Omar W. Nasim is an award-winning historian of science. Currently he holds the Professorship in the History of Science at the Institute for Philosophy at the University of Regensburg, Germany. He is a specialist in the visual, cultural, and material histories of science and technology in modern Western Europe, USA, and Great Britain.

Nasim has held fellowships with the Vossius Center for History of Humanities and Sciences in Amsterdam, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence, the Newton International Fellowship at Oxford University, the Chair for Science Studies at the ETH-Zurich, the NCCR’s Iconic Criticism project at the University of Basel, and the DAAD graduate exchange fellowship at the University of Konstanz. And besides being a Lecturer for the history of modern science and technology at the University of Kent, he was also a visiting lecturer at the department of art history at the University of Basel.

Nasim’s first book, Bertrand Russell and the Edwardian Philosophers: Constructing the World (2008) examined the emergence of early analytic philosophy in Britain, particularly through the lens of lesser-known figures and the history of psychology, logic, and mathematics. It won the Bertrand Russell’s Society’s book of the year award for 2009. His second book Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth-Century (2013) is the result of detailed archival and historical work, used to disclose the rich and productive links between the acts of drawing, seeing and knowing. This book won the prestigious History of Science Society’s Pfizer Award for Outstanding Scholarly Book in 2016.

Nasim's most recent book is called The Astronomer's Chair: A Visual and Cultural History (The MIT Press, 2021). For more information Click Here.

Currently he is working away on a monograph on the history of photography in astronomy. Nasim is also busy with a large-scaled project on the role of the ornamental arts in the history of science.

Nasim sits on the editorial board of six major journals and presses for the history of science and philosophy. He is currently the acting chair of the committee for the NASA Fellowship Program at HSS/SHOTS/AHA. And besides acting as a referee for American, British, Dutch, and German funding agencies, journals, and academic presses, as the Professor of the History of Science at the University of Regensburg, he is responsible for a host of administrative and leadership duties. Currently, Nasim is responsible for both the undergraduate and graduate programs, with a special emphasis on a two-year Master’s Program in the History of Science, which, until last year, was the only such program in Germany. Besides admissions, teaching, and supervision, it is Nasim’s remit to develop the B.A. and Master’s curricula, from ground up, so that it is globally representative of the history of science as a field while speaking to local contours and demands.

And over the years, Nasim has taught a broad range of courses, ranging from the history of photography, on the idea of the ‘savage,’ the ‘tools of empire,' and the 'history of time'; all the way to French philosophy of science, science and controversy, history of philosophy and science in the Islamicate; and scientific visualization. This semester (WS 2021/22) he is leading a lecture series on German Colonialism, Science, and Medicine.

Omar Nasim was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada). He is based in Munich, Germany.