Paula E. Findlen

Findlen's Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (1994) helped launch the field of museum studies.  She continues to work with museums, curators, art historians, and historians of material culture engaged with how we write the history of collecting and find new ways to engage the public with objects in (and out of) the museum, as seen in her recent Early Modern Things (2013).  She is also one of the leading historians interested in women's contributions to science, especially in the early modern period.  She is particularly well known for her work on Italian history, science, and culture, from the sixteenth-century naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi to the seventeenth-century Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher, and the eighteenth-century physicist Laura Bassi.  

Findlen's essays appear regularly in The Nation. Her work has won prizes from the Renaissance Society of America and the History of Science Society, and been awarded fellowships such as the Guggenheim, in addition to the 2016 Premio Galileo, a major international award for contributions to Italian culture.  Findlen would serve the Academy through rigorous and innovative scholarship and engaging public history.