Thomas Parke Hughes is Mellon Professor of the History and Sociology of Science, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania, and Visiting Professor at MIT and Stanford University.

His most recent publications include Rescuing Prometheus (Pantheon, 1998); (Penguin 1990), which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and (Oxford University Press, 1990), which he edited with Agatha Hughes .

He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (see his Swedish friend Arne Kaijser), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a recipient of the Leonardo da Vinci Medal of the Society for the History of Technology .

(Text from http://www.alteich.com/links/hughes.htm )

Hughes is most famous for having created the concept of technological momentum.