From 1990 to 2011, she was Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies[1] and director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary University of London.

[7][8] Jardine was born on 12 April 1944 in Oxford,[9][10] the eldest of four daughters of mathematician and polymath, Jacob Bronowski, and the sculptor, Rita Coblentz.

[12] Fluent in eight languages (including Greek and Latin), she studied for an MA in the Literary Theory of Translation with Professor Donald Davie at the University of Essex.

[13] In striking out on her own career path, Jardine recalled that she initially found her father's celebrity something of a burden, noting that she was "very, very conscious" of being his daughter.

When in 1969 she married Cambridge historian and philosopher of science, Nicholas Jardine,[14] she was relieved to assume her husband's surname, which she continued to use after the couple's divorce in 1979.

[26] She was the author of many books, both scholarly and general, including The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution and biographies of Robert Hooke, and Sir Christopher Wren (On a Grander Scale: the Outstanding Career of Sir Christopher Wren).

[27] Jardine wrote and reviewed widely for the media, and presented and appeared regularly on arts, history and current affairs programmes for TV and radio.

[28][29][30][31][32] During the first semester of the 2008–2009 academic year, Jardine was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, jointly sponsored by NIAS and the Royal Library in The Hague.

Her musical choices included Why by Annie Lennox, A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan, and Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads.

Previously she spent 23 years at Queen Mary, University of London, serving as head of the English department, dean of the faculty of arts, and as Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies.

In her earlier career, after a degree in mathematics and English and a PhD on Francis Bacon, she taught at the Warburg Institute, Cornell University and then for 12 years at Cambridge.

For nearly four decades, Lisa Jardine has combined high-level scholarship with extensive outreach, and has been extraordinarily energetic and effective in spanning the 'two cultures'.

[44][45] Jardine died of cancer on 25 October 2015, aged 71, and her ashes were buried next to those of her parents, in the west side of Highgate Cemetery in north London.