Nick Jardine

Nicholas Jardine FBA (born 4 September 1943) is a British mathematician, philosopher of science and its history, historian of astronomy and natural history, and amateur mycologist. He is Emeritus Professor at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) at the University of Cambridge.^[1]

Career

Jardine was educated at Monkton Combe School in Somerset and read natural sciences at King's College, Cambridge. He then worked as a King's College and Royal Society Research Fellow on the automation of classification and information retrieval and its applications to biological taxonomy and diagnosis. In 1975 he moved to Darwin College, Cambridge and to the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. Since then he has developed a question-based pragmatic philosophy of science (inspired by the work of Ian Hacking), as well as studying the history of early-modern astronomy and natural history, and reflecting on the methodology of the history of the sciences. From 1987–2011 he was Senior Editor of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science and from 1998 of Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. In June 2010, the Department of HPS held an event celebrating "The Seven Ages of Nick Jardine" prior to his retirement.^[2] Since his retirement he has continued to work as a principal investigator of two projects: Conflict and Priority in Early-Modern Astronomy; and Diagrams, Figures and the Transformation of Astronomy, 1450–1650. He is Senior Consultant to the Cambridge Scientific Heritage Project.

Hobbies

Jardine was a founding member in 1988 of the popular research seminar "The Cabinet of Natural History (Cambridge Group for the History of Natural History and the Environmental Sciences)". This is organised by staff and students of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and in term time it holds weekly seminars led by academic speakers. Jardine is a keen amateur mycologist and for over twenty years has led the annual HPS fungus hunt.^[3]

Personal life

He was married for ten years to Lisa Bronowski.

Selected publications

• Jardine, Nicholas and Sibson, Robin (1971) Mathematical Taxonomy, Wiley: London and New York
• Jardine, Nicholas and van Rijsbergen, C. J. (1974) Automatic Document Classification and Retrieval, Office for Scientific and Technical Information Report No. 5134, distributed by the National Lending Library
• Jardine, Nicholas (1984) The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science. Kepler's 'A Defence of Tycho against Ursus' with Essays on its Provenance and Significance, Cambridge University Press (2nd rev. ed. 1988)
• Jardine, Nicholas (1986) The Fortunes of Inquiry, Clarendon Press: Oxford (1986)
• Cunningham, Andrew and Jardine, Nicholas eds (1990) Romanticism and the Sciences, Cambridge University Press.
• Jardine, Nicholas (1991) The Scenes of Inquiry: On the Reality of Questions in the Sciences, Oxford University Press (2nd ed. with supplementary essays 2000)
• Jardine, Nicholas, Secord, J., and Spary, E.C. eds (1996) Cultures of Natural History, Cambridge University Press
• Frasca-Spada, Marina and Jardine, Nicholas eds (2000) Books and the Sciences in History, Cambridge University Press
• Jardine, Nicholas, Frasca-Spada, Marina, Raven, Faith and Stearn, W. T. eds (2001) J. E. Raven, Plants and Plant Lore in Ancient Greece, Leopard's Head: Oxford
• Jardine, Nicholas and Segonds, Alain-Philippe eds (2008) La Guerre des astronomes: La querelle au sujet de l'origine du système géo-héliocentrique à la fin du XVIe siècle, Les Belles Lettres: Paris, 3 vols

References