Values, Norms, and Facts We May Want to Take Responsability for

The first Balzan Prize for the History of Science was awarded in 1986 to Otto Neugebauer, who impressed the Balzan General Prize Committee with his detailed illustration of the remarkable scientific achievements of ancient civilizations, namely Mesopotamia and Egypt. To quote the Balzan Prize laudatio, Neugebauer «revealed both the debt of later civilizations, notably Greek and Indian, to their Mesopotamian forerunners, and the remarkable mathematical abilities of the Babylonian astronomers». Besides his work on what Babylonian astronomers actually accomplished several millennia before modern times, his primary contribution to the history of science was his extensive work on the historical reconstruction of Egyptian astronomy which contributed to eradicating a number of modern myths about its nature and influence.