This book offers the first in-depth study of the masculine self-fashioning of scientific
practitioners in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. Focusing on the British
Association for the Advancement of Science founded in 1831 it explores the complex and
dynamic shifts in the public image of the British 'man of science' and questions the status of
the natural scientist as a modern masculine hero. Until now science has been examined by
cultural historians primarily for evidence about the ways in which scientific discourses have
shaped prevailing notions about women and supported the growth of oppressive patriarchal
structures. This volume by contrast offers the first in-depth study of the importance of
ideals of masculinity in the construction of the male scientist and British scientific culture
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the eighteenth-century identification of
the natural philosopher with the reclusive scholar to early nineteenth-century attempts to
reinvent the scientist as a fashionable gentleman to his subsequent reimagining as the epitome
of Victorian moral earnestness and meritocracy Heather Ellis analyzes the complex and changing
public image of the British 'man of science'.
