Lisa Jardine
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| Lisa Anne Jardine | |
|---|---|
| Born | Lisa Anne Bronowski 12 April 1944 |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Parents | Jacob Bronowski and Rita Coblentz |
Lisa Anne Jardine CBE (born 12 April 1944), née Lisa Anne Bronowski, is a British historian of the early modern period. She is professor of Renaissance Studies and Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary, University of London, and is Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).[1] She was a Member of Council of the Royal Institution, but resigned from that post in September 2009.
Jardine is the eldest child of the late Jacob Bronowski and the sculptor Rita Coblentz[2] and is married to the architect John Hare. She has two sons and a daughter. Her professional name is taken from the surname of her first husband, Nicholas Jardine. She is cousin to television director Laurence Moody and actress Clare Lawrence Moody.
Jardine was educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College and Newnham College, Cambridge. For two years she took the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos before, in her final year and under the influence of Raymond Williams, she read English.
She is the author of many books, including The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution and On a Grander Scale: the Outstanding Career of Sir Christopher Wren. Her 2008 book Going Dutch won the 2009 Cundill Prize in History at McGill University, the largest history book prize in the world worth $75,000.
On 26 January 2011 Jardine appeared in a BBC documentary in which she refers to an "unknown chapter" in her father's life and states: "recently I made a disturbing discovery about the science that he did. During the second world war he used his mathematical brilliance to maximize the destructive force of aerial bombardment. Were people wrong about Jacob Bronowski?"[3]
In the very first episode of The Ascent of Man, Bronowski had this to say: "Here I, Jacob Bronowski, am a man who helped pioneer operations research [as the theory of efficient bombing] for the Royal Air Force during the war".[4] Bronowski was not, of course, the only one to find himself in that position; Freeman Dyson had also been in the Operational Research Section of the RAF and wrote (for example, in "Disturbing the Universe") of how their efforts tended to save lives rather than increase destructive force. Examples ranged from maximising the survival of aircrew exiting a doomed bomber, to halting area bombardment in favour of precision attacks affecting civilians less.[5] That puts "efficient bombing" in a different light.
Bronowski observed that such research had dual application; "I had not been long back from Hiroshima when I heard someone say, in Szilard's presence, that it was the tragedy of scientists that their discoveries were used for destruction. Szilard, replied, as he more than anyone else had the right to reply, that it was not the tragedy of scientists: 'it is the tragedy of mankind'."[6]
Jardine is a former Chairman of the Governing Body at Westminster City School for Boys, London.
Contents |
[edit] Works
[edit] Books
- Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (1974)
- Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (1983)
- From Humanism to the Humanities (1986) with Anthony Grafton
- What's Left?: Women in Culture and the Labour Movement (1989) with Julia Swindells
- Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print (1993)
- Reading Shakespeare Historically (1996)
- Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (1996)
- Erasmus: The Education of a Christian prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria (1997) editor
- Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon (1998) with Alan Stewart
- Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution (1999)
- Francis Bacon: The New Organon (2000) editor with Michael Silverthorne
- Global Interests: Renaissance Art Between East and West (2000) with Jerry Brotton
- On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Career of Sir Christopher Wren (2002)
- For the Sake of Argument (2003)
- The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London (2003)
- London's Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke (2003) with Jim Bennett, Michael Cooper and Michael Hunter
- Grayson Perry (2004)
- The Awful End of Prince William the Silent: The First Assassination of a Head of State with a Hand-Gun (2005)
- Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory (2008)
[edit] Broadcasting
- A Point of View. BBC Radio 4 series (2008, 2010)
- My Father, the Bomb and Me. BBC Four (26 January 2011)
[edit] References
- ^ "Professor Lisa Jardine CBE (Chair)". HFEA. n.d.. http://www.hfea.gov.uk/689.html. Retrieved 2008-04-15.
- ^ Lisa Jardine Obituary: Rita Bronowski [Coblentz], The Guardian, 22 September 2010
- ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00wkps1/My_Father_the_Bomb_and_Me/
- ^ http://larvalsubjects.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/hacking-the-social-construction-of-what2.pdf
- ^ Opinions from inside the Operational Research Section of Bomber Command
- ^ Bronowski, Jacob (1975). The Ascent of Man. British Broadcasting Corporation. p. 370. ISBN 0 563 10498 8. http://books.google.com/books?id=WNJ3PwAACAAJ&cd=1&source=gbs_ViewAPI.
