| 1 | Name: | Dr. Emma Rothschild | |
| Institution: | Harvard University | ||
| Year Elected: | 2002 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 302. Economics | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1948 | ||
Emma Rothschild received an M.A. at Oxford University in 1967 and was associate professor of humanities and associate professor of science, technology and society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for ten years. She was a Fellow of King's College in Cambridge and the director of its Centre for History and Economics 1991-2007. She moved to Harvard University in the summer of 2007 where she is now a professor of history. Among the leading historians of the Enlightenment, Dr. Rothschild's scholarly work focuses on the history of European economic ideas. She established herself as one of the most important writers on economics and technology when she published her first book, Paradise Lost: The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age (1973), in which she foretold the decline of the American auto industry by tracking the history of its rise and fall. Dr. Rothschild's other books include Science and Technology in the New Socio-Economic Context (1981) and Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment (2001). In the latter, which established her as one of the leading historians of the Enlightenment period, Dr. Rothschild explored misunderstandings of early and modern theorists of free trade with regard to the belief that economic order would arise out of an unregulated environment. More than many other scholars of economic thought, she has shown the wide range of ideas that Smith produced, revealing the many sides of his analysis of the world economy. Over the last 25 years Dr. Rothschild has served on numerous boards and committees in academia, research, and public policy in the United Kingdom and the world at large. She is also co-editor of The Rise and Fall of Historical Political Economy. Her current projects include a short book on anxiety and colonial administration in France; "The Inner Life of Empires," about an adventurous family in 18th-century Scotland; and a book about the East India Company and the American Revolution. Emma Rothschild was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2002. | |||