Derived from the Latin scientia meaning expertise, the word scientist was first used in print in 1834 by William Whewell, a true Renaissance Man who would also coin the word physicist.
Whewell was versatile by any standard. A professor of both mineralogy and philosophy, he excelled as a mathematician and an equation defining the shape of a curve is named after him – the Whewell Equation.
He was also a man of faith, pursuing his calling as an Anglican Priest. And he kept a keen eye on languages and cultures. A particular interest in Germany led him to translate Goethe’s Faust into English and to write his own seminal book on German churches.
Not surprisingly this breadth of accomplishments earned Whewell a large network of admirers. His student Charles Darwin quotes him on the title page of On the Origin of Species and during his tenure at Cambridge he became Master of Trinity College, whose alumni have won 32 Nobel Prizes.
As well as giving a name to the world’s scientists, Whewell gave names to many of the terms they would come to use in their daily working lives. To his contemporary Michael Faraday he suggested cathode and ion. Other words that owe their place in the English language to this remarkable man include developer, electromagnetics, biometry and catastrophic.
Considering his dedication to human advancement, it is appropriate that William Whewell’s name is remembered not only on earth but also in an exclusive spot almost 240,000 miles away. Whewell died in 1866, a full century before the Apollo missions launched mankind to what may be considered our greatest scientific achievement. But on the surface of the moon, eight miles in diameter and a mile and a half deep, is the Whewell Crater.
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