Dr. Samantha M. Thompson is a historian of science and technology whose work focuses on the history of astronomy and space sciences. She is an Edward & Helen Hintz Secretarial Scholar and Curator of Science and Technology at the National Air and Space Museum. Thompson received a BA in Astrophysics and Physics from the University of California, Berkeley, an MSc in the History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science, Medicine, and Technology from Imperial College London, and a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from Arizona State University. She has held positions at the Center for the History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics, the Lowell Observatory, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, and the National Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory Greenwich.