Emma Georgina Rothschild, CMG (born May 16, 1948) is a British economic historian who is currently Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard University. She is also serves as the director of the Joint Centre for History and Economics at Harvard University and a honorary Professor of History and Economics at the University of Cambridge.
She is a member of the Rothschild banking family of England and serves as a trustee of the Rothschild Archive,[1] the international centre in London for research into the history of the Rothschild family.
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Rothschild was born in London, England, the daughter of Victor Rothschild (1910–1990) and his second wife, Teresa Georgina Rothschild (née Mayor; 1915–1996). On her father's side, she descends from the Rothschild family. Her maternal grandfather, Robert John Grote Mayor, was the brother of English novelist F. M. Mayor and a greatnephew of philosopher and clergyman John Grote. Her maternal grandmother, Katherine Beatrice Meinertzhagen, was the sister of soldier Richard Meinertzhagen and the niece of author Beatrice Webb.[2][3] She is the sister of Amschel Mayor James Rothschild and the half-sister of Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild. At the age of 15, she became the youngest woman ever admitted to Somerville College, Oxford University, from which she graduated with a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1967. She was a Kennedy Scholar in Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
From 1978 to 1988, she was an associate professor at MIT in the Department of Humanities and the Program on Science, Technology, and Society and also taught at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France.
In recognition of her services to Britain's international cultural and academic relations, the New Year Honours 2000 made Rothschild a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George. She is a fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge
Rothschild sits on the Board of Directors of the United Nations Foundation.
In 1991, Emma married economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.
She has written extensively on economic history and the history of economic thought. Some of her publications include: