Noted IT historian, author, and curator, Ceruzzi has served as Curator of Aerospace Electronics and Computing at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. He received a BA from Yale University in 1970 and a PhD from the University of Kansas in 1981, both in American studies. Before joining the National Air and Space Museum, he was a Fulbright scholar in Hamburg, Germany, and taught History of Technology at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina.
Ceruzzi is the author or co-author of several books on the history of computing and aerospace technology, such as Reckoners: The Prehistory of The Digital Computer (1983), Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age (1989), Landmarks in Digital Computing: A Smithsonian Pictorial History (1994), and A History of Modern Computing (1998). He also published a book that examines the emergence of private contractors serving the U.S. Defense Department in the Washington, D.C. region: Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945–2005 (2008).
Dr. Ceruzzi has curated or assisted in the mounting of several exhibitions at NASM, including: Beyond the Limits — Flight Enters the Computer Age, The Global Positioning System — A New Constellation, Space Race, How Things Fly, and the James McDonnell Space Hangar of the Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, at Dulles Airport.
