| Citation | Professor Lisa Jardine, Professor of Renaissance Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University College London
Lisa Jardine, CBE is Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities at UCL. Previously she spent 23 years at Queen Mary, University of London, serving as Head of the English Department, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and as Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies. In her earlier career, after a degree in mathematics and English and a PhD on Francis Bacon, she taught at the Warburg Institute, Cornell University and then for 12 years at Cambridge.
She is a prolific and distinguished historian, with a special interest in the history of science, and has had wide impact on public life through her broadcasts and general writings, and her service on many public bodies. Among her 20 books, several of which have won major awards, are works on Bacon, Erasmus, Wren and Hooke. She has advised the Society on its archives, and, during a period of formal secondment to the Society, she edited the on-line 'Hooke Folio', published in 2007; she gave the Wilkins Lecture in 2003. She is in great demand as a lecturer, and has given Tanner Lectures in both Cambridge and Yale. She has received numerous honorary doctorates and fellowships; in 2012 she received the British Academy President's Medal.
She has served on the Arts and Humanities Research Council and as Trustee of the V and A Museum. In 2008 she was appointed chair of the Human Embryo and Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). She is the 2012/13 President of the British Science Association - a signal honour for a historian - and continues as a frequent broadcaster, noted for her 'Points of View' on Radio 4 and most recently for her 'Seven ages of science' series.
For nearly four decades, Lisa Jardine has combined high-level scholarship with extensive outreach, and has been extraordinarily energetic and effective in spanning the 'two cultures'. She has, in particular, been an enthusiastic advocate of the Society; election as an Honorary Fellow is recognition that she richly deserves and would deeply appreciate.
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