Roger Macfarlane, a professor in the Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature at Brigham Young University, has received the John and Olga Gardner Prize from the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.
Honoring an outstanding scholar with ties to the state of Utah, the annual prize is provided by the family of John and Olga Gardner. The award recognizes Macfarlane’s work in multi-spectral imaging, which allows classics scholars to read ancient texts which are illegible to the naked eye.
Since 2001, Macfarlane has directed the BYU Herculaneum Papyrus Project. The project applies NASA-developed multi-spectral imaging to the papyrological remnants of Vesuvius, enabling BYU scholars to restore legibility to texts so blackened that they are indiscernible to the human eye.
Macfarlane has received national and international recognition for his work, and he served as the content specialist for the KBYU-TV documentary, “Out of the Ashes.”
For more information, contact Roger Macfarlane at (801) 422-2864.
Writer: Brian Rust
