BIOGRAPHY

Trained as a historian of science, technology, and the environment, Dr. Peter Thompson is currently working on a book project that explores the development of both chemical weapons and chemical protection technologies in twentieth century Germany. Broadly speaking, he is interested in cultural understandings of both environmental dangers and the technologies devised to combat or control them, the role of science and technology under German fascism, phenomenological approaches to “the chemical,” and historical theory. At Lyman Briggs, Dr. Thompson teaches courses in the history of technology, chemistry, and the environment that explicitly engage with questions of scientific and technological ethics.

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LBC COURSES

• LB 133: Introduction to History, Philosophy & Sociology of Science

• LB 325A: Science and the Environment - Arts and Humanities

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EDUCATION

• Ph.D., History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• M.A., History, University of Maine
• B.A., History, Colby College

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AWARDS

• North Carolina German Studies Seminar’s Konrad Jarausch Essay Prize for Advanced Graduate Students in Central European History for “The Pale Death: Poison Gas and German Racial Exceptionalism, 1915-1945” (2020)
• German Studies Association Prize for the Best Essay in German Studies for “Wardens of the Toxic World: German Women’s Encounters with the Gas Mask, 1915-1945.” (2019)
• NTM—Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin Article Prize for Young Authors for “Wardens of the Toxic World: German Women’s Encounters with the Gas Mask, 1915-1945.” (2019)
• John. G. and Evelyn Hartman Heiligenstein Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at University of Illinois (2017)

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RESEARCH

• The Gas Mask in Interwar Germany: Visions of Chemical Modernity (Book manuscript under contract with Cambridge University Press)

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PUBLICATIONS

• Thompson, Peter. “From Gas Hysteria to Atomic Fear: A Historical Synthesis of Chemical and Atomic Weapons.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences. 52, no. 2 (2022): 223-264

• Thompson, Peter. “The Pale Death: Poison Gas and German Racial Exceptionalism, 1915-1945.” Central European History. 54, no. 2 (2021): 273-296.

• Thompson, Peter. “Wardens of the Toxic World: German Women’s Encounters with the Gas Mask, 1915-1945.” German Studies Review. 43, no. 2 (2020): 353-376.

• Thompson, Peter. “The Chemical Subject: Phenomenology and German Encounters with the Gas Mask in World War I.” History and Technology. 33, no. 3 (2017): 249-271.

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