Howard P. Segal

Howard Paul Segal (born July 15, 1948) is an American historian who is a professor of history at the University of Maine. He specializes in research on the history of American technology and American utopianism.

His best known book, Technological Utopianism in American Culture, Technology in America: A Brief History, was co-written with Alan I Marcus, and named by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book.

Since 1986, Segal's courses at the University of Maine have included the histories of both technology and science.

His father owned M. Segal & Sons, a glove manufacturer in Philadelphia.

Segal attended Franklin & Marshall College, where he completed his B.A. degree in 1970 and was awarded the Zimmerman Graduate Fellowship in History. He received his MA and PhD (1975) degrees at Princeton University. His doctoral thesis was titled Technological utopianism and American culture, 1830-1940.

Segal's early teaching appointments were visiting instructor at Franklin and Marshall College; Taft Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer, University of Cincinnati; Killam Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia; assistant professor at University of Michigan; and Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard University. By 1986, he entered the University of Maine's History Department as an Assistant Professor, and was promoted to associate professor in 1988 and professor in 1992. He has been elected Bird & Bird Professor of History during two periods at the University of Maine: from 1996 to 2005 and 2010 to 2015. He is periodically interviewed on radio and television to discuss current events in historical perspective.

• 2015: Society for Utopian Studies' Lyman Tower Sargent Award for Career Distinguished Scholarship..