Jim Bennett

Early life and education Bennett was educated at Grosvenor High School, a grammar school in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He studied at Clare College, Cambridge, graduating with Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1969. His doctoral thesis was titled "Studies in the life and work of Sir Christopher Wren". He was appointed on 1 October 1994, on the retirement of the previous director, Francis Maddison, and retired on 30 September 2012. He was also a fellow of the Faculty of History and Linacre College. In 2010, the University of Oxford gave him the title Professor of the History of Science. Under his leadership at the museum, the visitor figures increased from 25,000 to 180,000.

In 2016, Bennett became the president of the Hakluyt Society. He also held the position of Keeper Emeritus at the Science Museum, London. In addition, Bennett was President of the British Society for the History of Science and President of the Scientific Instrument Commission of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science. He also appeared in television documentaries.

In 1976, Bennett was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS).

Selected publications The Mathematical Science of Christopher Wren, J.A. Bennett. Cambridge, 1982 The Divided Circle: A History of Instruments for Astronomy, Navigation and Surveying, Jim Bennett. Oxford, 1987. Church, State and Astronomy in Ireland, 200 Years of Armagh Observatory, Jim Bennett. Belfast, 1990. The Garden, the Ark, the Tower, the Temple. Biblical Metaphors of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, Jim Bennett and S. Mandelbrote. Oxford, 1998. Practical Geometry and Operative Knowledge, Jim Bennett. Configurations, 6, 1998. London's Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke, Jim Bennett, Michael Cooper, Michael Hunter and Lisa Jardine. Oxford University Press, 2003. . Catalogue of Surveying and Related Instruments, Jim Bennett, Sillabe Srl, Livorno, Italy, 2022.

As editor The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science, John L. Heilbron (editor-in-chief), Jim Bennett, Frederic L. Holmes, Rachel Laudan and Giuliano Pancaldi (eds). Oxford University Press, 2003. .