Uses portraits of Joseph Banks, the Herschel family (William, his sister and collaborator Caroline, and his son John), and Humphry Davy, among others, to illustrate the evolution of the sciences in Great Britain from roughly 1770 to 1835. This era saw great advances in astronomy and chemistry, the sudden emergence of ballooning (not a science, of course, but a vehicle for new kinds of measurement and observation), and an overall trend towards specialization. In fact, it was not until the very end of this period that the term “scientist” was coined. The author is interested not just in the scientific discoveries themselves, but on how they effected the broader culture: he quotes liberally from poets (e.g. Coleridge, Byron, and the Shelleys), many of whom were interested and well-educated in the sciences.