Prof. Avner Ben-Zaken

Prof. Avner Ben-Zaken is an historian of science and a multidisciplinary and multicultural researcher dealing with ways in which science and knowledge cross cultural boundaries. He began his studies at the Hebrew University and graduated with honors with a doctorate in the history of science fromg UCLA. In 2003, he won the Reingold Prize of the International Science History Society. In 2004, he was elected to the Harvard University Fellowship, where he served as a Fellow until 2008. Prof. Ben-Zaken is a versatile researcher focusing on ways in which the crossing of cultural boundaries creates a transient and marginal consciousness necessary to create new ideas. Using this methodological approach, he researched and published in diverse fields, from the history of science in modernity, through the philosophy of late medieval history to political thought and law in the 20th century. He currently heads the Ono Academic College’s Excellence Program, and recently created the multi-disciplinary program in the humanities and social sciences. Ben-Zaken has published three books and dozens of articles.