The prize citation for Dr. Grafton’s Barry Prize reads:
Through his outstanding scholarship on the history of scholarship, Anthony Grafton has held up a mirror of penetrating insight to the academic enterprise itself. His groundbreaking work on the history of the classical humanist tradition, and the university’s methods of scholarly inquiry more generally, has invited scholars in every field to seek a deeper understanding of what we are doing when we engage in disciplined and systematic pursuit of truth. The Academy honors Dr. Grafton’s distinguished contributions to humanity’s understanding of how the organized pursuit of knowledge has developed.
Anthony Grafton is the Henry Putnam University Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University. His interests lie in the cultural history of Renaissance Europe, the history of books and readers, the history of science and the history of scholarship and education in the West. He is the author of ten books and has coauthored, edited, co-edited or translated nine others. A past president of the American Historical Association, he has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Balzan Prize for History of Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award. He is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the British Academy.
November 2025
The prize citation for Dr. Grafton’s Barry Prize reads:
Through his outstanding scholarship on the history of scholarship, Anthony Grafton has held up a mirror of penetrating insight to the academic enterprise itself. His groundbreaking work on the history of the classical humanist tradition, and the university’s methods of scholarly inquiry more generally, has invited scholars in every field to seek a deeper understanding of what we are doing when we engage in disciplined and systematic pursuit of truth. The Academy honors Dr. Grafton’s distinguished contributions to humanity’s understanding of how the organized pursuit of knowledge has developed.
Anthony Grafton is the Henry Putnam University Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University. His interests lie in the cultural history of Renaissance Europe, the history of books and readers, the history of science and the history of scholarship and education in the West. He is the author of ten books and has coauthored, edited, co-edited or translated nine others. A past president of the American Historical Association, he has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Balzan Prize for History of Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award. He is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the British Academy.
November 2025