Popular Science

I SHOULD like to be allowed to underline a few remarks that occur in a review entitled “Scientific Biography” in NATURE for January 29. The writer urges that science has neglected the populace and offered its wares for popular edification in a highly unedifying way. I believe this is very true. I am old enough to remember different times, and can recall with truth and gratitude the feeling of enthusiasm, and even of exaltation, which I had in early days on hearing or reading popular science lectures. I think of Huxley, Tyndall, Clifford, W. B. Carpenter, Lockyer, Roscoe, and some others. Science lectures then were aimed at showing how science did its work, and they brought into view something of the personality of the real scientific worker.