During the last thirty years of his life, Isaac Newton lived in London, where as head of the Royal Mint he moved in wealthy aristocratic circles, exerted substantial political influence, and profited financially from imperial trade and exploitation. To illustrate these themes, this lecture examines an oil painting by William Hogarth illustrating a children’s performance of John Dryden’s play The Indian Emperour, a dramatized version of the tussle for power between Hernando Cortez and Montezuma.
This lecture is held in conjunction with the Science Museum’s Science City 1550-1800: The Linbury Gallery as part of its Science Museum Lates. N.B. 7pm start
Patricia has a degree in physics from Oxford and a PhD in History of Science from London. Based at Cambridge University since 1993, she is an Emeritus Fellow of Clare College and was President of the British Society for the History of Science from 2016-18.
Her major research topics are eighteenth-century England and scientific portraits, but she has published a range of academic and popular books on the history of science. Her most recent is A Lab of One's Own: Science and Suffrage in the First World War (2018) but others include the prize winning Science: A Four Thousand Year History (2009), Newton: The Making of a Genius (2002) and Pandora's Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment (2004).
In addition to featuring in TV and radio programmes such as In Our Time, she regularly writes reviews and articles for publications such as Nature, The Times Literary Supplement, The Lancet and History Today.
She is currently working on a book about Isaac Newton's final three decades in London, when he became Master of the Mint and President of the Royal Society.
