He was born in Zürich and raised in Basel, Switzerland. After obtaining a first-class BA hon. in Philosophy and Modern Languages at Magdalen College, Oxford (1987), he studied physics for a couple of semesters at Basel University, in preparation for his study of the history of science at Harvard University (MA 1989, PhD 1995). His dissertation was called 'Matter and Microscopes in the Seventeenth Century' (thesis advisors: John E. Murdoch and Owen J. Gingerich). '
After two postdoc years in Rome (Istituto Svizzero) and Berlin (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte), he joined the Center for the History of Philosophy and Science in 1997, first as a postdoctoral researcher of the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO, 1997-2001) and subsequently as a research fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001-2006).
