Victoria R. Bricker and Harvey M. Bricker
in recognition of their book, Astronomy in the Maya Codices.
John Frederick Lewis Award
Established by a gift from the widow of John F. Lewis, to honor the outstanding maritime lawyer who played a major role in various cultural institutions in Philadelphia. Since 1981 the award has recognized the best book published by the Society in a given year.
2011
The American Philosophical Society awarded the 2011 John Frederick Lewis Award to Victoria and Harvey Bricker for their book Astronomy in the Maya Codices. The award was presented by Glen Bowersock, chair of the Lewis Award Committee and Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study.
Harvey and Victoria Bricker are Emeritus Professors of Anthropology at Tulane University and Courtesy Professors of Anthropology and Research Associates of the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida. Harvey M. Bricker is an archaeologist who received Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University. His early research was in French Palaeolithic archaeology. He was associated for many years with the excavation and analysis of a prehistoric rockshelter at Les Eyzies, in the Périgord region of southwestern France, and he directed the excavations of a late Neanderthal site in the French foothills of the Pyrénées. Since the early 1980s he has collaborated with Victoria Bricker in a program of research on Maya archaeoastronomy. In 1987 he was named “Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques” by the government of France “pour services rendus à la culture française.” Victoria R. Bricker is a cultural anthropologist who received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University. Her fieldwork in Mexico includes several years with the Tzotzil-Maya Indians of highland Chiapas, investigating their ritual humor and researching Colonial and Postcolonial revitalization movements in Chiapas, Yucatan, and highland Guatemala. Since 1971 she has carried out research on the Maya language of Yucatan, including ethnobotanical research for a Maya-English dictionary. In 1978 she began to study the language of Maya hiero-glyphs, later focusing on astronomy in the Precolumbian Maya codices. She was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in 2002.
Much of what we know of the Maya comes from the codices, which remain housed in archives in various parts of the world. Only in recent decades have the Maya hieroglyphs been deciphered, opening the door to new discoveries about this indigenous American civilization. Astronomy in the Maya Codices offers the most comprehensive treatment of Maya astronomy to date, integrating new insights and information from the fields of astronomy, archaeology, ethnography, and iconography. Making full use of the now understood correlation between the Maya and Western calendars, the authors have pulled together three decades of their own scholarly research, placing the contents of the codices in historic time with unprecedented specificity. At the same time, they offer a history of the research by other scholars as this field of study has grown over the past century and a half. With hundreds of illustrations from the codices throughout the book, this volume is designed to serve as a freestanding resource, offering context for references to Venus, Mercury, and Mars; solar and lunar eclipses; and certain stars, constellations, and the Milky Way. This far-reaching study of the codices confirms that, independent of the Old World traditions that gave rise to modern Western astronomy, the Precolumbian Maya achieved a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy based on observations recorded over centuries and passed down through generations.
In 1935 the Society established the John Frederick Lewis Award with funds donated by his widow. The award recognizes the best book or monograph published by the Society in a given year. The selection committee consisted of Glen W. Bowersock (chair), Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study; Helen F. North, Centennial Professor of Classics Emerita, Swarthmore College; and Noel M. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of History, University of Chicago.
2010
A. Mark Smith
in recognition of his book, Alhacen on Refraction: A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of Book 7 of Alhacen's De Aspectibus, the Medieval Latin Version of Ibn al-Haytham's Kitab al-Manazir.
The American Philosophical Society awarded the 2010 John Frederick Lewis Award to A. Mark Smith for his book Alhacen on Refraction: A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of Book 7 of Alhacen's De Aspectibus, the Medieval Latin Version of Ibn al-Haytham's Kitab al-Manazir. The award was presented by Glen Bowersock, chair of the Lewis Award Committee and Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study.
Professor Smith teaches a variety of courses in medieval history as well as the history of science from antiquity to the late Enlightenment. Broadly speaking, his interests lie in the field of intellectual history from the pre-Socratics to the Enlightenment, his scholarly focus being on the evolution of pre-Newtonian theories of visual perception. He received his Ph.D. in 1976 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he now holds a professorship. He has published a number of other works with the American Philosophical Society, including Descartes's Theory of Light and Refraction (1987), Ptolemy's Theory of Visual Perception (1996), Ptolemy and the Foundations of Ancient Mathematical Optics (1999), and, naturally, the three texts which contain the first six books of De Aspectibus.
