“Whatever difficulty we might experience in the middle of the nineteenth century in choosing a king of science”, read the obituary notice in The Morning Post of Monday, 2 December 1872, “there could be no question whatever as to the queen of science.”1 And in a full-length column the death in Naples on the preceding Friday of Mary Somerville was announced. The Times of the same date, in a notice 2 of equal length and somewhat more scientific detail, spoke of (...) the high regard in which her services to science were held both by men of science and by the nation. She had been for almost half a century the most famous of English scientific ladies and in achieving that role had become the first scientific lady of the world. (shrink)

SynopsisThe atomic theory of Dalton implied that there were more than 30 different kinds of matter, the chemical elements. William Prout (1815) was the first of a long line of distinguished speculators who sought to show, by argument and experiment, that this diversity overlay a more fundamental unity. Contrary to a common opinion, this was not an eccentric and unpopular movement, but involved many of the great names of nineteenth-century chemistry; and some of their speculations have proved to be very (...) near the mark. It may be that this strong current of well-informed speculation enabled the discoveries of cathode rays and of radioactivity (which provided the first real evidence of the complexity of the atom) to be integrated into the body of science with such remarkable rapidity. (shrink)