Christopher Phillips
· Assistant Professor of HistoryCarnegie Mellon University · History
Active 1938–2026
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About
I am a historian of science and of twentieth-century America, currently teaching as Professor of History in Carnegie Mellon’s History Department. My research focuses on the history of science, particularly statistics and mathematics. I am interested in the authority and expertise claimed for scientific practices and mathematical methods across modern U.S. history and most of my projects involve the spread of mathematical and numerical methods into new domains.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Sociology
- Mathematics
- Medicine
- Epistemology
- History
- Genetics
- Public administration
- Biology
- Philosophy
Selected publications
Precision Medicine and its Imprecise History
Harvard data science review · 2020 · 43 citations
1st authorCorrespondingsketches a history of precision medicine. Though sometimes portrayed as a field with roots primarily in genetics, he describes the decisive historical role played by statisticians and data scientists, particularly a group of midcentury biostatisticians located at the National Institutes of Health.
Modeling the epidemiologic individual
History of the Human Sciences · 2025-06-06 · 15 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingModern epidemiological methods often elide the distinction between individuals and populations in practice. Health data and outcomes gathered from a population can be, and often are, applied to a specific person, guiding preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic interventions. This article looks at a key site for the origin of this elision, the Framingham Heart Study, and shows how a novel methodological 'calculator' for individual risk of future disease emerged from what was originally designed a…
Screening For Colorectal Cancer in the Age of Simulation Models: A Historical Lens
Gastroenterology · 2020 · 5 citations
1st authorCorrespondingHistorical Studies in the Natural Sciences · 2021 · 3 citations
1st authorCorrespondingViral Networks: Connecting Digital Humanities and Medical History
2018-12-05 · 2 citations
book1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 23 shared
Bernard Tandler
University School
- 19 shared
Toshikazu Nagato
Fukuoka Dental College
- 17 shared
Carlin A. Pinkstaff
West Virginia University
- 12 shared
Thomas Kunz
Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology
- 9 shared
Bettie M. Steinberg
- 7 shared
Hugh H. Genoways
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
- 7 shared
Jeremy Clark
- 6 shared
Thomas L. Vaughan
Education
- 2011
Ph.D., History of Science
Harvard University
Other, History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine
University of Cambridge
Other, History and Science
Harvard College
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