• Question: Who was the first scientest in england?

    Asked by since1997 to Anna, Craig, Richard, Shane, Sue on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Richard Case

      Richard Case answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Good question since1997,

      I was on a live webchat with some of the other scientists that are taking part in this competition just before it started, where I learned something very interesting…. the word “scientist” wasn’t invented until the 1800’s… so strictly speaking the first scientist would be the person who came up with the word…..

      So I have googled it, and the answer seems to be William Whewell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell in 1833.

    • Photo: Shane Pennington-Cooper

      Shane Pennington-Cooper answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Well said Richard, once again people could Argue that because GOD is everywhere and he carried out the first experiment with Adam and Eve then maybe GOD was.

    • Photo: Anna Williams

      Anna Williams answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I wasn’t sure about this, so I Googled it…apparently…the first official English scientist was called Adelard of Bath, who lived in the 11th century. He wrote about the Abacus and the Astrolabe, the most important scientific instruments of his time. He translated a lot of works on maths and astronomy from the Arabic and helped to introduce new science to the Western world. He wrote a book on Natural Philosophy, which showed how reason and observation could be used to explain natural phenomena.

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