Yale’s Paola Bertucci Wins International Prize for Book on the History of Science

Paola Bertucci, professor of history and the history of medicine at Yale University, has received the 2025 Paul Bunge Prize for her book, In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023).

Presented annually by the Hans R. Jenemann Foundation and the German Chemical Society, the prize honors the best book on the history of scientific instruments. In her award-winning monograph, Dr. Bertucci discusses how eighteenth-century scientists published fictional events and results to bolster their careers, ultimately leading to long-lasting misrepresentations of scientific practice and enduring stereotypes.

At Yale, Dr. Bertucci serves as curator-in-charge of the history of science and technology division at the Peabody Museum. Her work focuses on science, technology, and medicine in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, as well as the visual and material cultures of science. In addition to her latest work, she has authored numerous scholarly publications, including Artisanal Enlightenment: Science and the Mechanical Arts in Old Regime France (Yale University Press, 2017).

Dr. Bertucci is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Bologna in Italy, where she majored in physics. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in England.