
Alain Touwaide
Research Associate, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, Washington DC, USA
Scientific Director, Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, Washington DC, USA
Full Bio
A classicist and historian of medicine, Alain Touwaide searches for, and explore ancient Greek medical manuscripts and texts in libraries all over the world, with a particular interested in botany, medicinal plants, and therapeutics from Archaic Greece to the Ottoman Empire. To exactly interpret the medical information of the texts, he works in collaboration with specialists across the disciplines.
He earned a PhD in Classics in 1981 (Louvain, Belgium) and a “Habilitation à diriger des recherches” in History in 1997 (Toulouse, France). He has been affiliated with several universities, laboratories, research centers and libraries worldwide as the Botany Department of the Smithsonian Institution, the Pharmacognosy Institute of the University of Illinois, Chicago, and now the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University, in Washington, DC. In 2023 he has been awarded the Urdang Medal by the American Institute for the History of Pharmacy for his lifetime dedication and achievements