Franklin-Lavoisier Prize

The Franklin-Lavoisier Prize is the Science History Institute’s first international award. Named for Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin, two of the 18th century’s greatest minds, this prize recognizes outstanding achievements and meritorious efforts that promote and advance the history and heritage of the chemical sciences and technology.

The Franklin-Lavoisier Prize was established in 2007 by the late Bernard Bigot who served as president of the Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie, the Paris-based “international house of chemistry” and cosponsor of the award.

Presented alternately in the United States and France every other year, this international prize is awarded to individuals and organizations from around the world that have contributed to and continue to create original and innovative work that opens new areas and perspectives in the preservation, interpretation, and sharing of our collective chemical heritage. 

Winners receive a medal and a monetary prize of €15,000, half of which is to be used for a public-facing project in France or the United States.

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2026 Awardee: William R. Newman

William “Bill” R. Newman has spent most of his career at Indiana University, where he has investigated major themes in the history of alchemy. In his 1991 book, The Summa Perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber: A Critical Edition, Translation & Study, he revealed the presence of a corpuscular theory of matter in medieval alchemy, which also formed the foundation of his later book, Atoms and Alchemy (2006). There Newman charted the heavy influence of Geber on the atomism of Daniel Sennert and on the matter theory of Robert Boyle, showing how alchemical corpuscular theory was appropriated and transformed by the mechanical philosophy.

A second theme of Newman’s work is the striking focus that medieval alchemy provided to the traditional Western idea of competition between art and nature. Newman’s 2004 Promethean Ambitions describes figures ranging from the medieval French poet Jean de Meun to his later compatriot, the ceramicist Bernard Palissy, who both viewed alchemy as the apex of human claims to outdo nature, although they reached opposite conclusions about its value. Even Francis Bacon, the champion of experimental science, found inspiration for his claim that nature differs from art “not in form or essence, but only in the efficient,” in alchemical exemplars.

Yet another theme in Newman’s work has been the pervasive impact of Joan Baptista van Helmont and the Helmontian tradition on the development of principles crucial to experimental science, such as the concept of mass balance. Van Helmont’s prominent influence appears in Newman’s 1994 biography of George Starkey, Gehennical Fire, as well as in Alchemy Tried in the Fire (2002), coauthored with Lawrence M. Principe. More recently Newman has been working with a team of dedicated scholars to produce The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, an online edition of Newton’s alchemical papers. This edition made it possible for Newman to shed considerable new light on Newton’s “chymical” activities in his 2019 book, Newton the Alchemist.

Winners of the Franklin-Lavoisier Prize

About the Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie

The Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie was founded in 1928 in Paris with the goal of building and maintaining a central meeting and working space to promote the popularization of science for chemists worldwide. To fulfill this mission, the organization provides several services and activities to facilitate cooperation among all those working to promote chemistry as one of the basic disciplines of science and technology.