Matthew Shindell

Matthew Shindell curates the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s collection of spacecraft, instruments, and other artifacts related to the exploration and study of our Earth and solar system, as well as exoplanets. He co-hosts the Museum’s podcast, AirSpace. A historian of science, Shindell is the author of For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet (2023) and The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey (2019), co-author of Spaceships: An Illustrated History of the Real and the Imagined (2022) and Discerning Experts: The Practices of Scientific Assessment for Environmental Policy (2019), and co-editor of Smithsonian American Women: Remarkable Objects and Stories of Strength, Ingenuity, and Vision from the National Collection (2019).