James Delbourgo

James Delbourgo (born 1972) is a writer and historian of science, collecting and museums.

He is the James Westfall Thompson Chair and Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University.

His 2017 book Collecting the World explored the life and career of Hans Sloane, which culminated in the foundation of the British Museum in 1753.

Published by Penguin in the UK and Belknap in the US, the book won four prizes, made four shortlists, and was named Book of the Week in the Guardian, London Times, Daily Mail and The Week Magazine, and one of Apollo Magazine's Books of the Year; featured in BBC Radio's Today Programme and NPR's Leonard Lopate Show, the British Museum and BBC History Magazine podcasts, Science Magazine and Smithsonian Magazine; and reviewed in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, New Republic, Financial Times, the Spectator, the Economist, the Lancet, Daily Telegraph, Irish Times, Nature Magazine and Art Quarterly.

Delbourgo has lectured on Sloane & the British Museum in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Jamaica and the US.