Lisa Jardine

Lisa Jardine in 2015

Lisa Anne Jardine CBE HonFRS FRHistS (née Bronowski; 12 April 1944 – 25 October 2015) was a British historian of the early modern period.

From 1990 to 2011, she was Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies and director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary University of London. From 2008 to January 2014 she was Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

Jardine was a Member of Council of the Royal Institution, until 2009. On 1 September 2012, she relocated with her research centre and staff to University College London (UCL) to become founding director of its Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities. Her father was Jacob Bronowski.

Quotes

• Germaine Greer first impinged on my own life in my final year as an undergraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge. We women students were all gathered together in the college hall for the annual Founder's Day Feast, and as we finished eating, the principal called us to order for the speeches. As a hush descended, one person continued to speak, too engrossed in her conversation to notice, her strong Australian voice reverberating round the room.
  At the graduates' table, Germaine was explaining with passion that there could be no liberation for women, no matter how highly educated, as long as we were required to cram our breasts into bras constructed like mini-Vesuviuses two stitched, white, cantilevered cones which bore no resemblance to the female anatomy. The willingly suffered discomfort of the Sixties bra, she opined vigorously, was a hideous symbol of male oppression.
  • "Growing up with Greer", The Guardian (7 March 1999)