David E. Kaiser, born June 7, 1947, is an American historian whose published works have covered a broad range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. He is a Professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the Naval War College and has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College, and Harvard University.

The son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities: Washington D.C., Albany, New York, and Dakar, Senegal. He attended Harvard University, graduating with a B.A. in history in 1969. He then spent several years at Harvard University gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in 1976. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976.

His works include: Economic Diplomacy and the Origins of the Second World War, Postmortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti (with William Young), Politics and War: European Conflict from Philip II to Hitler, and Epic Season: The 1948 American League Pennant Race. His book, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War, was winner of the 2001 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award (History Category). The Road to Dallas, which examined the evidence in the Kennedy Assassination was published in 2008. In December 2008 he published a collection of his blog entries History Unfolding : Crisis and Rebirth in American Life 2004-2008.

David (Hebrew: דָּוִד, דָּוִיד, Modern David Tiberian Dāwîḏ; ISO 259-3 Dawid; Strong's Daveed; beloved; Arabic: داوود‎ or داود‎ Dāwūd) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the second king of the United Kingdom of Israel and, according to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, an ancestor of Jesus. David is seen as a major Prophet in Islamic traditions. His life is conventionally dated to c. 1040–970 BC, his reign over Judah c. 1010–1003 BC,^{[citation needed]} and his reign over the United Kingdom of Israel c. 1003–970 BC.^{[citation needed]} The Books of Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles are the only sources of information on David, although the Tel Dan stele records "House of David", which some take as confirmation of the existence in the mid-9th century BC of a Judean royal dynasty called the "House of David".

David is very important to Jewish, Christian and Islamic doctrine and culture. In Judaism, David, or David HaMelekh, is the King of Israel, and the Jewish people. Jewish tradition maintains that a direct descendant of David will be the Messiah. In Islam, he is known as Dawud, considered to be a prophet and the king of a nation. He is depicted as a righteous king, though not without faults, as well as an acclaimed warrior, musician, and poet, traditionally credited for composing many of the psalms contained in the Book of Psalms.

David Kaiser is an American physicist and historian of science. He is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and department head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's program in Science, Technology, and Society. He is also a senior lecturer in the Department of Physics.

He is the author or editor of several books on the history of science, including Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics (2005), and How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival (2011). He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, in 2010.

Kaiser completed his AB in physics at Dartmouth College (1993), and obtained two PhDs from Harvard University, one in physics (1997) and one in the history of science (2000).