DIO has established three prizes, a grand each. All will be awarded at opportunity instead of rigidly per year. (I.e., their pace will be up to judges.) Three international panels of highly qualified judges, will decide future recipients. See below.
Dennis Rawlins, DIO's Publisher, has already awarded the initial (2004) ones, totalling $4000 — but will not even have a vote in future DIO-prize-judging.
The first E. Myles Standish Award for Scientific Principle goes to Myles Standish himself. E. Myles Standish's eminence in celestial mechanics is already internationally recognized. A leading pioneer in the establishment of numerical integration as the basis of national ephemerides, his orbits — computed by him and his colleagues at Cal Tech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory — have for decades reliably guided the world's ships & airplanes to their terrestrial ports, and NASA's craft to their celestial targets. The Standish Award reflects DIO's gratitude for Myles' lifetime of insisting on high standards of science and truth, and for his opposition to pretense in academe.
The first R. R. Newton Award for Scientific History goes to nonhistorian Charles T. Kowal (Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab), long a legendary living-immortal in astronomy, as discoverer of (among other objects) Chiron and two satellites of Jupiter. The specific historical discovery recognized by this Award is his recovery of Galileo's 1613 drawing of Neptune near Jupiter: perhaps the most shockingly outré discovery in the entire enterprise of astronomical history.
The first B. L. van der Waerden Award for Induction goes (doubly) to the admirably original researches of Alexander Jones (University of Toronto [since on to New York University]), whose utterly unexpected solutions of the Almajest mean motions of Mars and Jupiter displaced several others' (including Ptolemy's & DR's) unhistorical solutions. DIO looks forward to many more such central enlightenments from this still-youthful classicist.
The DIO Awards are established as follows:
The E. Myles Standish Award for Scientific Principle.
Presented to a scholar who has
excelled in the area of scientific principle by
example, creativity, and-or analysis. Judges:
Stephen Brush, University of Maryland;
President Emeritus, History of Science Society.
E. Myles Standish, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California
Institute of Technology.
Christopher Walker, Department of West Asian Antiquities, British Museum.
The R. R. Newton Award for Scientific History.
Presented for a discovery
in which history is advanced by use of scientific analysis. Judges:
Chas. Kowal, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Keith Pickering, Editor DIO.
F. Richard Stephenson, Physics, University of Durham;
International Astronomical Union.
The B. L. van der Waerden Award for Historical Induction.
Offering $1000
for each solution deemed superior to any of DR's eight best ancient-astronomy
inductions
(all eight posted at:
DIO 11.2 [2003]
p.33), their relative merit to be adjudicated by an independent panel
established in 2003, comprised of eminent scholars,
all of whom have challenged past DR induction(s),
most of them successfully at least once. Judges:
Rob't M. Bryce, author of Cook&Peary: the Polar
Controversy Resolved 1997.
Dennis Duke, Physics Department, Florida State University.
Hugh Thurston, Professor Emeritus, Mathematics, University of
British Columbia [since deceased: see below].
Curtis Wilson, History of Science, St.John's College, Annapolis.
Note added 2006/1/1:
As noted at ibid p.31, three of the four panel judges must be
convinced of a submitted solution's superiority. However,
the rarity of trustworthily independent judges in the astronomical history
field being what it has persistently been, DR regards these judges as
virtually irreplaceable. Thus, since two among the four van der Waerden Award
judges are of advanced age, DIO wishes to
warn potential aspirants
that we are not obliged to replace any BvdW-Award judges that become deceased.
I.e., unless a candidate wishes to face the challenge of convincing
a unanimity of three judges (or eventually three of two judges!),
it would be wise to submit promptly. Another way of looking at the situation:
given that the eight challenges were mailed to every serious scholar
of astronomical history in 2003
(and most of the eight DIO solutions were likewise mailed out
individually, ordmag a decade ago), and given that scholars
have unsuccessfully attempted betterment of several of the eight:
if the van der Waerden Award opportunity
is not met with reasonable promptitude,
DIO will consider itself free to adopt the position
that the eight theories cited have been validated
by general and long-term communal failure to excel them,
despite our repeated encouragements, challenges,
even offers (and grantings)
of generous fiscal remuneration for success in exceeding us.
[Hugh
Thurston died on 2006/10/29, so if there are to be any more winners
of the van der Waerden prize (by exceeding any of DR's eight on-the-line
solutions), we are now down to requiring approval of 3-out-of-3 judges.]
Note added 2004/12/5:
In any year during which none of the eight DR inductions is eliminated,
the van der Waerden Award committee is free to bestow its Award
upon the creator of a worthy induction unrelated to the DR list.
(And in such cases, a simple majority will suffice.)
Indeed, if the passing years bring no eliminations,
DR asks the committee to consider retro-honoring such theories as:
[a] Jack Horner's arguments that TyRex was a scavenger.
[b] the late Aubrey Diller's end-of-rational-controversy proof
(DIO 4.2 [1994]
p.56 Table 1) that Hipparchos in the 2nd century BC used
an accurate equation of spherical trig, and possessed
a long-lost figure (23°40') for the Earth's obliquity
which was much more accurate than the only extant precise
ancient value, that of Eratosthenes-Ptolemy (23°51'20''). (See
recent startling confirmations at
DIO 5 [2009]
[p.7 and Tables 1&2];
DIO 16 [2009]
‡3).
[c] The theory that Shakespeare was a front for Christopher Marlowe,
whose 1593/5/30 “death” appears
to have been an escape from noose or torture
for religious unorthodoxy, Marlowe having been arrested on 5/18,
and an associate's lethally detailed charge against him having reached
the Privy Council on 1593/5/29. See the books of Calvin Hoffman 1955
and Samuel Blumenfeld 2008. DR's own analysis can be found
elsewhere on this site.
The awarding of all DIO prizes will henceforth be strictly up to the several appointed panels, in order that evaluation of merit will be entirely out of DR's hands. The panels are also encouraged to consider & suggest improvements of the definitions of standards & principles, by which potential recipients will be judged.
Notice 2008-2009:
By majority vote of the R. R. Newton Award committee:
the R. R. Newton Award for Scientific History has been voted
both to Steve Albers and to Gerd Graßhoff: $1000 each.
Steve Albers proposed the fruitful idea of consulting historical satellite-search ms records of then-known planets when near geocentric conjunction with then-unknown planets, to find unwitting observations of the latter — an idea that led to Charles Kowal's world-famous 1980 find of Galileo's 1613 Neptune sightings. Kowal's first-ever first-person story behind this forever-unique discovery is a DIO exclusive: DIO 15.
Overturning universal obliviousness (shared by RRN & DR),
Gerd Graßhoff created
(University of Hamburg 1986 thesis, English translation 1990, Springer)
the completely original, successful, and
key-controversy-resolving
project of demonstrating undeniable mass-statistical correlations of
star-position errors in Hipparchos' Commentary
& Ptolemy's Almajest .
(This study's instant conversion of Syntaxis editor
Gerald Toomer [to realization that Ptolemy had appropriated Hipparchos'
star catalog] is a credit both to Graßhoff and to Toomer.)
Graßhoff is also co-editor (with A.Stückelberger) of
the first complete modern-language critical edition
(2006) of Ptolemy's Geography; our admiration of and appreciation
for this monumental work may be consulted in the preface to
DIO 14 [2008]
‡3 [p.33].
Anyone is free to propose nominees or achievements, by simply sending
specifics to the appropriate panel of judges.
And anyone in the world is eligible for the awards. With one exception: DR.