2021 Prize - Sara Schechner
This year's Sawyer Dialing Prize went to Dr. Sara Schechner “for her career in education and conservation of our dialing heritage, and in particular for her authorship of Time of Our Lives – Sundials of the Adler Planetarium”.
Dr. Schechner is a historian of science, and in particular, of astronomical instruments. She is the David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University. She is also a lecturer on the history of science at Harvard. Previously at the Adler Planetarium, she was pivotal in authoring and producing Time of Our Lives.
Fred presented Sara with an award certification, the tradional cash prize of $200 and a custom made Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials.
She acknowledged the Sawyer Dialing Prize with a presentation on “Sundials That Tell Us More Than the Time”. In her talk, she examined sundials that indicate the political, religious, economic and geographic context in which they were created from the humble dial to the princely treasure. Sundials could be found embedded in eating utensils, swords, guns, or your writing kit. Early consumers wanted pocket sundials with style, much the way iphone and smartphone users today show off their technology. Cities specialized in the manufacture of different styled dials. Living in London you might have an equatorial from Augsburg or in Paris you would choose the Butterfield Dial. For the rich, dials were of silver and gold. The middle class might have brass and the lower class might use a shepherd’s dial out of paper and wood.
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2020 Prize - No Award Given
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2019 Prize - Denis Savoie
This year's Sawyer Dialing Prize was awarded to Dénis Savoie at the NASS annual conference in Denver, CO. The certificate recognizes Dénis "for his long career of education, reserarch, and publications related to gnomonics and his outstanding portfolio of public sundial designs and restorations." Early in his career Dénis was significantly influenced by Morando, who was excellent at calculating planetary motions and played an important part in the reduction of astrometry data from the Hipparcos satellite. In his honor, asteroid 5702 was named Morando thanks to the submission by Dénis Savoi and Jean Meeus, and endorsed by L. D. Schmadel.
Dénis has designed many large sundials, including the giant "Nef Solaire" on the A9 motorway near Tave. Dénis has done many projects with Marc Goutaudier, including the creation of a sundial on the top of the SEIS Seismometer on the InSight mission to Mars. The sundial provided precise orientation of the seismometer using a unique shadow calibration ring.
At the fall annual meeting of the Commission des Cadrans Solaires - a subgroup of the Societe Astronomique de France - on 16 Nov 2019 the President of CCS, Philippe Sauvageot, presented Dénis with the traditional Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials and the Sawyer Dialing Prize certificate. He already received the Sawyer Award Prize of $200.
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2018 Prize - Gianpiero Casalegno
This year's Sawyer Dialing prize was awarded to Gianpiero Casalegno at the NASS annual conference in Pittsburgh, PA. The certificate recognizes Gian for "his achievements in harnessing modern digital technology to the benefit of traditional dialists around the world - 18 Aug 2018."
Gian was not able to attend the conference to receive the Sawyer Award, so Fred Sawyer read the certificate to NASS attendees and forwarded the award certificate and a custom made Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials to Gian in Italy. Gian chose to use the traditional cash prize of $200 to support the Bellingham Mural Sundial.
Gian prepared an acceptance speech that was read by Sawyer. Gian's began his talk with "My main contribution to gnomonics has been the development of several software programs [including Orologi Solari available to all at http://www.sundials.eu/download/download_enu.html] to help other people dealing with sundial design, simulation and restoration. Therefore today I would like to present a survey of my programs highlighting some unique aspects that could have been neglected or underestimated by most people."
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2017 Prize - No Award Given
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2016 Prize - Roger Bailey
This year's Sawyer Dialing prize was awarded to Roger Bailey at the NASS annual conference in Portland, ME. The certificate recognizes Roger for "consistently showing the dialing community that all you need to know in life can be learned from studying sundials, and for using that study to advance the theory and practice of dialing."
Fred Sawyer presented Roger with an award certificate, the traditional cash prize of $200 and a custom made Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials.
On receiving the award Roger's presentation was "That is a Good Question". Here he pointed out that most of his achievements in the art and science of dialing was sparked by answering good questions, questions like the shadow lengths or the time and direction of sunrise sunset on analemmatic sundials or time systems on Islamic sundials. The theme was "Ask and you shall receive". He remains open to good questions.
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- 2015 Prize - Gianni Ferrari
- 2014 Prize - Robert Kellogg
- 2013 Prize - André Bouchard
- 2012 Prize - Frank King
- 2011 Prize - Helmut Sonderegger
- 2010 Prize - Bill Gottesman
- 2009 Prize - John Davis
- 2008 Prize - Kate Pond
- 2007 Prize - Mac Oglesby
- 2006 Prize - Hendrik Hollander
- 2005 Prize - Tony Moss
- 2004 Prize - Bill Nye and Woodruff Sullivan
- 2003 Prize - Helm Roberts
- 2002 Prize - John Carmichael
- 2001 Prize - Robert Adzema
- 2000 Prize - Fer J. de Vries