Battle of Old Fort Wayne

Michael Cyril William Hunter FBA FRHistS (born 1949) is emeritus professor of history in the department of history, classics and archaeology^[2] and a fellow^[1] 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.^[2] 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)".^[3]

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.^[1]

Career

After a brief stay at the University of Reading Hunter joined Birkbeck, University of London in 1976.^[1]

Hunter's first monograph focused on the English antiquary and natural philosopher John Aubrey.^[4] 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.^[5]

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

From 2006 to 2009 Hunter directed the creation of a digital library focusing on British printed images before 1700.^[2]

He received the 2011 Roy G. Neville Prize from the Chemical Heritage Foundation for his biographical work Boyle: Between God and Science.^[7] He also received the 2011 Robert Latham medal from the Samuel Pepys Club.^[8][9] 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".^[2]

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.^[10]

Personal life

Hunter is a motorcycle enthusiast who likes two-stroke racing bikes.^[2] He lives in Hastings, East Sussex.^[1]

Works

Other academic books include:

• 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^[11]
• 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^[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