Background

Adrienne Mayor was born on April 22, 1946 in Benton, Illinois, United States. She is the daughter John Mayor, an actor and businessman, and Barbara Koch (Palmer) Mayor, an artist.

Education

Adrienne Mayor studied at the University of Minnesota from 1971 to 1976, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classical Folklore.

In 2007, Adrienne was awarded an honorary doctorate by Montana State University.

Career

In 1980, Adrienne Mayor began working as a writer, specializing in ancient and modern folklore and natural history. In 1980-1996, she was a copy editor and printmaker. Since 2003, she has served as an advisor, consultant and interviewee for film and TV documentaries for Discovery, History and Smithsonian Channels, BBC TV, ZDF-Berlin and other production companies. In 2006, Mayor was made a research scholar in the Department of Classics and History and Philosophy of Science Program at Stanford University. In 2011-2017, she was a regular contributor to the award-winning history of science website Wonders & Marvels. Besides, from 2018 to 2019, Adrienne was a Berggruen Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

In her research and writings, Adrienne Mayor blends the worlds of science and folklore. Her first book, The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths and Myth in Greek and Roman Times, came out in 2000. Since that time, she has wrote a number of books. Mayor's latest book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines and Ancient Dreams of Technology (2018), investigates how the Greeks imagined automatons, replicants and artificial intelligence in myths and later designed self-moving devices and robots.

Achievements

• Adrienne Mayor is an outstanding historian of ancient science, a notable classical folklorist and a renowned author of books. Mayor's book, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and the Scorpion Bombs, on the origins of biological and chemical warfare, revealed the ancient roots of poison weaponry and tactics. Her work is featured on the National Public Radio and British Broadcasting Corporation, the History Channel, the New York Times and National Geographic. Mayor's Fossil Legends research is featured in the National Geographic children's book, The Griffin and the Dinosaur. It's also worth noting, that Mayor's books have been translated into French, Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Hungarian, Polish and Greek.
  
  In 1998, Adrienne received the PEN/Jerard Fund Award. Her book, The Poison King, won top honors (Gold Medal) for Biography, the Independent Publishers' Book Award, in 2010, and was a 2009 National Book Award finalist. In 2014, the work, titled The Amazons, was a winner of the Sarasvati Prize for Women in Mythology.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs

    (Weapons of biological and chemical warfare have been in u...)

    2003
  • Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines and Ancient Dreams of Technology

    (As early as Homer, Greeks were imagining robotic servants...)

    2018
  • The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths and Myth in Greek and Roman Times

    (Griffins, Cyclopes, Monsters and Giants, these fabulous c...)

    2000
  • The Griffin and the Dinosaur: How Adrienne Mayor Discovered a Fascinating Link Between Myth and Science

    (Could Griffins have been real? When Adrienne Mayor carefu...)

    2014
  • Fossil Legends of the First Americans

    (The burnt-red badlands of Montana's Hell Creek are a vast...)

    2005
  • The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World

    (Amazons fierce warrior women, dwelling on the fringes of ...)

    2014
  • The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy

    (Machiavelli praised his military genius. European royalty...)

    2009

Views

Adrienne Mayor blends the worlds of science and folklore in her works. She shows, that, rather than springing from the imaginations of ancient storytellers, ancient myths frequently owe their origins to historical and scientific facts. In her writings and research Adrienne also combines such fields, as archeology and paleontology. It was while doing archeological work in Greece and Turkey, that she began to connect the discovery of large dinosaur fossils with the birth of ancient legends about giants and monsters.

As a folklorist and historian of science Adrienne also explores the themes of artificial intelligence, robots and self-moving objects in the work of ancient Greek poets Hesiod and Homer, who were alive somewhere between 750 and 650 BC. She thinks, that the ability to imagine artificial intelligence goes back to ancient times. Long before technological advances made self-moving devices possible, ideas about creating artificial life and robots were explored in ancient myths.

Quotations: "The universal quest to find balance and harmony between men and women beings, who are at once so alike and so different, lies at the heart of all Amazon tales."

"People have an impulse to imagine things, that aren't possible yet. There is a timeless link between imagination and science."

"The rebels issued coins, showing the Italian Bull, goring the Roman Wolf. Archaeologists have also discovered gold Italian coins similar to Mithradates' Pontic coins, showing Dionysus, an allusion to Mithradates' nickname and a symbol of rebellion against Rome."

"Mithradates began minting beautiful silver tetradrachms with his portrait in Pergamon, and the city of Smyrna also stamped bronze coins with his likeness. Other cities, including Ephesus, Miletus, Tralles and Erythrae, issued new gold staters to trumpet their independence from Rome."

"Archaeologists have discovered special-issue gold and silver coins with images of Dionysus (god of liberation) and Mithradatic devices, commemorating the communications between Mithradates and the insurgents in Italy from this time."

"Archaeology reveals, that about one out of three or four nomad women of the steppes was an active warrior, buried with her weapons."

"While war-ravaged Rome, Mithradates gloried in the victories of the Greek campaign. Halley's Comet was taken as a good omen by Mithradates' Magi and by his allies. In Athens, the philosopher Aristion succeeded Athenian, elected on a pro-Mithradates platform, Aristion's name appeared with Mithradates' on Athenian coins of 87-86 BC."

"Both had been riding horses and wielding bows and spears since childhood, so they probably took pleasure in chasing the game and practicing battle skills together. She wore typical Amazon-Scythian-Persian attire, and we know, that Mithradates dressed in traditional Persian style, so we can picture the couple similarly garbed in long-sleeved tunics, adorned with golden animals and geometric designs, wool cloaks, edged with gold, heavy leather and gold belts with golden buckles and patterned trousers, tucked into high boots. Each carried a Scythian bow exquisite workmanship, and two light spears. Their horses, of the finest stock from the high pastures of Armenia, would have been decorated with ornaments of gold."

"But now Heracles and his men are the first Greeks to drop anchor at Themiscyra, the Amazons' stronghold. The men pitch their tents on the beach."

"I found, that this was a desert region so obscure, that the designers of atlases typically stitch page bindings directly over that very latitude and longitude, obliterating the map's topography as surely as any sandstorm."

Membership

Adrienne Mayor is a member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Ameri­can Folklore Society, International Society for Contem­porary Legend Research and International Society of Cryptozoology.

Interests

• hiking, camping, travel

Connections

Adrienne Mayor is married to Josiah Ober.

Father:

John Mayor

Mother:

Barbara Koch (Palmer) Mayor

husband:

Josiah Ober

Josiah Ober is an American historian of ancient Greece, classical political theorist, educator and author. He is Mitsotakis Professor at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, working on historical institutionalism and political theory, focusing on the political thought and practice of the ancient Greek world and its contemporary relevance.

Also, Josiah is the author of a number of books, mostly published by Princeton University Press, including Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (1989), Political Dissent in Democratic Athens (1998) and Democracy and Knowledge (2008). He has also published about 75 articles and chapters.