ABSTRACT
'Romanticism' refers to a period and not just to a state of mind. While therefore one can classify the men of science of any period into the Romantic and the classical, we shall be concerned only with those active in approximately the life-span of Humphry Davy, 1778-1829. The sciences also lacked sharp and natural frontiers. Polymaths were not uncommon: John Dalton not only published an atomic theory but also worked on meteorology and colour-blindness, and Thomas Young proposed a wave theory of light, identified astigmatism in the human eye, published tables of chemical affinities, did fundamental work in mechanics and began the decipherment of the Rosetta stone. The Romantic period was one of rising interest in physiology, the science of life: and in Britain the great man had been John Hunter, who had raised surgery from a craft to a science.
