Adrienne Mayor

Mayor specializes in ancient history and the study of "folk science", or how pre-scientific cultures interpreted data about the natural world, and how these interpretations form the basis of many ancient myths, folklore and popular beliefs. Her work in pre-scientific fossil discoveries and traditional interpretations of paleontological has contributed to the emerging field of geomythology as well studies of classical folklore.

Her 2011 work The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times discusses the influence of dinosaur fossils on Greco-Roman myth, particularly griffins, centaurs, giants, and the Cyclopes stories. Mayor's book, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, & the Scorpion Bombs from 2022 details the evolution of ancient poison weaponry and tactics in to modern biological and chemical warfare.

Life

From 1980 to 1996, she worked as a copy editor, and printmaker.

Since 2006, Mayor has been a research scholar in the Classics Department and the History and Philosophy of Science Program at Stanford University.

Mayor has published books and articles on the history of automatons, Amazons, unconventional warfare, ancient automatons, toxic honey, tattoos in antiquity, smallpox blankets in history and legend, assassination by poisoned garments in Mughal India, fossil-related legends, fossil-related place names, and other topics in scholarly journals and popular magazines, including History Today, Lapham Quarterly, Noema, Journal of American Folklore, Archaeology, Natural History, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Gizmodo, The Conversation, and Foreign Affairs. Her books The First Fossil Hunters and Fossil Legends of the First Americans were both praised in Central Connecticut State anthropology department member Kenneth L. Feder's book Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology—a book dedicated to debunking pseudoarcheological claims.

Her books have been translated into French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hungarian, Polish, Turkish, Italian, Russian, Arabic, and Greek and have been featured in documentaries on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, and the BBC. She has lectured at the American Museum of Natural History, Boston Museum of Fine Art, Smithsonian, Art Institute of Chicago, Getty Museum, among other venues, and has been interviewed on NPR, BBC, and Coast to Coast AM. Her biography of Mithradates VI Eupator, The Poison King, was a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award 2009.

From 2011 to 2017, Mayor was a regular contributor to the history of science website Wonders and Marvels.

In 2018–19, she was a Berggruen Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, her research dedicated to the impulse to create artificial life, whether that be today's artificial intelligence or the animated statues of myth. The fruits of this research are contained in her latest book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology.