Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain. Peter J. Bowler. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 339 pp.

The central question raised by Science for All concerns the assumed decline of working scientists writing for the popular press after the Victorian Age in Britain. Observers of the history of science have noted that once scientists became professionalized around the turn of the twentieth century, they lost interest in writing for popular consumption and the field was taken over by journalists. Through extensive research and a good deal of meticulous detective work, Peter Bowler, a professor of the history of science at Queen’s University, Belfast, has collected a substantial body of evidence and builds a strong case that writing for the popular audience by working scientists was alive and well during the first four decades of the twentieth century.

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