The Bangladeshi-American historian who founded the modern archival study of the Soviet space program
Born in Dhaka to an academic family, Siddiqi earned his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon and became the first historian to systematically exploit post-Soviet Russian archives for the study of the Soviet space program, transforming it into a rigorous academic field. His 2000 NASA publication Challenge to Apollo remains the definitive archival history of the Soviet human spaceflight effort; The Wall Street Journal named it one of the five best books on space exploration, and it endures as the standard reference. In The Red Rockets' Glare (2010) he broadened his inquiry into the cultural history of Russian cosmic imagination from the 19th century through Sputnik, and he is now completing a study of the Gulag's intersection with Soviet science and technology as professor of history at Fordham University.
Career Timeline
- 2000Published Challenge to Apollo with NASA History Office
- 2004Ph.D. in History, Carnegie Mellon University
- 2005–현재Professor of History, Fordham University
- 2010Published The Red Rockets' Glare (Cambridge University Press)
- 2016Guggenheim Fellowship
- 2016–현재Co-editor, Studies in the History of Science and Technology series, Johns Hopkins UP