The tapestry of science does not just consist of facts uncovered about the natural world and the laws that connect them. This book is a collection of essays on aspects of the lives of some famous scientists and places where science is carried out, combined with accounts of some of the science the author himself has been involved in.

We often forget that the science underpinning our contemporary civilization is not a marmoreal edifice. On the contrary, at each moment in its development over past centuries, it grew and advanced through the efforts of individuals and the institutions they created. As Director of the Royal Institution and its Davy Faraday Research Laboratory throughout the 1990s, the author had a unique vantage point to observe how places and people condition the way science has been shaped in the past and continues to be today. The author's background as a practicing solid state chemist, with a lively concern for issues engaging public awareness of science, have led him to recognize and celebrate, not just the remarkable contributions and unusual lives of past scientific heroes like Rumford and Faraday, but also their present day successors. Over the years, this insight has resulted in a wide variety of articles and essays, spread through many publications; a selection of these is collected in this b