Lisa Jardine explores what's driving science in the 21st century: curiosity, politics, profit or PR?
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Age of War
Lisa Jardine explores how military demands mobilised science not in World War II, but in World War I.The idea that Britain's scientific expertise and effort was mobilised from scratch on the eve of World War II is a myth. Long before 1939, Britain was ready to wage, and win, a scientific war.
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Age of the Lab
Lisa Jardine explores how scientists became separated from wider society.Until the end of the 18th century, most scientific endeavour took place in private houses or workshops, often done on a part-time basis by passionate enthusiasts. It was the poet Samuel Coleridge who suggested, in 1833, that men who were neither literary nor philosophers might be called "scientists"; but still there were no public laboratories and certainly no white coats.The idea that people could be trained in laboratories was pioneered in Germany and it was decades before Britain caught on.In 1858, an expensive project to lay a telegraph cable under the Atlantic failed; and an inquiry into the failure recommended that Britain needed more men who understood how telegraphy actually worked. Today, the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge is famous for a string of Nobel Prize winning discoveries into the nature of the atom and the structure of molecules including, famously, DNA. But it was set up to train more telegraph engineers.As more purpose-built laboratories were established, complete with petri dishes, test tubes, and bunsen burners, scientists started to be perceived as somehow different from the rest of us. Trained in specialist techniques, they followed their own methods and rules. They became a separate tribe.
Lisa Jardine explores how the advent of mass manufacture in the Midlands changed scientific endeavour from a gentlemanly pursuit into a gritty, profitable, factory-based industry; and helped to forge a new scientific discipline, chemistry.Many early industrialists in Britain were vigorously interested in the material world. Josiah Wedgwood carried out thousands of experiments to achieve his unique Portland Blue: methodically changing the precise composition of the clay and adding different chemical elements to create new colours. He gave us fine bone china. He also gave us systematic and relentless testing on an industrial scale and the notion of quality control.Through patiently experimenting with different methods, apparatus and techniques, James Keir worked out how to mass-produce soap. His factory at Tipton turned soap making from a craft into a science. It revolutionised hygiene, made Keir's fortune and paved the way for modern industrial chemistry.In this Age of Opportunity, as the demand for little luxuries like soap and fine bone china grew, scientific endeavour was no longer solely a gentlemanly pursuit. It was a gritty, profitable, factory-based business. Science proved itself to be hugely profitable. And, at the turn of the century, Humphry Davy made it highly fashionable and respectable. His dazzling chemical performances in London were a sell- out. And, in 1833, Davy's friend, Samuel Coleridge suggested that men who were neither literary men nor philosophers, might be given the name, "scientist".
A history of science in Britain from the Restoration to the present day. Weaving science back into everyday life, Lisa Jardine shows how the concerns of the scientist are the concerns of us all
Ireland