Mordechai Feingold is an intellectual and institutional historian of science, from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century. His research focuses on how the rise of modern science has transformed Western culture from a humanistic, religious, and unified culture during the sixteenth century into a scientific, technological, secular, and fragmented one by the nineteenth century.

Feingold has authored four monographs, including Isaac Newton and the Origin of Civilization (Princeton University Press, 2013), written with Jed Buchwald; The Newtonian Moment: Isaac Newton and the Making of Modern Culture (Oxford University Press, 2004); and The Mathematicians' Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Society in England, 1560–1640 (Cambridge University Press, 1984). He has edited ten volumes on the history of science and related subjects and written dozens of articles.

Prior to joining the Caltech faculty in 2002, Feingold was an assistant professor at Boston University from 1984 to 1988 before joining the faculty of Virginia Tech. He was a junior fellow at Harvard University from 1981 to 1984, a visiting professor at the History of Science Society in 1992–1993, and a visiting professor of history at Caltech in 1994. He was a senior fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Dibner Institute in 1994–1995 and in 1999–2000; a fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 1996–1997; and a fellow at Harvard's Charles Warren Center in 2001–2002. He served as president of the International Commission for the History of Universities between 2005–2020. He became Corresponding member of the International Academy for the History of Science in 2007.

Feingold is the editor of the journals History of Universities and Erudition and the Republic of Letters, as well as co-editor of the journals Annals of Science and Perspectives on Science.