UCL STS Seminar series: Anna Marie Roos

Abstract

A set of unpublished correspondence between writer and art critic John Ruskin and physicist Oliver Lodge concerning cloud formation was rediscovered in the Cadbury Research Centre at the University of Birmingham, showing a more equal and reciprocal relationship between the two gentlemen about matters of art and science than previously realised. The exchange between Lodge and Ruskin, was one in which the hypotheses of Lodge as a theoretical physicist were challenged by Ruskin’s keen observational ability and scientific knowledge as an autodidact. When the exchange occurred, it is true that Lodge was a young man, eager to secure his professional position and not the later doyenne of English science, but that did not mean the correspondence was insignificant to either writer’s intellectual or personal interests. As they continued their correspondence, Lodge gained a respect and appreciation for Ruskin’s power of artistic apprehension of natural phenomena in informing scientific discovery and his simple, yet perceptive questions.