Robert Darnton
Harvard University Professor and Director of the University Library
Robert Darnton is an American cultural historian, recognized as a leading expert on 18th-century France. He graduated from Harvard University in 1960, attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship and earned a Ph.D. (D. Phil.) in history from Oxford in 1964. He worked as reporter at The New York Times from 1964 to 1965. Joining the Princeton University faculty in 1968, he was appointed Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of European History and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1982.
On July 1, 2007, he transferred to emeritus status at Princeton, and was appointed Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and director of the Harvard University Library. He has been a visiting professor or fellow at many universities and institutes for advanced study. His outside activities include service as a trustee of the New York Public Library, the Oxford University Press (USA), and terms as president of the American Historical Association (1999) and the International Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies.
Prof. Darnton is a pioneer in the field of the history of book. He is writing about electronic publishing and is the founder of the Gutenberg-e program, sponsored by Mellon Foundation.
He has written and edited many books, including The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie (1979, an early attempt to develop the history of books as a field of study), The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984, probably his most popular work, which has been translated into 17 languages), Berlin Journal, 1989-1990, (1991, an account of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of East Germany), and The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France (1995, a study of the underground book trade). One of Darnton's latest publications is dedicated to the National Digital Public Library of America.
Among his honors are a National Book Critics Circle Award, election to the French Legion of Honor, and the Gutenberg prize. In 2012, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal 2011 by President Barack Obama for his determination to make knowledge accessible to everyone.
