Director emerita, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Lorraine Daston is Director Emerita at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. She has published extensively on topics relating to the history of science, including probability, statistics, objectivity, and the moral authority of nature. Her most recent publications include Against Nature (MIT Press, 2019) and Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (Princeton University Press, 2022), as well as articles on long-term international scientific collaborations, nuclear reactor insurance, the history of calculation, and the coup d’oeil as a mode of understanding. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, and a corresponding member of the British Academy and the recipient of the Sarton medal of the History of Science Society, the Lichtenberg medal of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, as well as the Dan David prize.