Anthony Grafton

From Freepedia

Anthony Grafton (born 21 May 1950) is an American historian. He is noted for his wide learning, and in particular for his studies of the classical tradition from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century, and in the history of historical scholarship.

He was educated at the University of Chicago, where he took his A.B. and Ph.D. in rapid succession. He studied briefly at the University of London under the celebrated ancient historian Arnaldo Momigliano, and retains links with the Warburg Institute. After a brief period teaching at Cornell University he has since 1975 been a professor of history at Princeton University.

His many books include a profound study of the scholarship and chronology of the foremost classical scholar of the late Renaissance, Joseph Scaliger (2 vols, 1983-1993), a revisionist account (with Lisa Jardine) of the significance of Renaissance education (From Humanism to the Humanities, 1986), and, more recently, studies of Girolamo Cardano as an astrologer (1999) and Leon Battista Alberti (2000).

The best introduction to his preoccupation with the relations between scholarship and science in the early modern period is perhaps (still) Defenders of the Text (1991). In some ways his most original and accessible book is The Footnote: A curious history (1997; published in German as Die Tragischen Ursprünge der deutschen Fussnot), a case-study in what might be called the history of history, from below.

He is a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize.