Nicholas 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.

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. Since his retirement in 2010 he has been Senior Consultant to the Cambridge Scientific Heritage Project (2010–13) and principal investigator of the project Diagrams, Figures and the Transformation of Astronomy, 1450–1650 (2008–14) http://www.astronomicalimages.group.cam.ac.uk

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.

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