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Adam W adamwh — ‘Science is truly a relay race, with each discovery handed on to the next generation.’ Richard Holmes dates the period of Romantic science as extending (at least symbolically) between two celebrated voyages of exploration: Captain Cook’s expedition around the world aboard the Endeavour which began in 1768, and Charles Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos Islands aboard the Beagle, which began in 1831. While this is a group biography, covering a number of different scientists at work during this period, the lives and discoveries of three men are central. First is Joseph Banks (1743-1820) who, as a young botanist, was on board the Endeavour when she reached Tahiti in 1769. Banks features throughout much of the book: he was President of the Royal Society for over 40 years from 1778. The other two central figures are William Herschel (1738-1822) and Humphry Davy (1778-1829). These men were stars of what Coleridge called the ‘second scientific revolution’ in his Philosophical Lectures of 1819. Richard Holmes considers that this second revolution was primarily inspired by a series of breakthroughs in astronomy and chemistry. ‘The notion of an infinite, mysterious Nature, waiting to be discovered or seduced into revealing all her secrets, was widely held.’ We follow a number of different journeys in this book: Banks, and the ‘ambiguous paradise’ of Tahiti. William Herschel’s ambition was to construct a reflector telescope, an instrument that ‘might plunge deep down into the sky and explore it like an unplumbed ocean of stars.’ Hershel’s work, together with that of his sister Caroline – herself an astronomer – is covered in detail here. Humphry Davy writes of his exploration of nitrous oxide: ‘By degrees as the pleasurable sensations increased, I lost all connection with external things; trains of vivid visible images rapidly passed through my mind and were connected with words in such a manner as to produce perceptions perfectly novel. I existed in a world of newly connected and newly modified ideas.’ But it is the detail of Humphry Davy’s invention of the miner’s safety lamp that focussed my attention. Even more than the fact that the best mould for making a metal lens for a telescope involved pounded horse-dung. Read, too, about the first balloonists, who went soaring from the earth in the 1780s. They learned far more about the earth than they expected, in their search for knowledge of the skies. And, there is also a chapter about Mungo Park’s (1771-1806) expeditions in Africa. I had not previously heard of him. T he journeys are emotional, imaginative and intellectual as well as physical. There’s a thought-provoking chapter entitled ‘Dr Frankenstein and the Soul’, and consider the ‘Vitalism’ debate. We now know that galvanic and electrical energy cannot create life from inert matter, but what imaginary monsters have been created as a consequence? I thoroughly enjoyed this book: discovered some new learning of my own as well as finding a new context for some previously acquired knowledge. In 1833, William Whewell coined the word ‘scientist’. Perhaps coining this term, even though it wasn’t widely adopted until some years later, really defines the end of the period of Romantic science. Jennifer Cameron-Smith