The recipient of the 2024 Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities or Jurisprudence is Jan M. Ziolkowski in recognition of his paper “The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity,” presented at the APS April 2019 Meeting and published in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 164. Jan Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin at Harvard University, was elected a member of the APS in 2017.  The prize will be presented at the Society's November 2024 Meeting.  The full citation for the prize will be posted at that time.

The selection committee was Linda Greenhouse, chair, Senior Research Scholar, Yale Law School; Michael McCormick, Goelet Professor of Medieval History, Harvard University; and Brent Shaw, Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics Emeritus, Princeton University.

The recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s 2024 Karl Spencer Lashley Award is Margaret Livingstone, Takeda Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, in recognition of “fundamental discoveries concerning the organization and development of functionally specific processing pathways in the primate visual system.”  

The Karl Spencer Lashley Award was established in 1957 by a gift from Dr. Lashley, a member of the Society and a distinguished neuroscientist and neuropsychologist.  His entire scientific life was spent in the study of behavior and its neural basis.  Dr. Lashley’s famous experiments on the brain mechanisms of learning, memory and intelligence helped inaugurate the modern era of integrative neuroscience, and the Lashley Award recognizes innovative work that continues exploration in the field.

The members of the selection committee are William T. Newsome III (chair), Harman Family Provostial Professor, Vincent V. C. Woo Director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, Professor of Neurobiology and, by courtesy, of Psychology, Stanford University; John E. Dowling, Gordon and Llura Gund Research Professor of Neurosciences Emeritus, Harvard University; Catherine Dulac, Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, and Investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Ann M. Graybiel, Institute Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; John G. Hildebrand, Regents Professor of Neuroscience, University of Arizona; Eric Knudsen, Sewell Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus, Stanford University School of Medicine; Edvard Moser, Professor of Neuroscience, Director, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; and Larry R. Squire, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology, University of California, San Diego, Research Career Scientist, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego.
 

The recipient of the 2024 Magellanic Premium Medal is Barbara J. Wold. The full citation and medal inscription will be posted after the medal is presented at the November 2024 meeting of the Society.

Barbara J. Wold, Bren Professor of Molecular Biology at Caltech, has been selected for the 2024 Magellanic Premium Medal in recognition of her central role in the development of methods and insights that have transformed our understanding of gene expression in biological systems. 

The award was established from a gift of 200 guineas by John Hyacinth de Magellan, of London, in 1786, “for a gold medal to be awarded from time to time under prescribed terms, to the author of the best discovery or most useful invention relating to navigation, astronomy, or natural philosophy (mere natural history only excepted).”  The medal, named the Magellanic Premium, was first awarded in 1790.   It is the oldest medal recognizing scientific achievements given by a North American institution.

The selection committee:  Helen Quinn (chair), Professor of Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Emerita, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University; Vicki L. Chandler, Provost and Chief Executive Officer, Minerva University; Sandra Faber, Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz, Astronomer Emerita, University of California  Observatories; Eric Horvitz, Chief Scientific Officer, Microsoft, Affiliate Associate Professor, Departments of Computer Science and Engineering, and of Biomedical and Health Informatics, University of Washington; Sara Seager, Professor of Planetary Science, Professor of Physics, Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Class of 1941 Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; David Tirrell, Provost, Carl and Shirley Larson Provostial Chair, Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology.

The recipient of the 2023 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is Jared Farmer, in recognition of his book, Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees (Basic Books).  Dr. Farmer is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. The 2023 Barzun Prize was presented at the Society's November 2023 Meeting.

At the opening of his book Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees Jared Farmer suggests that his twin subjects are ‘curiosity and care’. Later he adds the word ‘mourning’, which he sees as ‘at root an act of care’. The pun is part of the project, a gesture towards the different kinds of attention humans have given to trees over time and because of time. ‘People cherish big trees, old trees, and especially big old trees. Except when they don’t’. Professor Farmer has in mind not only past and present worlds but ‘the next new world... when gardens must grow in our ruins’.

The book takes us on a series of extraordinary journeys. We learn about a sequence of tree species, from cedar to baobab; the long life of the yew in English graveyards; German explorations of Mexican dragon trees; lost tree worlds of Pacific countries; the fate of sequoias in the American West; the life and career of Edmund Schulman, ‘whose quest for arboreal longevity mirrored his academic precarity’; new discoveries of ancient life; ancient trees about to die.

