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.

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. 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.