Emma Georgina Rothschild

Emma Georgina Rothschild, CMG (born 16 May 1948) is a British economic historian who is a Professor of History at Harvard University. She is also the director of the Joint Centre for History and Economics at Harvard University and an honorary Professor of History and Economics at the University of Cambridge.

She is a member of the Rothschild banking family of England and is a trustee of the Rothschild Archive,^[1] the international centre in London for research into the history of the Rothschild family. After her marriage to Amartya Sen, she is also a member of the Sen family.

Early life and education

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).

Professorships

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.

Academic achievements, awards and honors

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.

Personal life

In 1991, Rothschild married economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.

Publications

She has written extensively on economic history and the history of economic thought. Some of her publications include:

• Paradise Lost: The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age (1973)
• Common Security and Civil Society in Africa (1999) (Co-Editor)
• Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment (2001)
• Language and Empire, circa 1800 (Historical Research, 2005)
• A Horrible Tragedy in the French Atlantic (Past and Present, 2006)
• The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History (2011)

See also

• Rothschild banking family of England list of references

References

External links

• Curriculum Vitae, Emma Rothschild, Cambridge University