Trees can always surprise us, Professor Farmer suggests. At any moment our sensibilities may be ‘staggered’ by ‘a threefold combination: size plus age plus rarity’. Playing with the familiar idea of a ‘long’ century - one that also occupies patches of the time before it and after it - Professor Farmer says his book ‘concerns the longest nineteenth century’, when consciousness was ‘pulled... far backward in linear time, and, simultaneously, when the energy transition to fossil fuels hurtled human impacts far into the future’. One of the many interesting implications of this perspective is that science finds itself merging with philosophy. ‘The category “oldest known” is less biological than epistemological - a subset of the oldest knowable trees... that can be absolutely dated all the way back to their first year of growth’. In this world, both more resilient and more endangered than we think, trees ‘have an ethical claim... Nothing could be more pragmatically sacred’. To respect this claim is to be what Professor Farmer calls ‘timeful’, meaning the opposite of what we also often are, obsessed with quantifying. ‘We store our quantifications in the cloud, and we continue to lose our planet’. On a similar perch between fear and wish he says, ‘I hope to say something hopeful, or at least anti-hopeless, about linear time’. Many of us will want to tell him that he more than amply succeeds.

The Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is awarded annually to the author whose book exhibits distinguished work in American or European cultural history.  Established by a former student of Jacques Barzun, the prize honors this historian and cultural critic who was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1984.  

The selection committee consisted of Michael Wood (chair), Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University; David Hollinger, Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley; and Robert B. Pippin, Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor, Committee on Social Thought, Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago.

Pursuit & Persistence: 300 Years of Women in Science, a new exhibition at the American Philosophical Society's Library & Museum, explores how women scientists have overcome obstacles to achieve breakthroughs, make places for themselves in science, and help others along the way. The gallery can only share a small fraction of these stories. 

In tandem with this exhibition, the APS has created a blog to highlight the lives and work of living APS Members and grant and fellowship recipients. Each month of the exhibition, four new scientists are featured.

Photo courtesy of Claire Parkinson

The recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s 2023 Karl Spencer Lashley Award is Silvia Arber, Professor for Neurobiology/Cell Biology, Biozentrum, University of Basel, Switzerland in recognition of her elegant elucidation of brainstem mechanisms that control movement of the body.  The award was presented at the November 2023 meeting of the American Philosophical Society. 

Silvia Arber has made fundamental discoveries concerning the organization and operation of intricate motor circuitry in the brainstem, advancing our understanding of circuit computation in cell populations that implement downward control of the spinal cord during movement. Using elegant behavioral dissection methods in combination with state-of-the-art cell type-specific molecular interventions, she showed that hitherto undescribed, spatially intermingled brainstem circuits have specialized roles in the activation of specific muscle groups via particular motoneurons in the spinal cord. Furthermore, she showed that well-defined subsets of these brainstem nuclei receive functionally specific inputs from locomotor circuits in the midbrain and further upstream, as well as the brain’s fear and escape circuits in the amygdala and periaqueductal grey, pointing to multiple circuits for activation of specific behaviors. As a result of Arber’s spectacular work, the premotor brainstem nuclei are being converted from a terra incognita to an interesting and functionally understandable system of microcircuits. Her discoveries have opened fertile new ground for understanding how movement is controlled in the healthy brain and how it is affected in neurodegenerative disease.

The Karl Spencer Lashley Award was established in 1957 by a gift from Dr. Lashley, a member of the Society and a distinguished neuroscientist and neuropsychologist.  His entire scientific life was spent in the study of behavior and its neural basis.  Dr. Lashley’s famous experiments on the brain mechanisms of learning, memory and intelligence helped inaugurate the modern era of integrative neuroscience, and the Lashley Award recognizes innovative work that continues exploration in the field.

The members of the selection committee are William T. Newsome III (chair), Harman Family Provostial Professor, Vincent V. C. Woo Director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, Professor of Neurobiology and, by courtesy, of Psychology, Stanford University; John E. Dowling, Gordon and Llura Gund Research Professor of Neurosciences Emeritus, Harvard University; Catherine Dulac, Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, and Investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Ann M. Graybiel, Institute Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; John G. Hildebrand, Regents Professor of Neuroscience, University of Arizona; Eric Knudsen, Sewell Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus, Stanford University School of Medicine; Edvard Moser, Professor of Neuroscience, Director, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; and Larry R. Squire, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology, University of California, San Diego, Research Career Scientist, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego.

The American Philosophical Society’s 2023 Patrick Suppes Prize for Experimental or Mathematical Psychology is awarded to Elke Weber “in recognition of her research showing how people make decisions important for society, using creative experiments and mathematically precise models and theory.”

Elke Weber is one of the world’s most respected decision scientists. Her research is marked by her desire to help society by helping people make wise decisions in real world settings. At Princeton Dr. Weber runs the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab that cuts across three academic units -- the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment within the School of Engineering, the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Center within the School of Public and International Affairs, and the Department of Psychology.  

