Citation for 1996 Dissertation Prize: Richard Weikart, "Socialist Darwinism: Evolution in German Socialist Thought from Marx to Bernstein," University of Iowa, 1994.

The prize committee (whose members this year were Mary Flesher, Ellen Herman, and David Valone) respectfully submitted the following citation: "We found the dissertation to be well focused, a skillful blending of ideas derived from archival resources and previous scholarship, clearly written, and sustained in analysis. It brings together a solid understanding of the history of German socialism with a nice exposition of Darwinian evolutionist. The author's analysis of the work of Marx, Engels, Lange, Bebel, Kaustsky, and Bernstein are persuasive illustrations of the cultural authority of scientific theory and scientific findings within 19-century German radical social thought. The dissertation provides an empirical basis for historians of the human sciences to pursue our conversation about science's dual roles as truth and authority as well as to ponder the relationship between the physical sciences to the human cultural imagination and its products."