Some time back, Adrian Teal was good enough to share a great quote with me, and it is high time that I got it up onto the Longitude Project blog. It is nice because it gives us a very different view of John Harrison, the humble carpenter from the provinces who dared to stand up to the scientific elite of the Royal Society and Board of Longitude.
The quote is from a biography of the aritist Thomas Gainsborough by his friend, Captain Philip Thicknesse, and reports the comments of Gainsborough’s brother John, known as ‘Scheming Jack’ because of his wild and somewhat outrageous inventions. [Read more]
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About Rebekah Higgitt
Rebekah Higgitt completed a PhD in the history of science at Imperial College London in 2004 and did postdoctoral research at the University of Edinburgh. She was Curator of History of Science and Technology at the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Observatory, Greenwich between 2008 and 2013 and is now a senior lecturer in the School of History at the University of Kent. Her research and publications have mainly focused on scientific institutions, scientific biography, history of science and the relationship between science, government and the public in 19th-century Britain. She became Principal Curator of Science at National Museums Scotland in August 2020 and is currently also Acting Keeper of Science & Technology.
Whewell's Ghost 