The daughter of computer engineer Douglas Palmer and artist Laura Higgins Palmer, Ada was born in Washington, D.C. but grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, where she attended Key School.[1] She began her undergraduate education at age 15 for two years at Bard College at Simon's Rock, and then transferred to Bryn Mawr College, where she received a Bachelor of Art in history in 2001.[4] She then obtained a Master of Arts and a doctorate in history at Harvard University in 2003 and 2009, respectively.[4][5][6][7]
Following a stint at Texas A&M University from 2009 to 2014, Palmer began teaching at the University of Chicago.[4][5] She was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago from 2014 to 2018, and has been an associate professor at the institution since 2018.[4]
As a scholar, Palmer researches and teaches about the Renaissance period. She teaches a class on the Italian Renaissance wherein students enact the 1492 papal election, complete with secret meetings, betrayals, and a final vote conducted in full costume.[8] In an interview, Palmer discussed her experience with the class, suggesting that students have a lot of favorable biases about this period despite its darker underside.[9]
Palmer co-authored The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy in the Renaissance: A Brief Guide with James Hankins in 2008. Her own first book, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, was published in 2014. Palmer holds that the Lucretius poem De rerum natura, rediscovered in the Renaissance, could be the first document offering a profane worldview; that is, the possibility to describe how the universe works without any divine influence. This theory has implications for the development of political science as well as other secular worldviews. Palmer and Hankins also argue that Lucretius' ideas directly influenced Niccolò Machiavelli and utilitarianism, because of the ways in which his theories helped them create an ethics working per se, without any external, godly influence.[10]
Palmer's first novel, Too Like the Lightning, the first of the Terra Ignota series, was published in 2016, and was a finalist for the 2017 Hugo Awards.[3] It has been described as a rational adjacent book,[13] a work influenced both by science-fiction and historical genres,[14] a fact the author has confirmed.[15] The novel won the 2017 Compton Crook Award for the best first novel in the genre published during the previous year.[16]
Palmer has announced multiple upcoming projects, including Hearthfire, the first novel in a new historical fiction series about Viking mythology; and The Wrath of Abaia, co-written with Jo Walton.[18] These novels are scheduled to be published in 2027 and 2025, respectively.[4]
