Alex WellersteinVerified account

I like how @wellerstein 's project is distinctive enough and he does enough media stuff that I can be listening to something and think "I bet they interview @wellerstein later" and sure enough there he his. Happened with the excellent recent @99piorg episode.

Real role model for making a valuable niche and owning it :)

At the November 2011 HSS meeting, I was really trying to figure out where to go next with academia. I had a very nice and open-ended 3-year postdoc, but no real knowledge of where I was trying to go or how to get there.

I had a conversation with Karen Darling where she essentially said, regarding my work on my book, figure out what you need this book to do for you, and what you want to be because of it. Is it going to get you a job? Is it going to establish you as the expert on a specific topic?

For whatever reason it suddenly just clicked that what I wanted was to be the nuclear history guy. Like, the one that would get called up on all these kinds of stories, the guy you had to check with or footnote. That was the ambition.