School of History, Philosophy, and Religion

Listen to an interview with Prof. Christopher McKnight Nichols, where he talks about the dilemmas facing the United States in the world, the shortcomings of existing foreign policy approaches, and his attempted rehabilitation of an idealistic isolationism to guide the United States in the future.

Jacob Darwin Hamblin is the recipient of this year’s Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize for his 2013 book, “Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism.” The prize, given by the History of Science Society, is awarded annually to “the author of a book useful in undergraduate teaching or which promotes public understanding of the history of science.”

Hamblin is a professor of history at Oregon State University. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Salon and publications devoted to the history of science, technology and the natural world.

His book traces postwar American scientists; roles in facilitating the study of ecosystems for military purposes. The prize committee called Hamblin’s book “an outstanding example of what interdisciplinary research and writing for a broad audience can achieve.” Hamblin is also the author of “Poison in the Well: Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age,” and “Oceanographers and the Cold War.”

His current research is based on work he’s done at the International Atomic Energy Agency in which he will look at the global promotion of nuclear ‘solutions’ especially in the developing world, from 1945 to the present.

The award was announced Nov. 5 at the annual meeting of the History of Science Society in Atlanta, GA.