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American historian of science From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lorraine Daston (born June 9, 1951)[1] is an American historian of science. Director emerita of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, and visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, she is an authority on Early Modern European scientific and intellectual history. In 1993, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a permanent fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study.[2]
Daston divides her year between a nine-month period in Berlin, and a three-month period in Chicago, where she usually teaches a seminar and assists doctoral students.[citation needed]
Daston was appointed the inaugural Humanitas Professor in the History of Ideas at University of Oxford for 2013.[5] She has also held Oxford's Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professorship in Intellectual History. In 2002, she delivered two Tanner Lectures at Harvard University, in which she traced theoretical conceptions of nature in several literary and philosophical works. In 2006, she gave the British Academy's Master-Mind Lecture.[6]
She is on the editorial board of Critical Inquiry.[7]
Daston was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2010. In 2013, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Princeton University.[8] She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017.[9] In 2018, she received the Dan David Prize.[10] In 2024 she was awarded the Balzan Prize for "History of Modern and Contemporary Science".[11]
She is married to the German psychologist and social scientist Gerd Gigerenzer.[citation needed]
“The-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” goes a long way to explain most scientific controversies I’m familiar with; so much so, that one wonders why it is that such debates so quickly and permanently become polemically polarized. The long after-life of the medieval disputation-cum-duel?..[12]
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