A. Mark Smith has worked with the American Philosophical Society on Alhacen's De Aspectibus for 10 years. Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception, which contained the first three books, was printed in 2001, Alhacen on the Principles of Reflection, which contained books four and five, was printed in 2006, and Alhacen on Image-Formation and Distortion in Mirrors, which contained book six, was printed in 2008. In this final publication, Alhacen on Refraction, which translates the seventh and final book of the De Aspectibus, Alhacen undertakes a comprehensive analysis of refraction, starting with the basic phenomenon and its underlying principles, and ending with an explanation of the apparent displacement and size-distortion of celestial bodies caused by atmospheric refraction. Certainly the most intriguing portion of the De Aspectibus, book seven is also the most problematic in terms of questionable theoretical suppositions and the logical inconsistencies that flow from them.
Mark Smith’s publication of the Latin version of Ibn al-Haytham's Optics is one of the great contributions to the history of science of our time. The edition is based upon an exhaustive examination of the manuscripts, the translation of the difficult, and at times obscure, text a model of clarity, and the introduction and commentary are exemplary in placing the work within the history of optics and explaining its technicalities and difficulties. This is a work of scholarship that will endure and be consulted for ages.
In 1935 the Society established the John Frederick Lewis Award with funds donated by his widow. The award recognizes the best book or monograph published by the Society in a given year. The selection committee consisted of Glen W. Bowersock (chair), Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study; Helen F. North, Centennial Professor Classics Emerita, Swarthmore College; and Noel M. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of History, University of Chicago.
2009
Stephen G. Brush
in recognition of his book Choosing Selection: The Revival of Natural Selection in Anglo-American Evolutionary Biology, 1930-1970
The American Philosophical Society awarded the 2009 John Frederick Lewis Award to Stephen G. Brush for his book Choosing Selection: The Revival of Natural Selection in Anglo-American Evolutionary Biology, 1930-1970. The award was presented by Mary Patterson McPherson, Executive Officer of the Society.
Stephen Brush worked at he Lawrence Livermore Laboratory from 1959-1965. He then went to Harvard, where he was a member of the Harvard Project Physics and was a lecturer in Physics and the History of Science until 1968. From 1968 to 2006 he was at the University of Maryland in University Park with a joint appointment in the Department of History and the Institute for Physical Science & Technology. He retired in 2006 and holds the title Distinguished University Professor of the History of Science Emeritus.
His book Choosing Selection: The Revival of Natural Selection in Anglo-American Evolutionary Biology, 1930-1970 discusses evolution, Darwin, and natural selection in the twentieth-century Anglo-American biological community. Dr. Brush examines the beliefs and theories of prominent biologists and evolutionists, including Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, Theodosius Dobzhansky, and Ernst Mayr.
In 1935 the Society established the John Frederick Lewis Award with funds donated by his widow. The award recognizes the best book or monograph published by the Society in a given year.
The selection committee consisted of Glen W. Bowersock (chair), Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study; Helen F. North, Centennial Professor Classics Emerita, Swarthmore College; and Noel M. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of History, University of Chicago.
2008
Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt
for her monograph, Franz Boas and W.E.B. DuBois at Atlanta University, 1906
The American Philosophical Society awarded the 2008 John Frederick Lewis Award to Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt for her monograph Franz Boas and W.E.B. Du Bois at Atlanta University, 1906. The award was presented by Glen W. Bowersock, Professor Emeritus of Ancient History at the Institute for Advanced Study and chairman of the prize selection committee.
Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt is Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of the College and professor of anthropology at Agnes Scott College. Her teaching and scholarly interests include folklore and the history and theory of anthropology. She is a recipient of the Society’s Mellon Resident Research Fellowship Grant and was a Library Resident Fellow from 1996-97. She is also the author of American Folklore Scholarship: A Dialogue of Dissent (1988) and Wealth and Rebellion: Elsie Clews Parsons, Anthropologist and Folklorist (1992).
