Fara has surely only scratched the surface of the ways in which women contributed to science in this period (and, as she points out, also the male labourers who constructed equipment and so on).T he threat of catastrophe is alluring. In other cases, it is through correspondence, or through a woman’s own writing that is picked up and expanded on by a man because the woman wasn’t allowed to present her ideas in a public forum. In some cases, this is domestically: when science is being done in the home, wives and sisters and household staff get drawn into the science almost automatically. She does this by taking several Lone Genius men (Descartes, Linnaeus, Lavoisier, Newton…) and examining the role that women played in their scientific lives. While refusing the suggestion that Hypatia and Katherine Johnson could have been at all comfortable sitting next to each other at a dinner party, Fara reclaims the existence of women in scientific endeavour. In this book, Patricia Fara delves into the myth of the lone male scientific genius and exposes it as just that – a myth. But Pandora in breeches means that Pandora is also trying to take over the male world. Pandora is already a problem: the first woman, in Greek mythology, whose existence brings all sorts of problems to the (male) world.
Fara is also a reviewer of books on history of science. She has written and co-authored a number of books for children on science. Her areas of particular academic interest include the role of portraiture and art in the history of science, science in the 18th century England during the Enlightenment and the role of women in science. She began her academic career as a physicist but returned to graduate studies as a mature student to specialise in History and Philosophy of Science, completing her PhD thesis at Imperial College, London in 1993. Fara is author of numerous popular books on the history of science and has been a guest on BBC Radio 4's science and history discussion series, In Our Time. Fara is also a research associate and lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. She is a former Fellow of Darwin College and is currently a Fellow of Clare College where she is Senior Tutor and Tutor for graduate students. She is a graduate of the University of Oxford and did her PhD at the University of London. Patricia Fara is a historian of science at the University of Cambridge.
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