Francis Bacon Award

The Francis Bacon Award is bestowed on an outstanding scholar whose work continues to have a substantial impact in the history of science, the history of technology, or historically-engaged philosophy of science. The winner of the Bacon Award is invited to spend one term (10 weeks) as a Visiting Professor at Caltech to teach and lead a biennial conference that brings together the best younger and established scholars in the area of the Bacon Visiting Professor's specific interests. The awardee also receives a Bacon prize medal and $20,000 prize.

HSS is pleased to announce the selection of Francesca Rochberg as the 2022 Francis Bacon Award recipient. Rochberg, the Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley, is the world's leading expert on the history of Babylonian astronomy and astrology, focusing on the second and first millennia BCE—the foundation for the development of astronomy among the Greeks. She has written several books, including Before Nature: Cuneiform Knowledge and the History of Science (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Her honors include a MacArthur Fellowship (1982) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1993), and in 2008 she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Please direct questions about the Francis Bacon Award to [email protected].

The Francis Bacon Award medal

Previous Awardees & Conferences

Year	Awardee	Awardee Title & Affiliation	Conference	Materials
2022	Francesca Rochberg	Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley	Thematic Continuities in Astronomy and Astrology from Antiquity to the Renaissance: A Conference in Memory of Noel M. Swerdlow May 18-20, 2023	Conference Program
2020	John Krige	Kranzberg Professor in the School of History and Sociology, Georgia Institute of Technology	Transnational Transactions: Negotiating the Movement of Knowledge Across Borders February 20-21, 2020	Conference Program Keynote Lecture Poster
2018	Niccolò Guicciardini	Associate Professor, Department of Human and Social Sciences, Università degli studi di Bergamo, Italy	Anachronism(s) in the History of Mathematics April 13-14, 2018	Conference Program Keynote Lecture Poster
2016	Jürgen Renn	Director, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science	General Relativity at One Hundred March 10-12, 2016	Conference Program Jürgen Renn Keynote Lecture Video Kip Thorne GR 100 Public Lecture Video
2014	Lisa Jardine	Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, University College London, Renaissance Studies	Testimonies: States of Mind and States of the Body in the Early Modern Period May 9-10, 2014	Conference Program
2011	Myles Jackson	Gallatin School, New York University, History of Science	Molecular Biology and Intellectual Property in the Age of Biocapitalism May 6-7, 2011	Conference Program
2010	Naomi Oreskes	Professor of History and Science Studies, Department of History, UC San Diego	How the Cold War Transformed Science May 7-9, 2010	Conference Program
2007	Alexander Jones	Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity, NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World	Ptolemy in Perspective: Use and Criticism of His Work from Antiquity to the Present May 31-June 2, 2007	Conference Program
2005	Lawrence Principe	Drew Professor of the Humanities, Director of the Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Pre-Modern Europe, Department of the History of Science and Technology, Johns Hopkins University	Workshop on 18th Century Chemistry April 21-June 2, 2005	Conference Program