American Academy of Arts and Sciences Awards Harvard Professor Victor Seow 2025 Sarton Prize

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded the Sarton Prize for the History of Science to Harvard professor Victor K.G. Seow for his 2022 book, “Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia.”

The Sarton Prize, awarded to Seow last month, was established to honor George Sarton, a founder of the History of Science discipline. The prize is awarded to emerging historians of science whose work demonstrates “exceptional promise.”

Seow’s book has also been awarded the John Whitney Hall Book Prize, the Michael H. Hunt Prize in International History, and the Chinese Historians in the United States’ Academic Excellence Award.

In his book, Seow focuses on the dynamic between government, politics, and energy – primarily the use of coal – within East Asia.

Academy president Laurie L. Patton wrote in a Feb. 20 press release that Seow’s “exploration of energy, industry, and politics in modern East Asia bridges disciplines and fosters a deeper understanding of the historical forces that shape science, technology, and society.

“It’s obviously deeply meaningful,” Seow said in an interview on Tuesday. “It’s a personal recognition and one for which I’m super grateful.”

“I also see this as an affirmation that the history of science also involves these elements of histories of labor, technology, and industry – that these are conversations within our field, and also in the region I study, East Asia,” he added.

In “Carbon Technocracy”, Seow argues that the reliance on fossil fuels is linked to state power and economic development for East Asian countries.

Seow said that coal is not simply a source of power but also an “epistemic object that structures scientific inquiry, bureaucratic governance and industrial planning” within East Asia and beyond.

He added that he focused primarily on East Asia because it “provides an interesting lens to study this relationship between energy and power” due to the range of political regimes that existed in the region during the 20th century.

Seow received his masters from Harvard in 2011 and received his Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages in 2014. He joined the Harvard faculty in 2017 and currently teaches courses in the History of Science department, focusing on technology, science, and industry in East Asia.

Seow leads the Science and Technology seminar series at Harvard, a program that features discussions on “critical historical and contemporary issues in science, technology, medicine, and the environment in East, South, and Southeast Asia,” according to the program’s website.

He is also working on another project, tentatively titled “The Human Factor: A History of Science, Work, and the Politics of Production.”

Seow said his unreleased book is “a history of industrial psychology in China.” For this project, Seow added that he is finishing a Master of Liberal Arts in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at the Harvard Extension School.

Seow said that winning the Sarton Prize for “Carbon Technocracy” is a “driver to continue asking important questions” and “take even more risks” in his work.

“It’s a boost, if anything, to continue along this path,” he added.