Margaret Candee Jacob (born 1943) is an American historian of science and Distinguished Professor of Research at UCLA. She specializes in the history of science, knowledge, the Enlightenment and Freemasonry.
Life
Margaret C. Jacob was born (1943) and raised in New York City. She graduated from St. Joseph's College in 1964 with a B.A. degree and then attended Cornell University, earning a master's degree in 1966 and her Ph.D. two years later. Jacob was appointed as an assistant professor at the University of South Florida in 1968 and spent 1969–71 as a lecturer in history at the University of East Anglia. She was hired as faculty at Baruch College of the City University of New York in 1971 and received tenure four years later. Jacob was appointed professor of history at the New School for Social Research in 1985 and simultaneously became dean of its Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts until 1988. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and co-authored a textbook on Western Civilization that has gone through five editions. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Modern History, Restoration, Journal of British Studies, Isis, and Eighteenth-Century Studies. "Best known for her studies of Isaac Newton and the development of Western scientific thought, Jacob has also written about the politics of writing history."
Works
Books
1970–1999
The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720, Cornell University Press and Harvester Press, Ltd., 1976. Reviewed in New York Review of Books, December 7, 1978. Italian translation, I Newtoniani e la rivoluzione inglese, 1689-I720, 1980 by Feltrinelli Editore, Milan. Reprinted, 1983; Japanese translation, 1990. Available from Gordon and Breach, "Classics in the History of Science." The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, published by George Allen & Unwin, London and Boston,1981; Italian translation, L'Illuminismo Radicale, published by Societa Editrice Il Mulino,1983. Second edition, revised, Cornerstone Books, 2005 The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution, Alfred Knopf, sold to McGraw-Hill, New York, 1988, 273 pp. Reviewed New York Review of Books, April 28, 1988; Italian translation, Einaudi Editore, 1992. Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth Century Europe, 1991, 350pp. Oxford University Press; reviewed TLS, June 12, 1992; AHR, 1993; JMH, 1994; Italian rights bought by Laterza. French translation appeared in 2004 with L'Orient, Paris. Telling the Truth about History with Lynn Hunt and Joyce Appleby, New York, W.W.Norton, 1994. Reviewed New York Times Book Review, March 25, 1994. TLS, June 10, 1994; The New Republic, Oct. 24, 1994; editions in Spanish, Polish, Lithuanian and Chinese under contract. A selection of the History Book Club. Forums on the book in History and Theory and the Journal of the History of Ideas. Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism, with Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs. My half discusses Newtonian mechanics and European industrial culture throughout the 18th century. Humanity Press, 1995. Winner of the Watson-Davis Award, History of Science Society
2000–2023
The Enlightenment: A Brief History of Documents. Bedford Books. 2001. 237 pages. . 2nd ed. 2016 The Enlightenment: A Brief History, Bedford Books, 2001. With Lynn Hunt and Wijnand Mijnhardt, The Book that Changed Europe, Harvard University Press, 2010 reviewed New York Review of Books, June 25, 2010. TBD Janet Burke & Margaret Jacob, Les premières francs-maçonnes au siècle des Lumières, Bordeaux University Press, 2010. 190pp, avec un cahier de 8 illustrations en couleur. with Lynn Hunt and Wijnand Mijnhardt, eds. Bernard Picart and the First Global Vision of Religion. Getty Publications, 2010 TBD