EXPeditions - The living library of knowlegde20 Juni 2025

Patricia Fara - The dawn of state-funded science

There's a famous saying by Francis Bacon that knowledge is power. As president of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks persuaded the British government to invest in science.

About Patricia Fara "I’m an Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.

I've got a degree in physics, but my real passion is the history of science, and I love writing books because I want to show everybody that the history of science is the history of absolutely everything."

Key Points

• As president of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks convinced the government that it was in their interests to invest in scientific research. • Banks’s suggestions for expanding the British Empire included seizing most of West Africa and using locals to dig up the gold. • Partly thanks to Banks, science and the State are now so closely allied that it’s often difficult to draw a line between the two spheres.

Joseph Banks is extremely famous in Australia, but he's not very well known in Great Britain. He didn't make any great scientific discoveries. On the other hand, he's extremely influential and a very important figure in the history of science.

He was president of the Royal Society for 42 years, which is a long time. And although he didn't write any great scientific papers and was very poor at mathematics (he was often criticised for his lack of mathematical ability), what he did do was bring together the government and scientific research.

There's a famous saying by Francis Bacon that knowledge is power. What Joseph Banks did while he was president of the Royal Society was to convince the government that it was in their interests to invest in scientific research.

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