Wilfrid Prest, AM (born 1940) is a historian, specialising in legal history, who is professor emeritus at the University of Adelaide.
He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society,[1] the Australian Academy of the Humanities,[2] the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia,[3] and Queen's College, University of Melbourne, and a member of the Council of the Selden Society, London.
In 2002 Prest resigned his personal chair in History to take up an Australian Research Council Australian Professorial Fellowship; he moved to the Law School in 2003, and subsequently held his fellowship as a joint appointment between Law and History, while preparing a biography of William Blackstone.
From 2010 to 2015, he oversaw as general editor the preparation of a new variorum edition of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, first published in four volumes from 1765 to 1769.
In the 2021 Australia Day Honours list, Prest was awarded Member (AM) in the General Division for significant service to tertiary education and to the law and legal history.