Ten new recipients of the Barry prize, awarded to scholars at U.S. colleges and universities for distinguished intellectual achievements, have been named.
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The American Academy of Sciences & Letters has announced the 10 recipients of this year’s Barry Prize, awarded to scholars at U.S. colleges and universities for distinguished intellectual achievements in the arts, sciences and learned professions.
An annual award, the Barry Prize “honors those whose work has made outstanding contributions to humanity’s knowledge, appreciation, and cultivation of the good, the true, and the beautiful.” Winners of the Barry Prize receive a cash award of $50,000 and also become members of the Academy.
The 2025 Barry Prizes were awarded in a November 12 ceremony in Washington, D.C. to:
Danielle Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. The Academy praised her work for illuminating “the challenges of modern democratic life,” adding that her scholarship “has cut through ideological oversimplifications in order to equip us to pursue justice and democracy in our own day.”
Richard P. Binzel, professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An expert on asteroids and the planet Pluto, Binzel invented the Tonio Scale, a method for categorizing the hazards posed by the impact of objects such as asteroids and comets. The Academy’s citation credited him for “distinguished contributions to humanity’s knowledge of the cosmos,” adding that he “has fueled humanity’s exploration of space, revealed the hidden history of the planet Pluto, resisted political distortion of space programs, and established new methods for discovering celestial objects.”
Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, distinguished university professor, Vernal Riffe Professor of Political Science and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University. She was recognized for “distinguished contributions to humanity’s understanding of democratic political life, and to its methods of social analysis,” including work that “has helped us understand one another better in an era of growing political division, and given social scientists better tools for examining human social behavior.”
Charles E. Butterworth, emeritus professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. Best known for his scholarship on medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, Butterworth was honored for “distinguished contributions to humanity’s knowledge of Arabic and Islamic philosophy, and its contribution to the shared heritage of human thought on moral and political questions.”
Sylvester James Gates, Jr., the Clark Leadership Chair in Science, and a professor in the physics department and school of public policy at the University of Maryland. A pioneer in the fields of supersymmetry, supergravity and superstring theory, Gates was cited for advancing “our understanding of space and time, the great cosmic scaffold of our world.”
Anthony Grafton, Princeton University’s Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Emeritus. He was recognzied for “his groundbreaking work on the history of the classical humanist tradition, and the university’s methods of scholarly inquiry more generally,” which “has invited scholars in every field to seek a deeper understanding of what we are doing when we engage in disciplined and systematic pursuit of truth.” Grafton has taught at Princeton for 50 years, with a focus on the Protestant and Catholic Reformations.
Philip Hamburger, the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia University and founder and CEO of the New Civil Liberties Alliance. an independent, nonprofit civil-rights organization based in Washington, D.C. Described by the Academy as “one of the preeminent scholars writing today on constitutional law and its history,” Hamburger teaches and writes on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, academic censorship, the regulation of science, judicial duty, administrative power, and the development of liberal thought.
Leon R. Kass, the Addie Clark Harding Professor Emeritus in the Committee on Social Thought and in the College at the University of Chicago. His citation reads in part, “As a physician, molecular biologist, and lifelong scholar of humanist and religious thought, Leon Kass has brought his love of learning to bioethics policy, and to the fundamental questions of human experience.” It added that his scholarship has “relentlessly reminded us to ask what it means to be human, and to be aware of how technological development may be altering that understanding.”
David A. Relman, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor of Medicine and professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University. A pioneer in the study of the microbiome, Relman was credited with making “signal contributions to medical science and public health” and for “distinguished contributions to humanity’s understanding of the microscopic ecosystems inside us, the pathogens that threaten us, and the value of honest scientific discourse, to the benefit of human health and welfare.”
Joseph H. H. Weiler, university professor in the School of Law at New York University and senior fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. AALS lauded Weiler for “his contributions on questions involving human rights, European integration, and international and comparative constitutional law (which) have helped us do justice in ways that respect our individual and communal humanity.”
About AASL
AASL gave out its first Barry Prizes in 2023, the year when the Academy was launched and its initial members were inducted. Its president is Donald W. Landry, who was recently named the interim president of the University of Florida. In addition to its awards, AASL seeks to recognize the importance of excellent scholarship and champion “the intellectual rigor and diversity of American colleges, universities, and public intellectual discourse.”