Jimena Canales
Mexican-American historian of science
Jimena Canales (born 1973) is a Mexican-American historian of science and author with a background in physics and engineering.
Career
Jimena Canales is the author of Simply Einstein (2021), Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science (2020), The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson and the Debate that Changed Our Understanding of Time (2015) and A Tenth of a Second: A History (2009) as well as numerous articles on the history of modernity; specializing in art, science and technology (appearing in Artforum, Aperture, WIRED, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, NPR, among others).
Canales obtained a B.S. in engineering physics at the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in 1995, a master's degree in History of Science at the Harvard University and a PhD in History of Science at the same university in 2003. In 2004 she worked as an assistant professor in the Department of History of Science at Harvard University and in 2013 she was promoted to associate professor. In 2012 she was senior fellow at the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie and in the summer she worked as a visiting professor at the Summer School for Media Studies at Princeton University in the German department. In 2013 she was recruited to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in the History of Science, which she held until 2017.
Jimena Canales has collaborated with the philosopher Bruno Latour, the artist Olafur Eliasson and the cosmologist Lee Smolin.
Her presentations on art and science has been featured at the Centre Georges Pompidou, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the 11th Shanghai Biennale and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (ICA).
Awards and reviews
Source:
Premio Cosmos, per la divulgazione scientifica for L'Ombra del diavolo
The New Yorker reviews
The Washington Post reviews
The Guardian's Top 10 Books About Time
Books of the Year 2016
25 Top Ibero-American Intellectuals
Best Science Books for 2015
Independent's Top Reads of 2015
Science Friday's Best Science Books of 2015
Charles A. Ryskamp Award from the American Council of Learned Societies
University of Chicago Press Bevington Prize (2008)
Prize for Young Scholars (2005), awarded by the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, History of Science
Books and selected articles
books
(2009) A Tenth of a Second: A History, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 9780226093185
(2016) The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson and the Debate that Changed Our Understanding of Time, Princeton University Press ISBN 9780691173177
(2020) Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science, Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0691175324
(2021) Simply Einstein, Simply Charly publ.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jimena Canales” is mexican-American historian of science. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jimena, Canales and Mexican-American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19856984. VIAF identifies the subject as 53979988. The Library of Congress control number is no2008183994. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 2021, 2020 and 2015.
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