Wellcome Trust-funded historian wins esteemed Humboldt Professorship
10 April 2009
The Humboldt Professorship is awarded to scientists and scholars outside Germany, enabling them to carry out a large-scale research project at a German university. It is one of the most prestigious European academic prizes and is awarded to up to ten researchers each year, usually in the fields of natural sciences, medicine and mathematics. A classicist and medical historian, Professor van der Eijk is the first ever successful candidate from the humanities.
Currently based at Newcastle University, Professor van der Eijk researches ancient and classical medicine, and he is Director of the Northern Centre for the History of Medicine - a partnership with Durham University funded by the Wellcome Trust. Among his ongoing work is a significant project to translate into English the complete works of Galen, the most significant medical figure of the Roman period.
The Humboldt award will support a large programme of research based at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Focusing on classical medicine and its reception in the Western medical tradition, Professor van der Eijk will address major questions about the dialogue between medicine and philosophy, medicine's engagement with the mind-body interface, the transfer of medical knowledge, and the relationship between medicine, moral values and religion.
The new research programme will be carried out in collaboration with colleagues in classics and philosophy at the Humboldt University as well as the Free University Berlin, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science at Berlin, the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science, and the Medical History Department of Berlin's Medical School 'Charité'.
Professor van der Eijk will continue to be involved in research and related activities at the Northern Centre for the History of Medicine, and he says the award will support the Centre's international collaborations: "This is great news for the History of Medicine programme, as the research activities in Berlin will build on and further strengthen the research projects funded by the Wellcome Trust. More generally, the Humboldt award will enable further collaboration between UK and overseas medical historians and so strengthen the international dimension of the programme."
Image: Illustration of Galen, with assistant and scribe, in an apothecary's shop. Dresden, 15th century. Credit: Wellcome Images