Autumn General Meeting
Alar Toomre

The 2014 recipient of the American Philosophical Society's Magellanic Premium medal is Alar Toomre "in recognition of his beautiful and prescient numerical simulations over 40 years ago of the interactions of galaxies ("Galactic Bridges and Tails," carried out with his brother, Juri), and for his development a half century ago of the key local stability criterion (the "Q" criterion) for differentially rotating disks in galaxies. He was also the first to make the remarkable suggestion and demonstrate that elliptical galaxies in the universe could arise solely from collisions of spiral galaxies. Overall, Toomre's work has had a profound influence on the understanding of galactic dynamics and has largely set the direction of research in this now very vigorous and active field." The medal is engraved, "Alar Toomre, For pioneering studies of collisions and evolution of galaxies."

Dr. Toomre joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963 and is now Emeritus Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT.

In 1786, two years after his election to the American Philosophical Society, John Hyacinth de Magellan of London, made a gift to the American Philosophical Society of 200 guineas for a medal to be awarded "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 consisted of Charles Slichter (chair), Research Professor of Physics, Center for Advanced Study Professor of Physics and Chemistry Emeritus, University of Illinois; Andrea Ghez, Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics, Professor of Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles; Leo Kadanoff, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Physics and Mathematics Emeritus, University of Chicago; and Irwin Shapiro, Director Emeritus, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Timken University Professor, Harvard University, Senior Scientist, Smithsonian Institution, and Schlumberger Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Autumn General Meeting
Lionel Gossman

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.

Autumn General Meeting
Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt

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.

Autumn General Meeting
Stephen G. Brush

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.

Autumn General Meeting
A. Mark Smith

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.

Autumn General Meeting
Victoria R. Bricker and Harvey M. Bricker

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 rock shelter 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.

Autumn General Meeting
Neil L. Rudenstine

The American Philosophical Society awarded the 2012 John Frederick Lewis Award to Neil L. Rudenstine for his book The House of Barnes: The Man, The Collection, The Controversy. The award was presented by Glen Bowersock, chair of the Lewis Award Committee and Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study. An educator, administrator, and literary scholar, Neil L. Rudenstine is President Emeritus of Harvard University and Chairman of the Advisory Board for ARTstor, an initiative of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He is a Trustee of the Barnes Foundation and is Vice-Chair of the Getty Trust in California. In addition to his fine work as a teacher and scholar of English literature, he has proved himself to be a clear-sighted academic administrator who is deeply imbued with and committed to intellectual inquiry and the life of the mind.

Rudenstine studied the humanities at Princeton University (B.A., 1956) and later attended New College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where he received another B.A. and an M.A. In 1964, he received a Ph.D. in English literature from Harvard University. Most of his subsequent career has been dedicated to educational administration. He stayed at Harvard from 1964 to 1968 as an instructor and then as an assistant professor in the Department of English and American Literature and Language. Between 1968 and 1988 he was a faculty member and senior administrator at Princeton University, serving as Dean of Students (1968-72), Dean of the College (1972-77) and Provost (1977-88). After his time as Provost at Princeton University, he served as Executive Vice-President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation from 1988 to 1991. He was President of Harvard University from 1991 to 2001. Dr. Rudenstine was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1992. He is an honorary Fellow of New College, Oxford, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge University. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

The House of Barnes: The Man, The Collection, The Controversy places Barnes within the context of his own historical era, sheds light on the ideas and movements (especially concerning art collecting, education, and aesthetics) that influenced him and shaped so much of his thinking, and considers the validity of his ideas. The impressive Barnes collection of mostly impressionist and post-impressionist art includes the works of Van Gogh, Renoir, Picasso, Pissarro, Cézanne, el Greco, and Matisse. The art Barnes chose to add to his collection, and his choice not to purchase certain pieces, had a tremendous influence on other art collectors.

Dr. Rudenstine’s volume offers a thorough examination of Barnes’s ideological (aesthetic and political) formation and of the context in which his thought evolved, including the English and American models of education and art appreciation that he wanted to emulate. He also provides a detailed history of Barnes’s collecting and an analysis of his idiosyncratic taste. The last chapters of the book deal with the events surrounding the Barnes Foundation’s move to Philadelphia, including the reasons that have been put forward in opposition and in support. There is an analysis of the Foundation’s financial plight, a review of the major court cases involving the Barnes, and a description of the fervent reactions following the court’s decision to allow the move to take place.

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; Julia Haig Gaisser, Professor Emeritus of Latin, Eugenia Chase Guild Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Bryn Mawr College; and Noel M. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of History, University of Chicago.

Autumn General Meeting
Anthony M. Cummings

The 2013 recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s John Frederick Lewis Award is Anthony M. Cummings for his monograph Nino Pirrotta: An Intellectual Biography. Musicology, the academic study of music in its historical and anthropological contexts, has been a scholarly discipline and doctoral-level university course for just over a century. This book is the first full-scale portrait of one of musicology’s most distinguished and accomplished practitioners. Nino Pirrotta (1908–98) was educated at the conservatories and universities of Palermo and Florence. In the absence of an opportunity to study music history systematically when undergoing his formal education, Pirrotta created his own vision of the discipline, which was and is distinctive. After appointments as librarian at the Conservatories of Palermo and Rome, Pirrotta was named head of the music library and professor of music at Harvard (1956–71) and thereafter professor of music history at the University of Rome (1972–78). His American and Italian pupils are among the most distinguished music historians of their generation.

Anthony Cummings recounts the principal details of Pirrotta’s career: the formal training, the initial forays into scholarly writing, the recognizable methodologies and scholarly concerns. He analyzes and interprets Pirrotta’s writings and identifies the features that characterize the celebrated and venerated humanist. Nino Pirrotta: An Intellectual Biography serves as a consideration of the practices and disciplinary achievements of one of the core humanistic fields of enquiry and of the satisfactions of the entire scholarly enterprise. Cummings has devoted years of work to this book, has interviewed family members and surviving colleagues and students of Pirrotta – in short, has done excellent work in building the portrait that is his main subject with accuracy and care.

Anthony M. Cummings is Professor of Music, Musicology, and Music History at Lafayette College. He earned a B.A. cum laude, with honors in history and in music, at Williams College, and an M.F.A. and Ph.D. in musicology at Princeton University. Prior to his appointment at Lafayette he was Professor of Music at Tulane University. He also has served as Dean of Admission at Princeton, Dean of Tulane College, and Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Lafayette. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of nine monographic publications, and author or co-author of numerous articles in scholarly journals. Cummings has been a Fulbright Scholar; Robert Lehman Visiting Professor in Residence at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence; and Scholar in Residence at the American Academy in Rome.

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; Julia Haig Gaisser, Professor Emeritus of Latin, Eugenia Chase Guild Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Bryn Mawr College; and Noel M. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of History, University of Chicago.