Lisa Jardine, who has died aged 71 after suffering from cancer, was the leading British female public intellectual of our times. She could properly be called a polymath, fluent in five languages and, as comfortable with the sciences as she was with the humanities, the breadth of her scholarship and the depth of her understanding of so many subjects was awe-inspiring. But more important to her than her impressive intellectual achievements – her research, her essays, her fascinating books and her stimulating broadcasts – was the opportunity to show the generations of women who came after her that it was both possible to succeed at work and at many other things as well.
At every stage of her career she made friends whom she kept all her life. She knew and cared about the details of their love affairs, their domestic dramas with their children and all their hopes and fears. She was as good a listener as she was a teacher, and a great encourager. Teaching was her passion, whether she was lecturing to a distinguished academic audience or helping a student get through a dissertation, and in the process many of her students would say she changed their lives.
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