Society for the History of Natural History Book Prize 2024
The prize is awarded for the best book published on the history or bibliography of natural history in the preceding two years.
Closing date is 30 June 2024.
Winners receive the John Thackray Medal, instituted in 2000 to commemorate the life and work of John Thackray (1948–1999), Past President of SHNH, and an outstanding scholar of the history of science with an enviable knowledge of natural history. He served as an Officer of the Society for the History of Natural History for 24 years (1973–1997) and in 1999 became the Society’s President. He authored 30 books and articles including Guide to the Official Archives of the Natural History Museum (1998).
Guidelines
- Prize winners are chosen by a panel of 3 judges (all members of the Society).
- Competition opens on 1 January 2024.
- Nominations may be made by SHNH members, or submitted by publishers.
- All books must be received by 30 June. Three copies of the book you wish to considered should be sent to the Chair of the Book Prize Panel. Contact Geraldine.Reid@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk to obtain the Chair’s name and address.
- All books should have been published in the two calendar years preceding the year the award will be presented. For instance, works published in 2022 and 2023 will be eligible for the 2024 award.
Selection Criteria
The prize will be awarded to the book which contributes most significantly to the history of natural history. Significance will be assessed on the basis of:
- Originality
- Organisation and presentation of information
- Excellence of intellectual content
- Contribution to the literature of the field.
Submission
Nominations must be sent to the Chair of the Book Prize Panel and include the following:
- Your name as a nominator and your contact details.
- The nominee’s name and contact details.
- A supporting statement (up to 600 words) describing why the nominee should receive the award.
SHNH Natural History Book Prize 2023
The Society is very pleased to announce that our prestigious Natural History Book Prize (the John Thackray Medal) will this year be awarded to Nicholas K. Menzies for Ordering the Myriad Things: From Traditional Knowledge to Scientific Botany in China (University of Washington Press, ISBN: 9780295749457). Nicholas K. Menzies is Research Fellow in Chinese Botanical Science at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California.
Ordering the Myriad Things relates how traditional knowledge of plants in China gave way to scientific botany between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, when plants came to be understood in a hierarchy of taxonomic relationships to other plants and within a broader ecological context. This shift not only expanded the universe of plants beyond the familiar to encompass unknown species and geographies but fuelled a new knowledge of China itself. Nicholas K. Menzies highlights the importance of botanical illustration as a tool for recording nature—contrasting how images of plants were used in the past to the conventions of scientific drawing and investigating the transition of “traditional” systems of organization, classification, observation, and description to “modern” ones.
The book explores the fascinating development of modern Chinese botany focusing on the transition from traditional knowledge to modern scientific practice. One judge praised the accessible glossary of places, names, and botanical terms which is in both Chinese and English. The judges felt this was a well-researched scholarly study of an important part of the history of botany and added to our limitedknowledge of scientific development in China.
Nicholas said: ‘What an extraordinary surprise! I am deeply honoured … that you have chosen to select my book from what, I am sure, was a remarkable group of works, to receive this important prize. Thank you’.
For those interested in reading more about Ordering the Myriad Things: From Traditional Knowledge to Scientific Botany in China you can access a recent review by Jiang Che in the Society’s Journal Archives of Natural History: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/anh.2023.0882
The Society for the History of Natural History Book Prize