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Aaron Gluck-Thaler was selected as the 2023-2023 IEEE Life Member History Fellow and 46th recipient of this prestigious fellowship. He is a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. He studies the history of surveillance and its relationship to scientific practice.

Gluck-Thaler’s dissertation provides a history of pattern recognition in 20th century America. It considers how and why scientists in diverse fields–from anthropology to engineering–adopted practices of pattern recognition. The project focuses on how technical research in pattern recognition acted as an epistemic support for surveillance, changing how people could be identified and of what their identity was thought to be composed. He also works on early histories of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

Gluck-Thaler holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from McGill University, a MSc in the Social Science of the Internet from the Oxford Internet Institute, and a MSc in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. His doctoral research has been supported by Harvard’s Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Doctoral Fellowship.

The IEEE Life Members History Fellowship was established in 1977 and has been presented since 1978. The IEEE History and Life Members Committees worked together to establish it, and it is administered by the IEEE History Center. We thank the generous donors who support the IEEE Life Members Fund of the IEEE Foundation, which makes this fellowship possible.