Research interests
Eighteenth-century natural philosophy; cultural history of science.
Selected publications
Erasmus Darwin: Sex, Science and Serendipity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)
Science: A Four Thousand Year History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
Fatal Attraction: Magnetic Mysteries of the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2005)
Scientists Anonymous: Great Stories of Women in Science (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2005)
Pandora's Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment (London: Pimlico, 2004)
Sex, Botany and Empire: The Stories of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2003)
Newton: The Making of Genius (London: Macmillan, 2002)
An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2002)
Sympathetic Attractions: Magnetic Practices, Beliefs, and Symbolism in Eighteenth-Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)
Memory, co-edited with Karalyn Patterson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
The Changing World, co-edited with Peter Gathercole and Ronald Laskey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)