A panel of 14 judges including peer publishers, librarians and academics has awarded the R.R. Hawkins Award for the year’s best scholarly publication to Elsevier, for Alan Turing: His Work and Impact, edited by S. Barry Cooper and Jan van Leeuwen. The announcement was made at a luncheon in Washington D.C. to celebrate the 38th Annual PROSE Awards, sponsored by the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division.
Celebrating the centenary of his birth, Alan Turing: His Work and Impact was praised as “a fitting tribute to the life of the legendary mathematical and scientific genius,” considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
“This remarkable volume contains a selection of more than two dozen of Turing’s most important writings, lectures and broadcasts from 1936 to 1954 and extensive commentaries from researchers and practitioners whose intellectual and personal lives Turing’s persona and work have influenced profoundly,” explained Myer Kutz, Myer Kutz Associates, and Mathematics Judge for PROSE. “The products of this unique mind are made accessible to both specialists and general readers by this touching and learned book.”
For the sixth year in a row, the PROSE program attracted a record-breaking number of submissions: 535 entries of books, reference works, journals and electronic products in more than 40 categories. This year also marked the first time that a trade publisher won an Award for Excellence, with HarperCollins selected for the Humanities discipline honor for Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch.
In another first, the Hawkins prize authors will receive a cash award of $10,000 endowed by the AAP/PSP.
In addition to the Hawkins Award, AAP also recognized winners in a number of other categories, and the complete list is available on the AAP Web site.
