Michael Hunter (historian)


Michael Cyril William Hunter 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. In Noel Malcolm's judgement, Hunter "has done more for Boyle studies than anyone before him ".

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. 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.
His most substantial scholarly achievement is his edition of Boyle's Works and Correspondence.
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. He also received the 2011 Robert Latham medal from the Samuel Pepys Club. 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.

Personal life

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

Works

Other academic books include: