Erik Meade Conway[1] (born 1965) is the historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.[2] He is the author of several books. He previously completed a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1998, with a dissertation on the development of aircraft landing aids.
In High-Speed Dreams (2005), Conway argues that U.S. government sponsorship of supersonic commercial transportation systems resulted from Cold War concerns about a loss of technological prowess in the modern world.[3][4] Realizing the Dream of Flight (2006) consists of eleven essays on individuals prepared in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight.[5] Conway also wrote Blind Landings (2007) and he is a co-author of a secondary-level education text entitled Science and Exploration (2007). Atmospheric Science at NASA was published in 2008.[6]
His 2010 book Merchants of Doubt was co-authored with Naomi Oreskes,[7] as was his article in the Winter 2013 issue of Daedalus called The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future.[8]