Michael Hunter (historian)
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| honorific_prefix =
| name = Michael Hunter
| honorific_suffix =
| image = Michael Hunter Neville Award 2011-47.jpg
| image_size =
| alt =
| caption = Michael Hunter at the Neville Awards in 2009
| birth_name = Michael Cyril William Hunter
| birth_date = {{birth year and age|1949}}
| birth_place = Harting, West Sussex
| death_date =
| death_place =
| employer = Birkbeck, University of London
| education =
| alma_mater = Jesus College, Cambridge, Worcester College, Oxford
| occupation = Historian
| years_active =
| known_for =
| notable_works =
| spouse =
| children =
| parents = Frank and Olive Hunter
| relatives =
| awards = Roy G. Neville Prize
}}
Michael Cyril William Hunter {{postnominals|country=GBR|FBA|FRHistS}} (born 1949) is emeritus professor of history in the department of history, classics and archaeology and a fellow of Birkbeck, University of London. Hunter is interested in the culture of early modern England. He specialises in the history of science in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England, particularly the work of Robert Boyle.{{cite web|title=Professor Michael Hunter|url=http://www.bbk.ac.uk/about-us/fellows/michael-hunter|website=Birkbeck, University of London|accessdate=26 May 2016}} In Noel Malcolm's judgement, Hunter "has done more for Boyle studies than anyone before him (or, one might almost say, than all previous Boyle scholars put together)".Noel Malcolm, 'Of Air and Alchemy', Times Literary Supplement, 22 August 2002
Education
Hunter read history at Jesus College, University of Cambridge, England from 1968 to 1972. He then attended Worcester College, Oxford, where he received a DPhil.
Career
After a brief stay at the University of Reading Hunter joined Birkbeck, University of London in 1976.
Hunter's first monograph focused on the English antiquary and natural philosopher John Aubrey.{{cite book|last1=Hunter|first1=Michael|title=John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning |year=1975 |publisher=Science History Publications|location=New York|isbn=978-0-88202-039-6}} Since then he has written extensively on the history of science and intellectual thought in England during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in particular the Royal Society.{{cite web|title=Chemical Heritage Foundation to Present Roy G. Neville Prize to Michael Hunter|url=http://www.chemheritage.org/about/news-and-press/press-releases/2011-10-10-neville-prize.aspx|website=Chemical Heritage Foundation|accessdate=26 May 2016|url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160712194432/http://www.chemheritage.org/about/news-and-press/press-releases/2011-10-10-neville-prize.aspx|archivedate=July 12, 2016}}
His most substantial scholarly achievement is his edition of Boyle's Works (with Edward Davis, 14 vols, 1999–2000)Reviewed by Roy Porter, [http://www.shpltd.co.uk/porter-boyle.pdf 'To Justify the Works of Boyle to Man'] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070702190515/http://www.shpltd.co.uk/porter-boyle.pdf |date=2007-07-02 }}, History of Science 39 (2001), pp. 241-48 and Correspondence (with Antonio Clericuzio and Lawrence Principe, 6 vols, 2001).
From 2006 to 2009 Hunter directed the creation of a digital library focusing on British printed images before 1700.
He received the 2011 Roy G. Neville Prize from the Chemical Heritage Foundation for his biographical work Boyle: Between God and Science.{{cite web|url=https://www.sciencehistory.org/roy-g-neville-prize|title= Roy G. Neville Prize in Bibliography or Biography|date= 5 July 2016|publisher= Science History Institute|accessdate = 26 March 2018}} He also received the 2011 Robert Latham medal from the Samuel Pepys Club.{{cite news|last1=Allen|first1=Katie|title=Samuel Pepys Award to Michael Hunter|url=http://www.thebookseller.com/news/samuel-pepys-award-michael-hunter|accessdate=26 May 2016 |work=The Bookseller|date=October 26, 2011}}{{cite web|title=The Robert Latham medal|url=http://www.pepys-club.org.uk/page5.html|website=Samuel Pepys Club|accessdate=26 May 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160325155607/http://www.pepys-club.org.uk/page5.html|archive-date=25 March 2016|url-status=dead}} In his honour, when he retired in 2013, the Birkbeck Early Modern Society held a conference on "Science, Magic and Religion in the Early Modern Period".
Hunter has been a wary defender of his turf, with scholars Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer observing he has been "consistently hostile" to their more recent work on Robert Boyle.{{cite book |first1=Steven |last1=Shapin |author1-link=Steven Shapin |first2=Simon |last2=Schaffer |author2-link=Simon Schaffer |title=Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life |edition=2nd |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-3849-3 |year=2011 |location=Princeton, NJ |oclc=759907750 |page=xxxvi }}
Personal life
Hunter is a motorcycle enthusiast who likes two-stroke racing bikes. He lives in Hastings, East Sussex.{{cite web|title=Michael Hunter, College oration|url=http://www.bbk.ac.uk/about-us/fellows/downloads/michael-hunter.pdf|website=Birkbeck College|accessdate=26 May 2016}}
Works
{{library resources box| by=yes | viaf=17236559 }}
Other academic books include:
- [https://archive.org/details/johnaubreyrealmo0000hunt/page/n7 John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning]. London: Duckworth, 1975. {{ISBN|978-0-71560-818-0}}
- Science and Society in Restoration England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. {{ISBN|0-521-22866-2}}{{cite journal|last1=Thorson|first1=James L. |last2=Hunter |first2=Michael|title=Science and Society in Restoration England.|journal=Eighteenth-Century Studies|date=1983 |volume=17|issue=2|pages=214|doi=10.2307/2738292|jstor=2738292}}
- The Royal Society and Its Fellows, 1660–1700: The Morphology of an Early Scientific Institution. BSHS monographs, 4. Chalfont St. Giles: British Society for the History of Science, 1982. {{ISBN|9780906450031}}
- Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989. {{ISBN|978-0-85115-506-7}}
- (with David Wootton). Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. {{ISBN|978-0-19-822736-6}}
- Robert Boyle Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. {{ISBN|9780521442053}}
- Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth-Century Britain. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995. {{ISBN|978-0-85115-594-4}}
- Robert Boyle (1627–91): Scrupulosity and Science. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000. {{ISBN|978-0-85115-798-6}}
- The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science, and Second Sight in Late Seventeenth-Century Scotland. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2001. {{ISBN|978-1-4175-7606-7}}
- (with Edward Bradford Davis). The Boyle Papers: Understanding the Manuscripts of Robert Boyle. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. {{ISBN|9780754655688}}
- Editing Early Modern Texts: An Introduction to Principles and Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. {{ISBN|978-0-230-00807-6}}
- Boyle : between God and Science, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. {{ISBN|978-0-300-12381-4}}
- The Image of Restoration Science : The Frontispiece to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society (1667). London: Routledge, 2016. {{ISBN|978-1-317-02787-4}}
- The Decline of Magic. London: Yale University Press, 2020 {{ISBN|978-0-300-24358-1}}
References
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Category:British historians of science
Category:Academics of Birkbeck, University of London
Category:Fellows of the British Academy