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Nice things people have said about my book

Some news!

In March, my book Unrefined was awarded the 2026 Paul Bunge Prize for the best work in the history of scientific instruments, given by the Hans R. Jenemann Foundation and the German Chemical Society.

Here's the press release. I'm flabbergasted to be listed alongside previous winners like Simon Schaffer, Matthew Jones, Charlotte Bigg, Jim Bennett, and Liba Taub.

Before my award lecture, Charlotte gave an especially kind introduction to my talk, the kind of introduction where you learn what your own book was really about.

Then, just this week I was delighted to see that Unrefined> has also been shortlisted for the British Society for the History of Science's 2026 Pickstone Prize, which "recognises the best scholarly book in the history of science, broadly construed, published in English in the last two years."

And then today I learned that Steven Shapin reviewed my book for the journal Metascience and said it "takes its place the most accomplished historical treatments of modern metrology— rich, resonant, detailed and forcefully written." It's odd to imagine going back to 2006 and telling the undergraduate reading Leviathan and the Air-Pump that one of that book's co-authors would someday review his own monograph.