Margaret C. Jacob

Margaret C. Jacob is Professor of History at UCLA.  Her interests lie in the history of science, and in intellectual history more broadly, and she has worked in British, Dutch, French and Belgian history. Her archival research has taken her to London, Birmingham, Manchester, and to Amsterdam, The Hague, Brussels, Paris and various French provincial towns. In 2002 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Utrecht and made a member of the American Philosophical Society and the Hollandse Maatschappij der Wetenschappen. She has been visiting faculty at l'Ecole des hautes etudes and, recently, the University of Ulster. Currently she is the recipient of a grant from the NEH for Collaborative Research on scientific application and early industrialization in Britain.

Her overriding intellectual concern has been with the meaning and impact of the Newtonian synthesis on religion, political ideology, industrial development and cultural practices. She has worked extensively on Newton's immediate followers, on freethinkers, freemasons, Dutch and French Newtonians, and has recently published a book with Larry Stewart on the impact of Newton's science from the publication of the Principia in 1687 to the Great Exhibition in 1851. She also, along with Lynn Hunt, has an active interest in British radicals and romantics of the 1790s. She has commented on issues in the so-called "science wars" and has written on historical methods and practices.