We went yesterday to the memorial event for Lisa Jardine organised by the University of London and the staff of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, which she founded, as well as Queen Mary where she spent so much of her academic career and University College where she and CELL recently migrated. It felt as if there were a thousand people, all of whom had been touched or influenced in some particular and special way by her personality and teaching: faculty, university adminstrators, former students, fellow researchers, Dutch scholars, each had admired her passionate intellectual enthusiasms, but also spoke invariably of the strength of her emotional support. We all miss her.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Lisa’s death leaves a gaping hole in the cultural life of this country.
I met her only once but enjoyed and profited by the work she did for decades. A great loss.
My partner was at the memorial event as he is Chief Executive of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), an organisation which Lisa chaired up until 2014. Indeed we have a lot to thank her for in this family as she was on the appointment panel which gave him his first job at the HFEA, after some years in government departments. She did, of course, bring valuable experience of being a cancer patient to her role and was key in the fight to ensure that the worth of the organisation was recognised at a time when it was under threat of abolition.
Joan
I’m glad to hear this. She was a wonderful person and a doughty defender of the public interest. Charles
My fondest memory of Lisa Jardine dates from when I briefly served on the AHRC Museums and Galleries Committee, which she chaired. We were reallocating three-year (or even five-year) funding to university museums. One major museum submitted a very complacent application and so, with Lisa’s encouragement, we proposed reducing its funding. A competing major museum made a very strong funding bid, so we recommended increasing its funding. As you might imagine, mild academic hell broke loose. This was a wonderful introduction to Lisa’s bravery, sense of mischief and, most importantly, willingness to confront the old establishment to better serve the public interest.