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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 baconadmin@caltech.edu.

Francis Bacon Award medal

The Francis Bacon Award medal

Previous Awardees & Conferences