Michael Hunter (historian)

Michael Cyril William Hunter (born 1949) is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, specializing in the history of science in seventeenth-century England, particularly the work of Robert Boyle. 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)".^[1]

His most substantial scholarly achievement is his edition of Boyle's Works (with Edward Davis, 14 vols, 1999–2000)^[2] and Correspondence (with Antonio Clericuzio and Lawrence Principe, 6 vols, 2001).^[2]

He received the 2011 Roy G. Neville Prize from the Chemical Heritage Foundation for his biographical work Boyle: Between God and Science.^[3]

Hunter is a motorcycle enthusiast who likes two-stroke racing bikes. He lives in Hastings, East Sussex.

Works

Other academic books include:

• John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning. New York: Science History Publications, 1975. ISBN 978-0-88202-039-6
• Science and Society in Restoration England. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-521-22866-2
• The Royal Society and Its Fellows, 1660-1700: The Morphology of an Early Scientific Institution. BSHS monographs, 4. Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks, England: British Society for the History of Science, 1982 9780906450031
• Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society. Woodbridge, Suffolk [England]: 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
• Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth-Century Britain. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0-85115-594-4
• Robert Boyle (1627–91): Scrupulosity and Science. Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 2000.^[2]
• The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science, and Second Sight in Late Seventeenth-Century Scotland. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2001. ISBN 978-1-4175-7606-7
• Robert Boyle Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.ISBN 9780521442053
• (with Edward Bradford Davis). The Boyle Papers: Understanding the Manuscripts of Robert Boyle. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007. 9780754655688
• Editing Early Modern Texts: An Introduction to Principles and Practice. Basingstoke [England]: 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

References

1. Noel Malcolm, 'Of Air and Alchemy', Times Literary Supplement, 22 August 2002
2. Reviewed by Roy Porter, 'To Justify the Works of Boyle to Man', History of Science 39 (2001), pp. 241-48
3. "Past Recipients of the Neville Prize in Bibliography or Biography". Chemical Heritage Foundation. Retrieved 10 November 2015.

External links

• Homepage at Birkbeck
• Works by or about Michael Hunter in libraries (WorldCat catalog)