News at Eleven: [Joseph] Banks helped bring science

to the masses by establishing the Bakerian Lecture, a prize lecture that still exists. These open lectures soon became the hottest ticket in London. With their talks carefully prepared and theatrically delivered, the scientists quickly became famous and, in Holmes' telling, Romantic heroes.

This status was enhanced by the Romantic poets--Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, Keats, and Byron--frequent audience members who often incorporated the ideas and images of science into their own work.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Exploring a time when poetry and science mingled

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