Michael A. Cook

Michael Allan Cook is a British historian and scholar of Islamic history. He studied History and Oriental Studies at King's College, Cambridge 1959-1963 and did postgraduate studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London 1963-1966 under the supervision of Professor Bernard Lewis. He was lecturer in Economic History with reference to the Middle East at SOAS 1966-1984 and Reader in the History of the Near and Middle East 1984-1986. In 1986 he was appointed Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Since 2007 he has been Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in Spring 1990. In 2001 he was chosen to be a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 2002 he received the prestigious $1.5 million Distinguished Achievement Award from the Mellon Foundation for significant contribution to humanities research. In 2004 he was chosen to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006 he won Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities at Princeton. In 2008 he won Farabi Award in the Humanities and Islamic Studies. In 2013 he was awarded an honorary doctorate at Leiden University. In 2014 he won the Holberg Prize.