The Boyle Lectures are named after Robert Boyle, a prominent natural philosopher of the 17th century and son of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork. Under the terms of his Will, Robert Boyle endowed a series of lectures or sermons which were to consider the relationship between Christianity and the new natural philosophy then emerging in European society. Since 2004, this prestigious Lectures series has been organized, with the assistance of Board of the Boyle Lectures, by the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) and has been held at one of its original locations, the Wren church of St Mary-le-Bow on Cheapside in the City of London.
Robert McCredie May, Baron May of Oxford was an Australian scientist who was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, President of the Royal Society, and a professor at the University of Sydney and Princeton University. He held joint professorships at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. He was also a crossbench member of the House of Lords from 2001 until his retirement in 2017.
Edward Caird was a Scottish philosopher. He was a holder of LLD, DCL, and DLitt.
Richard Henry Tawney was an English economic historian, social critic, ethical socialist, Christian socialist, and important proponent of adult education. The Oxford Companion to British History (1997) explained that Tawney made a "significant impact" in these "interrelated roles". A. L. Rowse goes further by insisting that "Tawney exercised the widest influence of any historian of his time, politically, socially and, above all, educationally".
Sir David Nicholas Cannadine is a British author and historian who specialises in modern history, Britain and the history of business and philanthropy. He is currently the Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, a visiting professor of history at Oxford University, and the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He was president of the British Academy between 2017 and 2021, the UK's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. He also serves as the chairman of the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in London and vice-chair of the editorial board of Past & Present.
David L. Smith is a noted historian at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He specializes in Early Modern British history, particularly political, constitutional, legal and religious history within the Stuart period. He is the author or co-author of eight books, and the editor or co-editor of seven others, and he has also published more than seventy essays and articles.
John Skorupski is a British philosopher whose main interests are epistemology, ethics and moral philosophy, political philosophy, and the history of 19th and 20th century philosophy. He is best known for his work on John Stuart Mill and his study of normativity, The Domain of Reasons. His most recent publication is Being and Freedom: on Late Modern Ethics in Europe.
Sir Frederick Maurice Powicke was an English medieval historian. He was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, a professor at Queen's University, Belfast, and the Victoria University of Manchester, and from 1928 until his retirement Regius Professor at the University of Oxford. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1946.
Sir Hrothgar John Habakkuk was a British economic historian.
Martin John Millett, is a British archaeologist and academic. From 2001 to 2022, he was the Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and a professorial fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Since 2021, he has been the president of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Sir James Clarke Holt, also known as J. C. Holt and Jim Holt, was an English medieval historian, known particularly for his work on Magna Carta. He was the third Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, serving between 1981 and 1988.
Sir Keith Vivian Thomas is a Welsh historian of the early modern world based at Oxford University. He is best known as the author of Religion and the Decline of Magic and Man and the Natural World. From 1986 to 2000, he was president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
William Chaderton was an English academic and bishop. He also served as Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity.
Geoffrey N. Cantor is Emeritus Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds and Honorary Senior Research Associate at UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London. He has written about Michael Faraday, the wave theory of light and the responses of the Quaker and Jewish religions to science. With John Hedley Brooke he delivered the 1995–1996 Gifford Lecture at the University of Glasgow, which were subsequently published as Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion in 1998. He contributed to the SciPer Project, which researches the popularization of science in the periodicals of the 19th century, such as the Boy's Own Paper and Punch, and has lectured upon this subject at the Royal Institution in 2005.
William Linn St Clair, was a British historian, senior research fellow at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and author.
Ian Wallace Archer FRHistS is a historian of early modern London and the Robert Stonehouse Tutorial Fellow in History at Keble College, University of Oxford.
Christopher Robert Cheney was an English medieval historian, noted for his work on the medieval English church and the relations of the papacy with England, particularly in the age of Pope Innocent III.
Alexandra Marie Walsham is an English-Australian academic historian. She specialises in early modern Britain and in the impact of the Protestant and Catholic reformations. Since 2010, she has been Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and is currently a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She is co-editor of Past & Present and vice-president of the Royal Historical Society.
Dr. Robert Fox MA, DPhil, FSA FRHistS is a leading British authority on the history of science. He is interested in the history of sciences and technology in Europe from the 18th century onwards. He has published extensively. His book The Savant and the State examines science, culture and politics in France between 1814 and 1914, while Science without Frontiers examines developments from the late nineteenth-century until the Second World War. In 2015, Fox received the George Sarton Medal, the premier award of the international History of Science Society (HSS). He was recognized as a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France's Ministry of Culture in 2006.
Noah Jonathan Efron is a professor at Bar-Ilan University, where he was founding chair of the interdisciplinary program on Science, Technology, and Society.
