The Dingle Prize
The Dingle Prize was established in 1997 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Society, and is named after the mathematician, astronomer and philosopher of science Herbert Dingle, a founder member. Its value is £300.
In keeping with the Society's concern to communicate history of science to broad audiences, the 2009 Dingle Prize is awarded biennially for the best book in the history of science, technology and medicine accessible to a non-expert readership. The 2009 competition was for books published in 2007 and 2008. Over 40 nominations were received and the entries read by a panel of four judges – Geoffrey Cantor (chair), Jill Howard, Melanie Keene, and Viviane Quirke.
The winner of the 2009 competition was Thomas Dixon, Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Thomas Dixon’s Science and Religion was announced the winner of the 2009 competition. In commending Dixon’s book the judges wrote: “Using a wide-range of examples Dixon beautifully demonstrates how the history of science can illuminate a complex issue of contemporary importance – the relationship between science and religion. The book is historically sophisticated, intellectually engaging, and thought provoking. It is clearly and concisely written, well argued, and accessible to the non-expert; it should appeal to a wide readership not only beyond the history of science community but also outside academia.”
Previous winners of the Dingle Prize
- 2007: Philip Ball for his Elegant Solutions: Ten Beautiful Experiments in Chemistry. London: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2005
- 2005: Stephen Pumfrey for Latitude and the Magnetic Earth: the True Story of Queen Elizabeth's Most Distinguished Man of Science. Icon Books, 2003
- 2003: Ken Alder for The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World. London: Little, Brown, 2002
- 2001: Deborah Cadbury for The Dinosaur Hunters. London: Fourth Estate, 2000
- 1999: Steven Shapin for The Scientific Revolution. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996
- 1997: Adrian Desmond and James Moore for Darwin. London: Penguin, 1992
Shortlisted entries in 2009
The other 4 shortlisted titles in 2009 were:
- Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder. How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (London: Harper Press, 2008)
- Ruth Richardson, The Making of Mr. Gray’s Anatomy. Bodies, Books, Fortune, Fame (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)
- Matthew Stanley, Practical Mystic. Religion, Science, and A. S. Eddington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)
- John Waller, A Time to Dance, a Time to Die. The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518 (Thriplow, Cambridge: Icon Books, 2008)