Anthony Grafton

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Anthony Grafton
Anthony Grafton (cropped).JPG
Grafton lecturing at the Gotha Research Center in 2010
Born
Anthony Thomas Grafton

(1950-05-21) May 21, 1950 (age 75)
Spouse
Louise Erlich
(m. 1972)
[1]
Awards Balzan Prize (2002)
Academic background
Education University of Chicago (BA, MA, PhD)
Institutions
Doctoral students
Main interests History of books

Anthony Thomas Grafton (born May 21, 1950) is an American historian of early modern Europe and the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, where he is also the Director the Program in European Cultural Studies. [2] [3] He is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize. From January 2011 to January 2012, he served as the President of the American Historical Association. [2] From 2006 to 2020, Grafton was co-executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas .

Contents

Early life and education

Grafton was born on May 21, 1950, in New Haven, Connecticut. He was educated at Phillips Academy.

He attended the University of Chicago, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1971 and a Master of Arts degree in 1972. He made Phi Beta Kappa in 1970, with honors in history and in the college. After studying at University College, London, under ancient historian Arnaldo Momigliano, from 1973 to 1974, he earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in history from the University of Chicago in 1975. He still retains links with the University of London's Warburg Institute. [4]

Grafton married Louise Erlich in 1972, and was married to her until her death in 2019. They had two children. [5]

Career

After a brief period teaching at Cornell's history department, he was appointed to a position at Princeton University in 1975, where he has subsequently remained. In 2006, he became co-editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas , together with Warren Breckman, Martin Burke, and Ann Moyer.

Works

Anthony Grafton is noted for his studies of the classical tradition from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century, and in the history of historical scholarship. His many books include a study of the scholarship and chronology of Renaissance scholar Joseph Scaliger (2 vols, 1983–1993), and, more recently, studies of Girolamo Cardano as an astrologer (1999) and Leon Battista Alberti (2000). In 1996, he delivered the Triennial E. A. Lowe Lectures at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, speaking on Ancient History in Early Modern Europe. [6] Together with Lisa Jardine, he also co-wrote a revisionist account of the significance of Renaissance education (From Humanism to the Humanities, 1986) and on the marginalia of Gabriel Harvey. [7]

He also penned several essay collections, including Defenders of the Text (1991), which deals with the relations between scholarship and science in the early modern period, and, most recently, Worlds Made by Words. His most original and accessible book is The Footnote: A Curious History (1997; originally published in German in 1995 as Die tragischen Ursprünge der deutschen Fußnote), a case study of how the marginal footnote developed as a central and powerful tool in the hands of historians.

He also writes on a wide variety of topics for The New Republic , The American Scholar , and The New York Review of Books . He owns a bookwheel which he keeps at hand in his home.

Honors

Selected publications

Articles

Books

Essays

References

  1. "Anthony Grafton Biography | AHA". www.historians.org.
  2. 1 2 "Anthony Grafton | Department of History". history.princeton.edu. Retrieved May 14, 2020.
  3. "Anthony T. Grafton, Director — European Cultural Studies". ecs.princeton.edu. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  4. "Anthony Grafton". The Department of History. The Trustees of Princeton University . Retrieved September 26, 2012.
  5. "Obituary | Louise Erlich Grafton of Princeton, New Jersey".
  6. "Lectures". Gazette. Oxford University. October 5, 1995. Archived from the original on February 27, 2018. Retrieved January 23, 2017.
  7. Jardine, Lisa; Grafton, Anthony (1990). "'Studied for Action': How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy". Past & Present (129): 30–78. doi:10.1093/past/129.1.30.
  8. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
  9. "Anthony Grafton". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved May 14, 2020.
  10. "Professor Anthony Grafton". The British Academy. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
  11. "Honorary doctorates and prizes". Leiden University. Retrieved February 21, 2024. 2006 Anthony Grafton (historian)
  12. "Honorary degrees awarded at Encaenia | University of Oxford". www.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
Academic offices
Preceded by
E. A. Lowe Lecturer
1996
Succeeded by
Preceded by Sigmund H. Danziger Jr. Memorial
Lecturer in the Humanities

2010–2011
Succeeded by
Professional and academic associations
Preceded by President of the American Historical Association
2011
Succeeded by
Awards
Preceded by Balzan Prize
2002
With: Walter Jakob Gehring, Xavier Le Pichon,
and Dominique Schnapper
Succeeded by
Preceded bySucceeded by
Preceded bySucceeded by
Preceded bySucceeded by