William Whewell was a nineteenth-century scientist and polymath. Unlike his contemporaries, who tended to specialise in one subject, Whewell wrote not only on science but also philosophy, theology and literature. He is also responsible for coining the term ‘scientist’ as a replacement for the increasingly outdated ‘natural philosopher’. Whewell is most famous for this extensive history of science, which attempted to describe the subject from its origins in antiquity to the present.