The Sydney Prize is named for a Dartmouth College professor whose passion and encouragement inspired students both inside and outside of the classroom. It honors whoever exhibits promise across three endeavors – scholarship, undergraduate teaching and leadership for liberal arts education – with its winner honored at Phi Beta Kappa’s Triennial Council meeting.
New York Times columnist David Brooks selected “The Coddling of the American Mind” as one of this year’s winners of his annual Sidney Award, which honors some of the best long-form essays in politics and culture. In his essay, Brooks explores the phenomenon of hypersensitivity among students, the ways it erodes their critical thinking and leaves them unprepared for life in the real world.
For 2023, the prestigious Andrew Gemant Memorial Prize was awarded to physicist Sidney Perkowitz for his work in connecting physics with art and humanities. This includes his books, lectures, and his tireless efforts to engage with the public and connect physics with art and media.
Having majored in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sidney took a summer course on molecular biology and was enthralled. He went on to pursue a Ph.D in physics at Columbia University and conducted research on bacteriophage T4 DNA replication with Cheng Chin. But he also became fascinated by the cultural, artistic, and humanistic aspects of physics.
The Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize seeks outstanding original short fiction of up to 3000 words themed loosely around the notion of travel. This year’s judges, Laura Elvery, Paige Clark and Michael Winkler, have selected a winning piece, Annie Zhang’s ‘Who Rattles the Night?’, to be published in Overland, along with two runners-up. Zhang is a writer and editor living on unceded Wangal land.
SHOT has a number of awards and fellowships that recognize excellence in the field of history of technology. Those include the Leonardo da Vinci Medal, which is given to an individual who has significantly contributed to the study of the history of science and technology, Melvin Kranzberg Dissertation Fellowship, Joan Cahalin Robinson Prize, Abbot Payson Usher Fellowship and Brooke Hindle Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Several of these awards were given out at this year’s SHOT conference in Pittsburgh. We will be posting a full list of all award winners shortly, and you can find more information about all of our prizes and fellowships on our website. In the meantime, sign up for our newsletter to receive winner announcements, Calls for Entries, Sidney’s Picks and more! We look forward to seeing you in Pittsburgh next spring. Thank you to our sponsors for their generous support of these awards! Please consider supporting SHOT with a donation. Click here for more information. The Sydney Prize is made possible by a gift from the family of the late Miss A.M. Ardern in memory of her brother, who was a Phi Beta Kappa member.