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].

PREVIOUS AWARDEES

John Krige (2020), Kranzberg Professor in the School of History and Sociology, Georgia Institute of Technology

Niccolò Guicciardini (2018), Associate Professor, Department of Human and Social Sciences, Università degli studi di Bergamo, Italy

Jürgen Renn (2016), Director, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Lisa Jardine (2014), Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, University College London, Renaissance Studies

Myles Jackson (2011), Gallatin School, New York University, History of Science

Naomi Oreskes (2010), Professor of History and Science Studies, Department of History, UC San Diego

Alexander Jones (2007), Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity, NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

Lawrence Principe (2005), 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

PREVIOUS CONFERENCES

Transnational Transactions: Negotiating the Movement of Knowledge Across Borders
[February 20-21, 2020]