Science and Politics in the 19th Century

The word scientist isn't used until the 20th century, although it had been coined in the 1830s. It's only after the Education Act in 1870 that science begins to come into the school curriculum and into the university curriculum. H.G. Wells is kind of an emblem of the emergence of funded science and of the authority of science. In the 1890s, you're getting huge strides in physics, in biology,. discovery of bacteria and viruses and how they work - all kinds of new technological advances.