Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize

The Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize, named in honor of the long time director of Science Service and his wife, was established in 1985 through a long-term pledge from Miles and Audrey Davis. The prize consists of $1000 and a certificate.

The prize honors books in the history of science directed to a wide public (including undergraduate instruction). The book must be published in English during a period of three calendar years immediately preceding the year of competition (books eligible for 2019 were published in 2016, 2017, or 2018).They should be introductory in assuming no previous knowledge of the subject and in being directed to audiences of beginning students and general readers. They should introduce an entire field, a chronological period, a national tradition, or the work of a noteworthy individual. Multi-authored or edited books are eligible, whereas unrevised reprints of previously published works are not. The prize may not be split between two books. Check the nomination form below for the deadline.

Should the prize committee wish to review a nominated title, the History or Science Society Executive Office will request that a copy of be sent to each member of the committee.

Submit a Nomination for the Davis Prize

Past Winners of the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize

2018 Jim Endersby, Orchid: A Cultural History (University Of Chicago Press, 2016). 
2017 Tania Munz, The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language (University Of Chicago Press, 2016). 
2016 Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism (Oxford University Press, 2013).
2015 Martin Rudwick, Earth’s Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters (The University of Chicago Press, 2014).
2014 W. Patrick McCray, The Visioneers: How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future (Princeton University Press, 2012).
2013 David Kaiser, How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture and the Quantum Revival (W.W. Norton & Company, 2011).
2012 Mark Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology (University of Chicago Press, 2009).
2011 Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (Bloomsbury Press, 2010).
2010 Marcia Bartusiak, The Day We Found the Universe (Pantheon Books, 2009).
2009 Charles Seife, Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking (Viking Adult, 2008).
2008 Helen Rozwadowski, Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea (Belknap Press, 2005).
2007 Matt Ridley, Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code (Atlas Books, Harper Collins Publishers, 2006).
2006 Robin Marantz Henig, Pandora’s Baby: How the First Test Tube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution (Houghton Mifflin Press, 2004).
2005 Alan M. Kraut, Goldberger’s War: The Life and Work of a Public Health Crusader (Hill and Wang, 2004).
2004 Jeff Hughes, The Manhattan Project: Big Science and the Atomic Bomb (Columbia University Press/Icon Books, 2003)
2003 Ken Alder, The Measure of All Things: The Seven Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World (The Free Press, 2002).
2002 Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500-1700 (Princeton University Press, 2001).
2001 Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life (Harvard University Press, 2000).
2000 Gregg Mitman, Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film (Harvard University Press, 1999).
1999 Daniel J. Kevles, The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science and Character (W.W. Norton & Company, 1998).
1998 Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
1997 Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (Simon & Schuster, 1995).
1996 Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs and Margaret C. Jacob, Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism (Humanities Press, 1995).
1995 Victor J. Katz, History of Mathematics: An Introduction (New York: Harper Collins, 1993).
1994 David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
1993 James Moore and Adrian Desmond, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist (London: Michael Joseph, 1991).
1992 John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
1991 Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Modern Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
1990 Robert W. Smith, The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA Science, Technology, and Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
1989 Joan Mark, A Stranger in Her Native Land: Alice Fletcher and the American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988).
1988 John L. Heilbron, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck as Spokesman for German Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
1987 Thomas L. Hankins, Science in the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
1986 Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself (New York: Random House, 1983).