The seeds of Franz Boas and W.E.B. Du Bois at Atlanta University, 1906 were planted at the American Philosophical Society Library, where Dr. Zumwalt was researching the papers of the anthropologist William Shedrick Willis. In these papers she discovered an unpublished draft manuscript, Boas Goes to Atlanta, which Willis had conceived as a study of Franz Boas’s work in black anthropology.
Using the first chapter of this manuscript as a jumping off point, Zumwalt goes on to consider the Father of American Anthropology’s trip to Atlanta in great depth. Drawing from a wealth of archival correspondence and bibliographic research, she relates the history of Boas’s time on the Atlanta University campus; responses to his talk by blacks and whites; and the conflict that the trip itself caused between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.
In 1935 the American Philosophical Society established the John Frederick Lewis Award with funds donated by his widow. The award recognizes the best book or monograph published by the Society in a given year.
The selection committee consisted of chairman Glen W. Bowersock, Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study; Helen F. North, Centennial Professor Classics Emerita, Swarthmore College; and Noel M. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of History, University of Chicago.
2007
Lionel Gossman
for his monograph, The Making of a Romantic Icon: The Religious Context of Friedrich Overbeck's “Italia und Germania”
The 2007 recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s John Frederick Lewis Award is Lionel Gossman for his monograph The Making of a Romantic Icon: The Religious Context of Friedrich Overbeck's “Italia und Germania” published in the Society’s Transactions, volume 97, part 5. The book is a captivating study of a once-famous German painting’s genesis and context and of the unexpectedly numerous layers of esthetic and religious meanings Dr. Gossman has cleverly shown it to contain. It is a most pleasurable read.
Born in Scotland, Lionel Gossman earned an M.A. at the University of Glasgow in 1951, a diplome d'études supérieures at the University of Paris in 1952, and a D. Phil. at the University of Oxford in 1957. After teaching at the University of Lille and at Glasgow, he came to the United States in 1958 and joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University, where he taught for seventeen years. He moved to Princeton University as professor of Romance languages and literatures in 1976. Dr. Gossman was appointed the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures in 1983, and became professor emeritus in 1999. Dr. Gossman’s interests focus on the relationship between history and literature in 17th through 19th century Europe.
Dr. Gossman's other publications include Men and Masks: A Study of Molière (1963), Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment (1968), The Empire Unpossess'd (1981), Between History and Literature (1990), Geneva-Zurich-Basel: History, Culture and National Identity (with N. Bouvier et al, 1994) and Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas (2000). He received the Behrman Award in 1990 and was named an Officier des Palmes Académiques in 1991. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1996.
In 1935 the American Philosophical Society established the John Frederick Lewis Award, with funds donated by his widow, to honor this outstanding maritime lawyer who played a major role in various cultural institutions in Philadelphia. The award recognizes the best book or monograph published by the Society in a given year.
The selection committee consisted of chairman Eugene F. Rice, Jr., William R. Shepherd Professor Emeritus, Columbia University; Glen W. Bowersock, Professor of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study; and Noel M. Swerdlow, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of History, University of Chicago.
2006
Vincent Ilardi
for his monograph, "Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes"
2005
Derek S. Linton,
for his monograph, "Emil von Behring: Infectious Disease, Immunology, Serum Therapy."
2004
Edward J. Olszewski,
for "Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667-1740) and the Vatican Tomb of Pope Alexander VIII"
2003
James E. McClellan,
for Specialist Control: The Publications Committee of the Académie Royale des Sciences (Paris), 1700-1973
2002
Gunther S. Stent,
for Paradoxes of Free Will
2001
A. Mark Smith,
for Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception: A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of the First Three Books of Alhacen's De aspectibus, the Medieval Latin Version of Ibn al-Haytham's Kitab al-Manazir
2000
June Z. Fullmer (posthumous),
for Young Humphry Davy: The Making of an Experimental Scientist
1999
Francesca Rochberg,
for Babylonian Horoscopes
1998
Whitfield J. Bell, Jr.,
for Patriot-Improvers, Biographical Sketches of Members of the American Philosophical Society, 1743-1769
Martin W. Daly,
for The Sirdar. Sir Reginald Wingate and the British Empire in the Middle East
1996
Joseph R. McElrath,
for The Apprenticeship Writings of Frank Norris, 1896-1898
