UCSB alum Jacob Darwin Hamblin is the most recent winner of the Watson and Helen Miles Davis Prize from the History of Science Society. The prize – awarded for the best book published in the history of science and written for the general public – was for his 2013 Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism.
Hamblin did his Ph.D in UCSB’s History Department with the late Larry Badash as his advisor. (The fact that his middle name is the same as a certain famous naturalist certainly doesn’t hurt either.) Hamblin is currently Professor of History at Oregon State University.