Dan David Prize

21/04/2026

Widely acclaimed documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, whose study of institutions and human behavior redefined the art of non-fiction storytelling over a career spanning six decades, passed away recently. His unparalleled body of work earned him worldwide renown and prestigious honors, including the Dan David Prize in 2003, in particular for his profound contribution to social commentary and the study of the human condition.

16/04/2026

The Dan David Prize team mourns the death of Michael O. Rabin, one of the world's most prominent computer scientists and the recipient of the 2010 Dan David Prize.

29/12/2025

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The Dan David Prize is the largest history prize in the world with an annual purse of $3 million. We award up to nine prizes of $300,000 each year to outstanding early and midcareer scholars and practitioners in the historical disciplines. The remaining $300,000 fund a program for international....

17/12/2025

In 1519 the Tlaxcala presented Cortés with a large bone they said belong to a race of giants, as proof of their might. The Spanish accepted this claim, and struck an alliance against the Aztecs.

2025 Dan David Prize winner Mackenzie Cooley is a historian of early modern nature and medicine:

When conquistador Hernán Cortés arrived in Mexico in 1519, he partnered with the indigenous Tlaxcalans against their long-time enemies, the Mexica. The Tlaxc...

11/12/2025

Congratulations to 2022 Dan David Prize winner Natalia Romik whose new book "Architecture of Memory: Exploring (Post-) Jewish Spaces in Eastern Europe" was recently published by UCL Press.

The book, which is open access, can be downloaded here:

Architecture of Memory explores architectural disappearance, urban remembrance and functional change amid social upheaval. Using archival, architectural and artistic methods, Natalia Romik investigates the spectral architecture of former shtetls – predominantly Jewish towns in Central and Eastern ...

10/12/2025

When a gravedigger in 1860s Nevada City buried Chinese immigrants without noting their names, he inadvertently left evidence of the erasure of Asian-Americans from the public eye and from history.

2025 Dan David Prize winner Beth Lew-Williams is a historian of race and migration in the modern US.

When a gravedigger in 1860s Nevada City buried Chinese immigrants without recording their names, he erased their individual identity from the historical reco...

03/12/2025

In 15thC Ethiopia, King Yəsḥaq decreed the forced conversion of the Beta Israel to Christianity. In defiance, 75 Beta Israel committed su***de; the place of their deaths became a holy site.

2025 Dan David Prize winner Bar Kribus is an archaeologist specializing in the history of the Beta Israel.

In fifteenth-century Ethiopia, the Christian King Yəsḥaq tried to force the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) to convert to Christianity. Rather than convert, a g...

01/12/2025

The Dan David Prize mourns the loss of celebrated playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, who died at age 88.

Stoppard was the 2008 Dan David Prize laureate in the category of Creative Rendering of the Past - Literature, Theater and Film, among many other accolades. In his immortal play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard wrote “We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”

Pictured: Tom Stoppard receiving the Dan David Prize in 2008

26/11/2025

Using new forensic methods, archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls and her team found ethical ways uncover Holocaust atrocities despite N**i attempts to cover them up.

2025 Dan David Prize winner Caroline Sturdy Colls is an archaeologist of the Holocaust and sites of genocide:

Every crime leaves a trace. Despite N**i attempts to hide the horrors of what they had done at Treblinka extermination camp by razing it to the ground, archa...

20/11/2025

What does it mean to tell history?

Who is included and who is forgotten?

These are questions Fred Kuwornu asks in his films, encouraging audiences to think differently about the past.

2025 Dan David Prize winner Fred Kuwornu is an artist and filmmaker:

What does it mean to tell history? Who is included and who is forgotten? Who is in the frame and who is left outside of it? These are some of the questions t...

13/11/2025

The rediscovery of the notebooks of John Wickins, Isaac Newton’s college roommate, paints a new picture of Newton as a collaborator and a friend, rather than a lone genius.

2025 Dan David Prize winner Dmitri Levitin researches early modern history & the history of knowledge:

When we think of Isaac Newton, we often imagine a lone genius working tirelessly in the solitary pursuit of knowledge; we rarely think of the friends he migh...