Washburn Award
Honoring Excellence
Through its board of trustees and prizes and awards committee, the Museum of Science presents the Bradford Washburn Award to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution toward public understanding and appreciation of science and the vital role it plays in our lives. Past recipients include Jacques Cousteau, Jane Goodall, and Carl Sagan — part of a long list of distinguished individuals who have made significant contributions to scientific and technological literacy. The Museum honors each awardee with an embossed golden medal, a reception, and a seated dinner.
In 1964 an anonymous donor who believed deeply in both the people and the mission of the Museum established the Washburn award, named for H. Bradford Washburn Jr., the explorer-cartographer who served as director of the Museum from 1939 - 1980. Through a restricted endowment fund, the donor intended to recognize in perpetuity the importance of making scientific understanding available to the broad populace. The Museum is grateful for the philanthropy that makes this award possible.
Washburn Award Recipients
2012
- Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage
- Co-hosts, MythBusters
2011
- Jean-Michel Cousteau
- Explorer, environmentalist, educator, oceanographer, and filmmaker
2010
- Atul Gawande, MD, MPH
- Surgeon, professor, author, New Yorker staff writer
2009
- Thomas L. Friedman
- Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times columnist
2008
- Neil deGrasse Tyson, PhD
- Frederick P. Rose Director, Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History; television host, NOVA scienceNOW
2007
- Bill Bryson
- Author, A Short History of Nearly Everything
2006
- David Suzuki, PhD
- Scientist, environmentalist, and broadcaster
2005
- Dean Kamen
- Inventor
2004
- Brian Greene, PhD
- Physicist
2003
- Alan Alda
- Television host, Scientific American Frontiers
2002
- Greg MacGillivray
- Large-format filmmaker
2001
- Dava Sobel
- Author
2000
- Ira Flatow
- Author, television and radio producer and host
1999
- Nicholas Negroponte, PhD
- Co-founder and director, MIT Media Lab
1998
- Timothy Johnson, MD, MPH
- ABC Medical Editor
1997
- Daniel Goleman, PhD
- Psychologist, author, science journalist
1996
- Edward O. Wilson, PhD
- Evolutionary biologist, entomologist
1995
- Sylvia A. Earle, PhD
- Sea explorer, conservationist
1994
- Paula S. Apsell
- Journalist, film producer
1993
- David A. Macaulay
- Writer, illustrator
1992
- Sally Kristen Ride, PhD
- First American woman in space
1991
- C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD
- Former surgeon general of the United States
1990
- John Henry Hemming, CMG, DLitt
- Director, Royal Geographical Society
1989
- Bradford and Barbara Washburn 50th Anniversary
- No award presented
1988
- National Geographic Society
1987
- Sheila Evans Widnal, ScD
- Teacher, researcher, aerospace engineer
1986
- Robert D. Ballard, PhD
- Director, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
1985
- Brigadier General Charles E. Yeager, USAF (Retired)
- First to break the sound barrier
1984
- Stephen Jay Gould, PhD
- Harvard professor of geology and curator of invertebrate paleontology, Museum of Comparative Zoology
1983
- Sir David Attenborough
- Filmmaker
1982
- Thor Heyerdahl, PhD
- Student of prehistoric navigation
1981
- Roger Tory Peterson, PhD
- Artist, teacher, ornithologist
1980
- Mary D. Leakey, PhD
- Paleoanthropologist
- Kenneth F. Weaver
- Science Editor, National Geographic Magazine
1979
- Isaac Asimov, PhD
- Science author
1978
- Carl Sagan, PhD
- Author and professor of astronomy and space sciences, Cornell University
1977
- Sir Arthur Charles Clarke
- Science and science-fiction writer
1976
- Loren C. Eiseley, PhD
- Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania
1975
- Jean Mayer, PhD, ScD
- Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health
1974
- Jane Goodall, PhD
- Wildlife researcher, primatologist
- Baron Hugo Van Lawick
- Nature photographer
1973
- Rene Dubos, PhD
- Professor of biology, Rockefeller University, New York
1972
- Walter Sullivan
- Science Editor, The New York Times
1970
- Walter Cronkite
- Senior CBS News correspondent
1969
- Sir George Taylor, DSc
- Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England
1968
- George Wald, PhD
- Professor of biology, Harvard University
1967
- Donald Baxter MacMillan
- Rear Admiral, USNR (Retired)
1966
- Gerard Piel
- Publisher, Scientific American
1965
- Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau
- Director, Institut Oceanographique et Musee, Monaco
1964
- Melville Bell Grosvenor, PhD
- President, National Geographic Society
