Alan McGowan
Author & Executive Editor, Environment magazine
Who they are
Alan H. McGowan is an author, academic, and Executive Editor of Environment magazine. Across a career spanning the Scientists' Institute for Public Information, the Gene Media Forum at Syracuse, and The New School — where he chaired both the Science, Technology and Society and Environmental Studies programs — he has published more than one hundred articles on the intersection of science, society, and public responsibility.
Why we chose them
After fifteen years of original research through seventy-four linear feet of Franz Boas's correspondence, McGowan published Citizen Scientist, the first work to fully interweave Boas's groundbreaking anthropology with his political activism. It recovers a figure who challenged racial superiority, defended free speech, and argued that scientific expertise carries a responsibility to engage with the world — questions McGowan makes clear remain as unresolved today as in Boas's time.
Results that deserve a stage?
The awards are chosen, not bought — but every honoree's story started with a conversation.