The highest recognition from the Society for the History of Technology is the Leonardo da Vinci Medal, presented to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the history of technology, through research, teaching, publication, and other activities.
SHOT is extremely pleased to announce that the 2025 recipient of the Leonardo da Vinci Medal is:
The Melvin Kranzberg Professor emeritus, Georgia Institute of Technology
Professor John Krige has conducted path-breaking scholarship in the history of technology, specializing in state-driven innovation in the domains of space and civilian nuclear technology, and he has forged new interdisciplinary links with the fields of US diplomatic, transatlantic, and Cold War histories. Krige has done incisive and pioneering work on technological institutions and systems, as well as global flows of artifacts and associated knowledge systems. He has been a leader in teaching and outreach in the field.
Krige’s academic career began with his publication of the team-authored three-volume history of CERN and his exploration of intergovernmental big science as project leader on the two-volume history of the European Space Agency. He led the Center for Research in the History of Science and Technology, Paris, and in 2000 took up the prestigious Kranzberg chair in history of technology in Georgia Tech’s School of History and Sociology. Here, Krige’s shifted his focus to US-European relations during the Cold War, and an analysis of how American governmental and philanthropic institutions mobilized science and technology to consolidate American global power. Two important monographs followed: American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (MIT 2006) and Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe: US Technological Collaboration and Nonproliferation (MIT 2016). Collaborating with two of his students, he co-authored NASA in the World: Fifty Years of International Collaboration in Space (Palgrave Macmillan 2013). In the last decade, John has shifted attention to questions of knowledge transfer that were published as Knowledge Flows in a Global Age (Chicago 2022) and (with Mario Daniels) Knowledge Regulation and National Security in Postwar America (Chicago 2022).
The exemplary spirit of collaboration that John has brought to the academy is evident in the eight edited volumes and special journal editions in which he has participated, along with his numerous co-authored books and articles. In all, Krige has published 20 books and edited volumes, including three individual monographs, along with 24 refereed articles in leading journals, and 31 book chapters. His most recent article in Technology & Culture on US-China chip wars (2024) was downloaded 2,656 times by the end of February 2025. In addition to the Kranzberg chair, Krieg has held numerous prestigious fellowships and visiting professorships, including the Lindbergh Fellowship in Aerospace History at the Smithsonian Institution (2004-5), the Shelby Cullom Davis Center Fellowship at Princeton University (2006), and visiting professorships at the California Institute of Technology (2009), Emory University (2006, 2007-08), and Manchester University (2008).
Krige has been exemplary in mentoring students. He left a sizeable imprint on the graduate program at Georgia Tech, where he served as Director of Graduate Studies (2008-14) and supervised 25 students. A unique aspect of Krige’s stewardship was his mentoring of many students who worked in archives in Asia. He was able to guide these students in the nuances of technological practices while giving them the autonomy to deal with non-western, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial archives. Krige was also instrumental provided crucial involvement in the launch of Georgia Tech’s study abroad campus in Metz, France, in the summer of 2002.
Krige has served SHOT and other sister organizations as well as journals with distinction. He was SHOT President from 2017-18, when he made significant contributions to the further internationalization of SHOT’s mission, sat on the Executive Council (2012-2014), and joined the Committee on International Scholars (2000-2003). John has also served as a member of the formative Coordination Committee for Tensions of Europe (2000-2003) and on the HSS Council (2012-2014). John has a long and distinguished editorial career as editor-in-chief of the journal History and Technology for nearly two decades (1990-2008), a series editor for Studies in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (Routledge) and advisory editors for the British Journal for the History of Science, Minerva (2000-2003, 2009- present), and Isis (2001-2004).
John Krige has shown himself a model scholar who has devoted a long and distinguished career to the field of the history of technology. SHOT is delighted to award him the 2025 Leonardo da Vinci Medal