William T. Stearn Student Essay Prize
The William T. Stearn Student Essay Prize has been instituted in honour of the late William T. Stearn, a scholar whose work contributed much to the field and to this Society.
William T. Stearn, CBE, was born in Chesterton, Cambridge, and developed an early interest in books and natural history. He became an outstanding botanical scholar and worked at the British Museum (Natural History) from 1953-76, retiring as a Senior Principal Scientific Officer. His many awards included the Linnean Gold Medal of The Linnean Society of London (1976), and the Society for the History of Natural History’s Founders’ Medal in 1986.
Nathan Smith (University of Cambridge) is the eleventh winner of the prize (2019). For more information see: https://shnh.org.uk/news/william-t-stearn-essay-prize-2019/
W. T. Stearn Student Essay Prize 2020 is now closed for entries
The competition is open to undergraduate and postgraduate students in full or part-time education. Entry is not limited to members of SHNH. Entries will be considered by a panel of three judges appointed by the Council of the Society. The winner will receive £300 and be offered membership of the Society for one year. The winning essay will normally be published in the Society’s journal Archives of Natural History.
The Prize Rules and Application Form are available for download as an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files.
Entries must be prepared in conformity with the bibliographic conventions of Archives of Natural History, in ‘Guidelines for Authors’.
W. T. Stearn Essay Prize Winners
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Nathan Smith. University of Cambridge, Department of Zoology. PhD student in Molecular Ecology. It takes a village: The life of Henry Thomas Soppitt and the attempts by provincial mycologists to navigate their scientific legacy. |
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Carissa Chew. University of Edinburgh. Orientalism and the ant: empire, race and myrmecology. Published in Archives of Natural History 46 (2): 347-361 (October 2019). Available at: https://doi.org/10.3366/anh.2019.0595 |
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Aaron van Neste. Harvard University. PhD student in the History of Science. Practising taxonomy: Joel Asaph Allen and species making. Published in Archives of Natural History 45 (2): 197-212 (October 2018). Available at: https://doi.org/10.3366/anh.2018.0514 |
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Lee Raye. Cardiff University, PhD student in The Forgotten Beasts in Medieval Britain. The Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx) in early modern Scotland. Published in Archives of natural history 44 (2): 321-333 (October 2017). Available at: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/anh.2017.0452 |
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Etienne Stockland. Columbia University, Phd Candidate in History, 2010-2016. Patriotic natural history and sericultural natural reform in the French enlightenment. Published in Archives of natural history 44 (1): 1-18 (April, 2017). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/anh.2017.0410 |
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Matthew Holmes, University of Leeds, PhD student in Food Security in the Biotech Age: The National Institute of Agricultural Botany since 1970. The perfect pest: natural history & the red squirrel in nineteenth-century Scotland. Published in Archives of natural history 42 (1): 113-125 (April, 2015). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/anh.2015.0284 |
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Andrea Kennedy, University of Cambridge MPhil student 2011-12. The beauty of Victorian beasts: illustration in Rev. J.G. Wood’s Homes without Hands. Published in Archives of natural history 40 (2): 193 – 212 (October, 2013): 193-212. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/anh.2013.0168 |
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Nils Petter Hellström, who completed his M.Phil. in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. The tree as evolutionary icon: Tania Kovats’s TREE in the Natural History Museum. Published in Archives of Natural History 38 (1): 1-17 (April, 2011). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/anh.2011.0001 |
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Stephanie Pfennigwerth, School of English, Journalism and European Languages, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia. ‘The mighty cassowary’: the discovery and demise of the King Island emu. Published in Archives of Natural History 37 (1): 74-90 (April, 2010). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/E0260954109001661 |
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Ross Brooks, Department of History, Oxford Brooks University, Oxford, UK. All too human: responses to same-sex copulation in the common cockchafer (Melolontha melolontha (L.), 1834-1900. Published in Archives of Natural History 36 (1): 146-159 (April, 2009). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/E0260954108000703 |
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Heather Brink-Roby, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Siren canora: the mermaid and the mythical in late nineteenth-century science. Published in Archives of Natural History 35 (1): 1-14 (April, 2008). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/E0260954108000041 |