David Pantalony, PhD
Curator, Science and Medicine
Biography
David (he/him) is curator for collections related to several subject areas in the sciences and medicine, including astronomy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, metrology, meteorology, time keeping, exploration, and surveying. David specializes in the history of scientific instruments, with a broader interest in the material culture of science in Canada, collection history, and provenance (object biography). He was the lead curator for the Medical Sensations exhibition in the Canada Science and Technology Museum. In 2018, the Canadian Museums Association honoured David—along with Ingenium-McGill Fellow Hasan Umut and Ingenium research intern, Assia Kaab—with the award for outstanding achievement in the category of research, for their work with the Petrovic mathematical instrument collection.
David holds and an MA and a PhD from the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. He has held curatorial, research, and fellowship positions at the Smithsonian Institution, MIT, Dartmouth College, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Bakken Library and Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. David is an adjunct professor in history at the University of Ottawa, where he is involved in collection-based teaching, research, and digital activities. David is also an adjunct professor at UOttawa’s Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies, through which UOttawa and Ingenium partnered on an international symposium on Indigenous star knowledge.
Areas of expertise
- Physical sciences
- Medicine
- History of precision instruments
- History of science and medicine
- Material culture of science
Publications
What Remains: Biographies of Scientific Objects in the Past and Present
A collection of essays on artifacts from Ingenium’s collections. Book in preparation.
The Physics Collection at the University of Saskatchewan: The development of an instrument making culture on the Prairies (1920–1950)
With V.J.L. Fisher, appears in Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, (September 2022): 25-31.
What Remains: The Enduring Value of Museum Collections in the Digital Age
Appears in HoST – Journal of History of Science and Technology 14, no. 1 (June 2020): 130-152.
Altered Sensations: Rudolph Koenig’s Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth-Century Paris
Springer, 2009. Winner of the Paul Bunge Book Prize for “outstanding research publications on all aspects of the history of scientific instruments.”
Research projects
Indigenous star knowledge
Indigenous star knowledge, an international symposium hosted on traditional Algonquin Anishnaabeg territory.
