The BSHS Pickstone Prize is awarded every two years to the best scholarly book in the history of science (broadly construed) in English. The Prize aims to recognize pioneering works that advance the scholarly understanding and interpretation of the scientific past. In focusing on academic books, it complements the Society’s Hughes Prize, which rewards engagement with broader audiences.
Established in 2014 with the help of the budget surplus from the 2013 International Congress of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, the prize honours the memory of our colleague Professor John Pickstone (1944-2014), whose research and teaching so keenly exemplified the scholarly virtues that we wish to celebrate with this memorial.
Both single-authored and multiple-authored books are eligible, but not edited collections. Nominations can be made by anyone. Self-nominations are allowed, as are multiple nominations by a single nominator. Nominations must be available as printed books.
An announcement of the winning title will be made via the BSHS President’s Newsletter then posted on the BSHS website. The author may be asked to give a lecture based on its contents at the BSHS Annual Conference or on another mutually convenient occasion.
For the most recent information about this prize please visit our news page.
Previous Winners:
- The 2020 BSHS Pickstone Prize was awarded to Shinjini Das for Vernacular Medicine in Colonial India: Family, Market and Homoeopathy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)
- The 2018 BSHS Pickstone Prize was awarded to Michael Wintroub for The Voyage of Thought: Navigating Knowledge across the Sixteenth-Century World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
- The 2016 BSHS Pickstone Prize was awarded to Anne Hardy for Salmonella Infections, Networks of Knowledge, and Public Health in Britain, 1880-1975 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)
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The 2014 BSHS Pickstone Prize was awarded to Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday for Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2013).
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