Anna Lisbet Kristina Rausing (born 9 June 1960) is a science historian and philanthropist. She is a co-founder of Arcadia, one of the UK's largest philanthropic foundations.

Early life

Lisbet Rausing is the eldest daughter of

Hans Rausing Hans Anders Rausing, KBE (25 March 1926 – 30 August 2019) was a Swedish industrialist and philanthropist based in the United Kingdom. He made his fortune from his co-inheritance of Tetra Pak, a company founded by his father Ruben Rausing, and ...

and his wife Märit Rausing. She has one sister,

Sigrid Rausing Sigrid Maria Elisabet Rausing (born 29 January 1962) is a Swedish philanthropist, anthropologist and publisher. She is the founder of the Sigrid Rausing Trust, one of the United Kingdom's largest philanthropic foundations, and owner of ''Granta ...

, and one brother, Hans Kristian Rausing. Her grandfather,

Ruben Rausing Anders Ruben Rausing (; né Andersson; 17 June 1895 – 10 August 1983) was a Swedish industrialist and the founder of the liquid food packaging company Tetra Pak. Early life Anders Ruben Andersson was born in 1895 in Råå, a small fishing h ...

, was co-founder of the Swedish packaging company

Tetra Pak Tetra Pak is a Swedish–Swiss multinational food packaging and processing company with head offices in Lund, Sweden, and Pully, Switzerland. The company offers packaging, filling machines and processing for dairy, beverages, cheese, ice crea ...

. Rausing studied History at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

(B.A., summa cum laude 1984) and completed an M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1993) in History at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

Career

Harvard University Press published Rausing's scholarly biography of

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his Nobility#Ennoblement, ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalise ...

, ''Linnaeus: Nature and Nation'' in 1999. Throughout her career she has published a range of articles on related subjects in scholarly journals including ''Isis'', ''Representations'', ''Configurations'', and ''History of Political Economy''. She has also contributed to the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...

'' and ''

The Sunday Telegraph ''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings. It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...

'', and has published a number of pieces on the evolution of archive digitization and on open access to scholarship. Rausing is a senior research fellow at King's College. She holds honorary doctorates from

Uppsala University Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. The university rose to significance during ...

and SOAS. She is also an honorary fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars spa ...

, the

Linnean Society The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature colle ...

, the

Royal Historical Society The Royal Historical Society, founded in 1868, is a learned society of the United Kingdom which advances scholarly studies of history. Origins The society was founded and received its royal charter in 1868. Until 1872 it was known as the Histori ...

, The Royal Society of Biology and the

Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry The Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry ( sv, Kungliga Skogs- och Lantbruksakademien), formerly the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture (''Kungl. Lantbruksakademien''), founded in 1813 at the initiative of Crown Prince Charles, is on ...

. She was elected to the

Harvard Board of Overseers The Harvard Board of Overseers (more formally The Honorable and Reverend the Board of Overseers) is one of Harvard University's two governing boards. Although its function is more consultative and less hands-on than the President and Fellows of Harv ...

(2005–2011) and Yad Hanadiv Advisory Committee (2001–2011). She served on the Cambridge Conservation Initiative Advisory Board from 2012 to 2022.She also works closely with a family-owned liquid food packaging company, Ecolean.

Philanthropy

Peter-Baldwin-Libset-Rausing-e1538496110718

Lisbet Rausing co-founded the Arcadia Fund in 2001 with her husband Professor Peter Baldwin. As of March 2022, the Fund has made grant commitments of over $919 million to charities and scholarly institutions globally that preserve cultural heritage and the environment and promote open access. Arcadia-funded projects include the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme at Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Endangered Archives Programme at the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

and Fauna & Flora International's Halcyon Land and Sea fund. They are listed as one of the biggest benefactors to the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

and donated $5 million to the Wikimedia endowment in 2017 after Baldwin joined its advisory board. Rausing and Baldwin also founded Lund Trust. Since 2002 Lund Trust has given more than $77.7 million to charities in the UK and internationally.

References

External links

Arcadia FundBiography at Imperial CollegeHarvard University Press
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rausing, Lisbet 1960 births Living people English people of Swedish descent Historians of science Swedish philanthropists Lisbet Harvard University alumni Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology University of California, Berkeley alumni Honorary Fellows of the British Academy

Early life

Career

Philanthropy

See also

References

External links