Did you know that Sir Christopher Wren was a professor of astronomy? Strictly speaking, designing St. Paul’s Cathedral was an extra-curricular activity. Did you know that Edmund Halley’s greatest contribution to astronomy was not his predicting the return of the comet bearing his name? He was the one who persuaded Newton to publish his momentous discoveries concerning gravity and optics. Did you know that Christian Huygens’ discovery of Titan and understanding of what exactly Saturn’s rings were, are almost modest compared to his construction of the first really accurate clock? Modern science depends on it!
Well maybe you did, but I didn't; at least not until I read Lisa Jardine's very detailed but eminently readable book about the scientific discoveries of the 17th and 18th centuries and the people who made them. In her introduction, Jardine makes the case for scientists to be viewed with more sympathy and less suspicion. We have unprecedented access to information allowing us to educate ourselves as never before. Yet many of the populace view science with a suspicion based on ignorance. Ignorance not only of even the most basic facts of science but also of the huge importance it plays in our lives. This is one of a number of books that try to popularize science by telling its history as a story; a story full of drama, human failings and heroics, petulant patriotism and patronage. In other words, it says that far from scientists being the soulless automatons of popular ignorance they are all too human, both in their failings and their greatness.
The book starts with the story of why the Royal Observatory in Greenwich was built (in order to help establish longitude at sea) and also who built it and how. Sir Jonas Moore was the driving force behind both funding and construction. Wren and Hooke designed it and Moore installed John Flamsteed as the first Astronomer Roy- al. Great…except Moore discovered that Flamsteed was an observer who took devotion to duty to ludicrous extremes. Although his measurements were more than enough to satisfy the most demanding sailor in locating his position, the new Astronomer Royal stubbornly refused to publish his observations until he was happy with them. Not only did Moore die without ever seeing these observations in print, Flamsteed did too. Quite remarkable when you realize that he started his observing in 1675 and kept them up until his death in 1719!
The story moves on to one of the main characters of the book –- Robert Hooke. On the debit side, he emerges as the type of guy that would argue with Christ up on the cross (he had a long running dispute with Huygens regarding the invention of the balance wheel in clocks).
On the credit side, however, we learn that not only was he involved with Wren in designing St. Paul's but he was the designer and maker of the most superb scientific instruments. A pioneer in the development of compound microscopes, even he could not match the work of another of scientific history’s (and therefore history’s) great figures – Anthony Von Leeuwenhoek. This Dutch civil servant never used anything other than a simple microscope but made and used them to such an exceptional standard that not only did he discover bacteria but it was another hundred years before anyone else managed to see them!
Jardine eventually moves into the territory of botany, concentrating on the medical and huge commercial implications of expeditions to far-flung places. I was less interested in these chapters but only because I am not that interested in plants. Nevertheless, I felt they took up too much of the book (which, by the way, is well illustrated both in color and black-and-white).
Eventually the author leaves botany behind and tells the story of Henry Oldenburg who set up voluminous correspondence between various scientists and contributed to the dissemination of information around Europe. The last chapter deals with Crick and Watson’s historic discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule, giving due credit to the now (largely forgotten) Rosalind Franklin, whose excellent X-Ray diffraction photos led her to suspect what Crick and Watson used those same images to prove. Franklin died tragically young and surprisingly is omitted from the very useful thumbnail descriptions of the work of the main characters.
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