Balzan Prize 2024 for Lorraine Daston
The emerita director at the MPI for the History of Science receives the prestigious award in the category of History of Modern and Contemporary Science
The jury honoured the renowned science historian Lorraine Daston "for the extent, originality and variety of her work, which has drawn on a wide range of scientific fields to highlight the mental representations and values underlying research activity; for the number and quality of her articles and books, which have opened up new paths in the history and epistemology of sciences; for her contribution to the training of generations of researchers; and for her support — as head of prestigious institutions — for innovative research projects."
Daston, born in 1951, is an American-born scholar who serves as director emerita at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She has been teaching at the University of Chicago since 2005 and is a Permanent Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Her extensive body of work covers diverse historiographical topics, including early modern natural philosophy's treatment of wonders and monsters, the history of probability theory, the moral authority of nature, and the evolution of scientific observation.
One of the world’s leading historians of science, Daston’s research has significantly contributed to understanding how key scientific concepts such as objectivity, reason, and rationality have evolved from the early modern period to the Cold War. Her work appeals to both scholars and the general public, with her latest book, Rivals: How scientists learnd to cooperate, which deals with the development of historical scientific communities through to the global scientific community, or Rules: A short history of what we live by, which is dedicated to the human need for order.
About the Balzan Prize
The Balzan Prize, awarded annually in four categories that rotate between disciplines in the humanities and natural sciences, honours researchers with outstanding, internationally recognised achievements. Alongside Daston, this year's laureates include John Braithwaite (Restorative Justice, Australian National University), Michael N. Hall (Biological Mechanisms of Aging, University of Basel), and Omar Yaghi (Nanoporous Materials for Environmental Applications, University of California, Berkeley).
Each prize is endowed with 750,000 Swiss francs (800,000 euros or 890,000 US dollars), with half of the amount designated for funding research projects involving young scientists. The awards ceremony will take place on November 21 in Rome.
The prize is endowed with 750,000 Swiss francs (800,000 euros/890,000 US dollars) per category. Half of the prize money is to be invested in research projects with young scientists. The award will be presented on November 21 in Rome.
The jury also announed the subject areas for the 2025 prize:
- History of Contemporary Art
- Classics: Athenian Democracy Revisited
- Atoms and Ultra-Precise Measurement of Time
- Gene and gene-modified cell therapy
