about us

the undergraduate philosophy club is one of the oldest clubs at the ohio state university. so old, in fact, that we don't actually know how old it is. we do know that the club put out a magazine in 1921 called "the thinker" that contained all of the papers presented in the prior year, so the club was obviously in full swing by then.

incidentally, the club's official name is the leighton philosophy club, presumably named after a retiring professor leighton who worked with the club for years. who knew?

1921 was also the year that the club initiated the bingham award. william e. bingham was a student in philosophy at michigan, ohio state and cornell universities before coming to ohio state as an assistant professor of philosophy, bingham enlisted in the navy in the spring of 1917 while the united states was embroiled in world war 1, rising to the rank of ensign. in late 1918, he accidentally drowned in the harbor of tangier, and in his memory, the club started an endowment fund to give an annual award to the student who wrote the year's best undergraduate philosophy paper. the medal that constitutes the award is a hand-size oblong plaque depicting the greek goddess athena wearing a helmet, leaning on a spear and gazing pensively at a small upright stone, with an inscription on the medal's back paying homage to bingham. the prize was designed by ohio state professor albert chandler and executed by madame anie mouroux, a french medalist who won the prestigious prix de rome scholarship for the arts andcreated a number of important world war 1 medals, including one of president warren g. harding.

the first bingham award was given out at the 1922 spring commencement, but by 1936, the supply of medals was exhausted and the molds were eventually lost. efforts to replace them failed in 1944 and again in 1958. during this period, the recipients apparently only received a photgraph of the medal, though books were included as part of the award as of at least 1947. in 1967, a large new medal was commissioned and used for a few years, but today, we award the true bingham medal thanks to professor alan hausman, who secured on loan an original medal in 1981 from which new molds were made.