Anthony Grafton

Anthony Grafton
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Name	Anthony Grafton
Birth date	21 May 1950
Birth place	New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Historian, academic
Education	University of Chicago (B.A., 1970), University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1975)
Known for	History of scholarship, history of the book, intellectual history
Employer	Princeton University

Anthony Grafton. He is an American historian and academic renowned for his work on the history of scholarship, the history of the book, and the intellectual history of the Renaissance and Early Modern Europe. A prolific author and esteemed teacher, he has spent the majority of his career at Princeton University, where he has influenced generations of students and scholars. His research is characterized by deep engagement with primary sources, a mastery of philology, and a commitment to tracing the transmission of ideas from antiquity through the Scientific Revolution.

Biography

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he was raised in a family with strong academic interests, which led him to pursue his undergraduate and doctoral studies at the University of Chicago. His doctoral dissertation, completed under the guidance of renowned scholars like Arnaldo Momigliano, focused on the historical methods of the Renaissance scholar Joseph Scaliger. This early work established the foundational themes for his career, exploring the recovery of classical antiquity and the development of critical historical practices. He has been married to historian Louise A. Tilly and later to literary scholar Lorraine Daston.

Academic career

After completing his doctorate, he began his teaching career at Cornell University before joining the faculty of Princeton University in 1975, where he was appointed to the Henry Putnam University Professorship. He has also held numerous visiting positions at prestigious institutions worldwide, including the University of Oxford, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and the Warburg Institute in London. For many years, he served as a contributing editor for *The New York Review of Books*, bringing scholarly insights to a broad public audience, and has been a key figure in the scholarly community of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Scholarship and contributions

His scholarship is centered on the history of humanistic learning from the classical world to the Enlightenment, with particular emphasis on the practices of reading, writing, and annotation. He pioneered interdisciplinary studies linking the history of science, the history of the book, and intellectual history, demonstrating how figures like Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton were deeply engaged with textual criticism. His work on forgers like Annius of Viterbo and on the marginalia of scholars has illuminated the material culture of knowledge, showing how the printing press and manuscript traditions shaped modern scholarship.

Major works

He is the author and editor of numerous influential books that have become standard references in their fields. Key monographs include *Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship* (1983-1993), a two-volume study that won the Pfizer Award, and *The Footnote: A Curious History* (1997), a celebrated exploration of the evolution of historical citation. Other significant works are *Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship* (1990), *Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer* (1999), and *Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West* (2009). He has also co-authored important texts like *New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery* (1992) with April Shelford and Nancy Siraisi.

Awards and honors

His contributions have been recognized with many of the highest honors in the humanities. He is a recipient of the Balzan Prize for the History of the Humanities, a prestigious international award, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He holds honorary degrees from institutions such as Leiden University and the University of Chicago, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the British Academy. In 2011, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama for his exceptional contributions to cultural and intellectual life.

Category:American historians Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Historians of the Renaissance