defau...
- Reposted by Trevor OwensIt's cold out, so it's a good time to think about racing through the searing heat of the Sun's corona at 430,000 miles per hour. In today's AIP History Weekly Edition @jowiph.bsky.social looks at the how space scientists carried the idea of a solar probe from the 1950s through to launch in 2018.
- I’m excited to share the @aip.bsky.social 2026 Research Agenda. Developed with leaders across AIP’s Federation, it outlines five initiatives on policy & funding, workforce, digital preservation, international collaboration, and identities in the physical sciences. www.aip.org/aip/2026-aip...
- Honored and grateful that @aip.bsky.social is receiving @nehgov.bsky.social support for our project, Preserving 21st-Century Science: A National Fellowship for Early & Mid-Career Cultural Heritage Professionals.
- NEH awards $75.1 million in grants to 84 humanities projects, including research, education, and public programs on the U.S. 250th anniversary. tinyurl.com/3a37thbk
- Looks like the IMLS just posted NOFOs for all their major grant proposals with due dates of March 13th across the board. Great to see that they are inviting proposals for their full slate of programs content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USI...
- Reposted by Trevor OwensIn today's AIP History Weekly Edition, we look at recent articles by @rhiggitt.bsky.social and Yuto Ishibashi, which show how record-keeping, history, and institutional governance intertwined during the centuries-long evolution of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.
- This excerpt from David M. Berry’s new book, Artificial Intelligence and Critical Theory analyzing the “Bliss Atractor” in Claude is facanating. Analyzing these kinds of “glitches” will be really powerful for demystifying the logic of LLMs stunlaw.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-...
- “NASA’s Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts” -> www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/c...
- Just finished reading @patchenbarss.bsky.social’s “The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius.” Its a rich and engaging exploration of physics, mathematics and his timultuious personal life. Highly recommend this one. patchenbarss.com/books/the-im...
- Was also thrilled to see @patchenbarss.bsky.social’s cite this 1989 oral history interview from @aip.bsky.social’s archives
- Reposted by Trevor OwensWhen we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.
- Great interview on the origins of science supercomputing centers as part of the infrastructure for research in the physical sciences. Looking forward to seeing more of Julia's research on this in the future.
- In the latest Weekly Edition from AIP History, Julia Menzel answers some questions about the dissertation she completed this past summer at MIT. Now, she is working as a postdoc at @ihpst-uoft.bsky.social in Toronto. This is some great research that spans from epistemology to science policy.
- Reposted by Trevor Owens"How to Spot AI Hallucinations Like a Reference Librarian" HT @tjowens.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/cardcata...
- Reposted by Trevor OwensOur latest blog post is all about floppy disks!
- Stephen Hawking’s Floppy Disks & the Digital Legacy of Science: An Interview with Leontien Talboom -> www.aip.org/library/ex-l...
- Stephen Hawking’s Floppy Disks & the Digital Legacy of Science: An Interview with Leontien Talboom -> www.aip.org/library/ex-l...
- Reposted by Trevor OwensGreat overview of Alex's argument that we need to understand the scale of Truman's ignorance about the atomic bomb prior to its use as informing his insistence on gaining presidential control over it afterward.
- Reposted by Trevor OwensI love these photos. And I love that there are so many of Hedwig. She's so adorable.
- As a follow on to the interview I did with @oliviacampbell.bsky.social about her Sisters in Science Book, the AIP library and archives team is featuring a whole series of photos from our collections of women physicists featured in the book. -> www.aip.org/library/ex-l...
- As a follow on to the interview I did with @oliviacampbell.bsky.social about her Sisters in Science Book, the AIP library and archives team is featuring a whole series of photos from our collections of women physicists featured in the book. -> www.aip.org/library/ex-l...
- Great interview with @oliviacampbell.bsky.social about how she used archival sources for SISTERS IN SCIENCE www.aip.org/library/ex-l...
- Reposted by Trevor OwensThis is a great, quick, informative read on an important institution in the long history of science policy.
- “Where Science Meets Storytelling: Twelve Years of the Science Blogs Web Archive” great short interview about the importance of archiving ephemeral science blog content at the Library of Congress.