Traditional economic theories of decision making have traditionally been based on rational principles, but humans routinely violate these in both the laboratory and the real world. Real decision makers are not rational, in good part because their cognition is limited.  Dr. Weber explores the way that humans with a strictly limited capacity for reasoning and cognition act, live, and make decisions in a world that is only partially predictable. The real world often fails to tell a decision maker what is the outcome of a decision, and often fails to tell the decision maker what is the decision’s personal or societal benefit. When the world does provide such feedback, it often does so at quite long delays. Dr. Weber’s research shows how humans deal with such an unpredictable world by discounting both risk and time, doing so not just in laboratory studies but when they make decisions in their natural environment. Traditional theories also have focused on humans as individuals. Her research has shown how the social network in which humans are embedded plays a critical role in their decision making, and has shown the important role of social norms and their violations. As an example, her research has been applied to energy policy and climate change.  Most generally, Dr. Weber’s research is aimed to help individuals and social planners deal with their limited cognitive abilities, the unpredictable world, and the unprecise knowledge of the consequences of their decisions, in order to capitalize on the full range of their human capabilities to choose goals well, and to make wise decisions.

The Patrick Suppes Prize honors accomplishments in three deeply significant scholarly fields, with the prize rotating each year between philosophy of science, psychology or neuroscience, and history of science. The Patrick Suppes Prize in Psychology or Neuroscience is awarded for a body of outstanding work which consists of at least three articles published within the preceding six years.  The work in psychology is to be either in mathematical or experimental psychology.

The committee members were Richard M. Shiffrin, Distinguished Professor, Luther Dana Waterman Professor, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Indiana University; Mahzarin Banaji, Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Psychology Department, Harvard University; Susan T. Fiske, Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology, Professor of Public Affairs, Princeton University; John G. Hildebrand, Regents Professor of Neuroscience, University of Arizona; Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor, Criminology Law and Society, UC Irvine School of Social Ecology; and Jay McClelland, Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Chair, Department of Psychology, Director, Center for Mind, Brain and Computation, Stanford University. 
 

The 2023 recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Science is Martine Rothblatt “in recognition of her many transformative, diverse, singular scientific and public service contributions, including but not limited to:  creating and patenting a system for providing global portable internet access using low earth orbit satellite and satellite direct radio broadcast system resulting in the successful commercialization of the first global satellite radio network; founding a biotechnology company that seeks to repair donated organs previously considered too damaged for transplant and thereby provide an unlimited supply of transplantable organs, advancing xenotransplantation through genetic engineering and digital modeling creating organs that are directly transplantable into humans, revolutionizing the timely delivery of transplant organs through the development of a battery powered helicopter setting world records for electric flight while culminating in the drone delivery of donor organs for transplant, becoming a leading advocate for transgender rights, and investigating the future of artificial intelligence as a cognitive enabler with her work on digital consciousness and immortality.”

Martine Rothblatt founded United Therapeutics in 1996 and has served as chairman and chief executive officer since the inception of the company. Prior to creating United Therapeutics, Dr. Rothblatt founded and served as chairman and chief executive officer of Sirius Satellite Radio and was principally responsible for several other unique applications of satellite communications technology. She also represented the radio astronomy interests of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Radio Frequencies before the Federal Communications Commission. On behalf of the International Bar Association, she led efforts to present the United Nations with a draft Human Genome Treaty. She moved to biotechnology from satellite technology and started United Therapeutics to find a cure or better treatment for primary pulmonary hypertension that affects one of her daughters, a disease that was deadly at the time. It sells five FDA-approved drugs to help people with the disease.  Now publicly traded, the company is experimenting with pig cloning and genetic modification to create lung transplants the human body doesn’t reject.

Dr. Rothblatt received a combined Law and Master of Business Administration degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned her Ph.D. in medical ethics from the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary College, University of London. Her book, Your Life or Mine: How Geoethics Can Resolve the Conflict Between Public and Private Interests in Xenotransplantation, was published in 2004. Dr. Rothblatt is a member of the International Institute of Space Law and the International Academy of Astronautics and the International Bar Association. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2008.

In 1906 Congress authorized the medal to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Franklin’s birth.  President Roosevelt directed that the 1st one go to the Republic of France.  50 copies were given to the American Philosophical Society for its use.  The Society has chosen to be to be parsimonious in their distribution.  For three decades only one was given and that was to Marie Curie in 1921.  Since 1937 they have been awarded more liberally but still quite selectively, for major contributions in the sciences, humanities or public service.

The selection committee members are Ronald M. Fairman, Emeritus Clyde F. Barker - William Maul Measey Professor of Surgery, Chief of Vascular Surgery and Endovascular Therapy, Vice-Chairman for Clinical Affairs, Department of Surgery, and Professor of Surgery in Radiology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Clyde F. Barker, Former President, American Philosophical Society, Donald Guthrie Professor, Department of Surgery, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Lawrence H. Einhorn, Distinguished Professor, Livestrong Foundation Professor of Oncology, Professor of Medicine, Indiana University; and John N. Loeb, Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Columbia University.