Saturday, October 31, 2015

My hero / Lisa Jardine by Martin Rees


 Lisa Jardine.
Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi


My hero: Lisa Jardine by Martin Rees

The astronomer royal pays tribute to polymath Lisa Jardine, who died this week


Martin Rees
Sat 31 Oct 2015

M
ost people’s careers run in grooves. Even if their achievements are lasting, they are usually within an established role – in politics, business, academia or a profession. But there are some people who can’t be categorised – creative personalities who straddle conventional boundaries in a unique way. These are the individuals who leave the most distinctive legacy, and Lisa Jardine was one of them. Scholarly in science as well as literature and history, she spanned the “two cultures”. She was politically engaged and campaigned for many causes and institutions. Above all, she had a zest for communicating and was able to engage with a wide public, young and old.


I first met Lisa when she was a young lecturer at Cambridge University. Later, when I was president of the Royal Society, we were fortunate to have her support and her advice on our archives. She was especially excited to recover a folio by Robert Hooke, containing long-lost records of the society’s meetings.
Her response to a cancer diagnosis in 2004 was to work even harder. During the last decade she presented dozens of radio talks and a fine series on the history of science; she was active on innumerable panels and committees. We both resigned from the board of the Royal Institution, in protest against actions we thought deplorable.
One of her most surprising decisions, in 2008, was to become chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, a challenging role involving novel ethical issues. It was perhaps in homage to her father, Jacob Bronowski, that she felt she should do some scientific service to the nation.
In her public and private roles she was a supreme life-enhancer. Her death has come as a shock and sadness to those of us who hoped that her effervescent enthusiasm would inspire us for at least another decade.
THE GUARDIAN





2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016



Posted by at
Labels: , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)