- Estimated Decline in New Graduate Physics Program Enrollments, Fall 2025. “First-year enrollment in graduate physics programs is estimated to have declined by 7–9%” New report from the @aip.bsky.social research team. Read more here-> www.aip.org/statistics/e...
- I had a lot of fun writing a new piece for Radiations Magazine about the awe-inspiring work of NIST metrologists. I got to learn how they measure mass with astonishing precision using universal constants! Truly incredible science in action. students.aip.org/radiations/f...
- In 1969, @physicstoday.bsky.social asked readers to help identify a 1932 APS banquet photo. The replies—annotated copies, letters, stories—became part of AIP’s archives. I wrote about what this early “crowdsourcing” effort tells us about collective memory in science. www.aip.org/library/ex-l...
- Reposted by Trevor OwensExplore Part II of an insightful interview from today's Scholarly Kitchen with @wendyqueen.bsky.social @hopkinspress.bsky.social & @tjowens.bsky.social on how digital tools have reshaped the history of science. #ReadUP #TeamUP scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/11/25/s...
- Reposted by Trevor OwensI! M! L! S! "The ruling nullifies the Administration’s actions to dismantle IMLS and permanently prohibits the Administration from taking such actions in the future. The ruling has immediate nationwide effect." www.ala.org/news/2025/11...
- I picked up a copy of Alec Nevala-Lee’s new book “Collisions : a physicist's journey from Hiroshima to the death of the dinosaurs” a few months ago on. This overview and discussion of the book from @williamthomas.bsky.social is moving it toward the top of my to read stack www.aip.org/history/neva...
- Reposted by Trevor Owens21 applications from all around the world -- a new record! Gotta go crunch some numbers this week to see how many we can fund.
- Big thanks to @wendyqueen.bsky.social for the opportunity to talk about some of the work our team at @aip.bsky.social is doing to to support the physical sciences community through humanities and social science research. Stay tuned for part two!
- Guest Post — Science as Story, Memory as Infrastructure: A Conversation with Trevor Owens, Part 1 scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/11/19/g...
- Reposted by Trevor OwensHere's an insightful interview from today's @scholarlykitchen.bsky.social & an interview from @wendyqueen.bsky.social @hopkinspress.bsky.social w/ @tjowens.bsky.social on where humanistic inquiry reveals deeper dimensions of how we understand science, scholarship, and ourselves. #ReadUP #TeamUP
- Guest Post — Science as Story, Memory as Infrastructure: A Conversation with Trevor Owens, Part 1 scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/11/19/g...
- “H.R.6028 - Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act” -> www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c... curious to see how this develops regarding who has the authority over the Librarian of Congress.
- Huge step forward in enabling access and use of content archived from government websites!
- 1/ Announcing GovScape – a public search system for 10 million U.S. government PDFs (70 million pages)! GovScape offers visual search, semantic text search, and keyword search. Explore below: Website: www.govscape.net ArXiv link: arxiv.org/abs/2511.11010
- Today’s World Digital Preservation Day 2025 brings the release of the new Global Bit List of Endangered Digital Materials from the @dpc-chat.digipres.club.ap.brid.gy 🌍 It’s a snapshot of the digital materials most at risk of being lost forever. #WDPD2025 -> www.dpconline.org/digipres/cha...
- This year’s Bit List introduces sector-specific guidance, including new sections for Research and Academic Institutions. This can help each field understand and address its unique preservation challenges. #WDPD2025
- I had the privilege of serving on the Bit List Council, working alongside an incredible group of colleagues from across the globe — all committed to protecting our shared digital heritage. #WDPD2025
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View full threadAs the DPC’s @williamkilbride.bsky.social notes, “Digital preservation is not just a technical concern, it is a societal necessity.” That makes awareness raising & consensus building work like this critical. Learn more about the Bit List here 🔗 www.dpconline.org/news/dpc-lau... #WDPD2025
- Reposted by Trevor OwensDo you take snapshots of your everyday life as a physical scientist? @aip.bsky.social is soliciting photos from scientists at all career stages and disciplines from around the world to broaden its 30 000+ photo collection, which is used frequently by historians. #physics #astronomy #histSTM
- Learn more about the work of AIP's librarians & archivists to build a more contemporary and inclusive visual record of the physical sciences community in this new @physicstoday.bsky.social article -> "Archivists seek photos of today’s physical scientists" physicstoday.aip.org/news/archivi...
