The Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation is pleased to announce Daniel Stone as the 2024-2025 Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellow.
Daniel Stone, historian, independent scholar, and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, is writing about the fight over the world’s most destructive poison. His book, AMERICAN POISON: A Deadly Invention and the Woman Who Battled for Environmental Justice, will chronicle the four-year battle in the 1920s between Thomas Midgley, one of the era's most celebrated inventors, and Alice Hamilton, a doctor and pioneering environmental activist, who tried to warn the world about tetraethyl leaded gasoline and the century of devastation it would cause. The book, a character-driven work of narrative nonfiction, introduces Hamilton as the original Erin Brockovich of the 1920s who battled for workers rights and public health, and Midgley, a renowned inventor whose once-bright legacy has darkened as the destructive effects of his inventions have become clear.
The Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellowship was endowed by The Lemelson Foundation in recognition of Lemelson Center founding director Dr. Arthur P. Molella’s contributions to scholarship and recording and celebrating the history and present day importance of invention and innovation in American society. The Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellowship provides financial support for a senior scholar, author, or inventor/entrepreneur to spend up to six months in residence at the Lemelson Center to advance his/her scholarship while participating in the intellectual life and programmatic activities of the National Museum of American History.

Photo courtesy of Daniel Stone.