On the Spot: Patricia Fara

Why are you a historian of science?

I read physics, but the history of science is more fun: you have to get the facts right, but you decide how to interpret them.

What’s the most important lesson history has taught you? 

Ambition and ruthlessness are ubiquitous and impossible to prevent. 

Which history book has had the greatest influence on you? 

Greg Dening’s The Death of William Gooch.

What book in your field should everyone read?

Peter Galison’s Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps.

Which moment would you most like to go back to?

The first demonstrations of electrical machines in the early 18th century: it must have been mind-blowing.

Which historian has had the greatest influence on you?

My PhD supervisor, Jim Secord.

Which person in history would you most like to have met? 

Emilie du Châtelet, the brilliant 18th-century mathematician who believed that the point of life is to take pleasure in everything you do.

How many languages do you have? 

At various times in my life, I’ve been proficient in French, German, Latin, and Serbo-Croatian.

What’s the most exciting field in history today? 

Global history.

What historical topic have you changed your mind on? 

Scientific revolutions – I now think they’re an unhelpful way of thinking about the past.

What is the most common misconception about your field?

That you have to be a scientist.

Who is the most underrated person in history… 

Tupaia, the Tahitian navigator and translator who enabled James Cook to reach Australia and New Zealand.

… and the most overrated?

Isaac Newton.

Is there an important historical text you have not read? 

I’ve only read short extracts from Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

What’s your favourite archive?

The Women’s Library at LSE.

What’s the best museum?

The Spalding Gentlemen’s Society is a favourite.

What technology has changed the world the most?

Radio.

Recommend us a historical novel... 

I never read historical novels: too much uncertainty about what’s fact and fiction.

... and a historical drama?

Brian Friel’s Translations (1980).

You can solve one historical mystery. What is it?

Where did Isaac Newton go when he signed out of Trinity College for weeks at a time?

Patricia Fara is an Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and a columnist at History Today.