- Reposted by Trevor OwensIn today's AIP History Weekly Edition, guest contributor Don Opitz looks at the multitudinous scholarly and professional contributions of the late Margaret Rossiter in creating a historiography of women in science. #HPS
- Had a great time exploring @hornbakelibrary.bsky.social’s new exhibition. Letterpress, labor unions, archivists, and Zip disks. What more could you want! Kudos to the whole team on a great exhibit.
- Really proud of this piece, and the full report that will come out in the near future. What we learned from early career leaders in the physical sciences is likely broadly relevant to other scholarly/scientific domains.
- Interviews with early-career scientists reveal the ways that professional societies foster a sense of belonging, write @tjowens.bsky.social and Anne Marie Porter. They also provide opportunities for members to give back to the community. #physics #astronomy
- “Reframing the narrative on physics readiness” great article in @physicstoday.bsky.social A powerful case for how/why intro course sequences for physics and engineering undergrads can be updated to support students who did not take calculus in high school. physicstoday.aip.org/features/ref...
- Had a lot of fun responding to these digital preservation questions. Neat to also see how @rfrank.bsky.social and so many other smart folks responded!
- LIL fellow @maxy.bsky.social asked 14 scholars, archivists, designers, business leaders & engineers: "If you were given unlimited funding to design a system for storing and preserving digital information for at least a century, what would you do?" Their answers: lil.law.harvard.edu/generational...
- “Major climate change indicators broke records in 2024” excellent breif overview in @physicstoday.bsky.social of the recent @ametsoc.org State of the Climate report physicstoday.aip.org/news/major-c...
- People’s stories matter. The people we most wish we had stories from are often too humble to think their stories matter. I explore this in a bit in “Shakespeare Got It Wrong: Jack Oliver’s Memoirs of a Geophysicist” for the Niels Bohr Library and Archives Blog. -> www.aip.org/library/ex-l...
- “Five ways the second Trump term is reshaping climate science and policy” great in depth reporting from @physicstoday.bsky.social -> pubs.aip.org/physicstoday...
- Reposted by Trevor OwensAnd Martinis? His dad was a refugee from Yugoslavia. repository.aip.org/node/129661
- Was honored to get the chance to respond and engage with @shannonmattern.bsky.social’s insightful questions and observations on my last book in this conversation.
- Libraries, archives & museums are under pressure, but cultural memory can survive. Hear author @TJOwens.bsky.social of AFTER DISRUPTION: A FUTURE FOR CULTURAL MEMORY chat with @ShannonNattern.bsky.social on the Future Knowledge #podcast. 🎧 Listen & subscribe ⤵️ futureknowledge.transistor.fm
- Great context and background on the winners of this year’s Nobel prize in physics.
- Our story on today’s announcement of the 2025 #NobelPrize in #Physics has been updated. Learn more about the prizewinning research. #IYQ2025
- Finished reading Shohini Ghose’s book “Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe.” I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in the physical sciences and their histories. -> mitpress.mit.edu/978026204831...
- Also thrilled to see the book reference AIP oral histories with Vera Rubin, Lise Meitner, and Margaret Burbidge.
- Finished reading @adambecker.bsky.social’s “More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity.” An amazing resource for understanding how the focus on AI relates to billionaires desires to colonize space and live forever.
- Today's the day! My new book MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER is finally out! If you want to understand why tech billionaires are so obsessed with impossible ideas about space and AI — and why that's dangerous — this book is for you. #MoreEverythingForever www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-...
- Lots of updates and opportunities in this month's @aip.bsky.social history monthly newsletter! Learn about some new photo collections, grants for archives and historians of science, and articles on a number of major history of science exhibitions and programs www.aip.org/history/aip-...
