Academic & Teaching staff

Dr Jonathan Topham

Senior Lecturer

Dr Jonathan Topham

+44 (0)113 34 32526

Jon Topham's research relates mainly to the cultural history of science in late Georgian Britain. One particular focus is on the history of scientific communication, drawing on the historiography of the book. Among his co-publications are Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: Reading the Magazine of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media (Ashgate, 2004), and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: An Electronic Index (HRI Online, 2005). He is presently also researching a monograph on Publishing Science in the Age of Revolutions, 1789-1832. Jon also maintains a major research focus on science and religion in Regency and Victorian society, particularly in regard to natural theology and theologies of nature. He is currently preparing a monograph entitled the Reading the Book of Nature: Science, Religion and Society in a Revolutionary Age.

Jon joined the Department in 1999, initially as an AHRB research fellow on the Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical (SciPer) Project.  Previously he held several research fellowships in the University of Cambridge and worked as an editor on the Darwin Correspondence Project.

Research Interests

  • Science and its publics: popular science and science popularization
  • Science and religion in Regency and Victorian society; natural theology and theologies of nature
  • The history of the book in nineteenth-century Britain: authorship, reading, and publishing
  • Nineteenth-century life and earth sciences; Darwin and Darwinism

Selected Publications

  • 'Science, Print, and Crossing Borders: Importing French Science Books into Britain, 1789-1815', in Geographies of Nineteenth Century Science, ed. by David N. Livingstone and Charles Withers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 311-44.
  • 'Biology in the Service of Natural Theology: Darwin, Paley, and the Bridgewater Treatises', in Biology and Ideology: From Descartes to Dawkins, ed. by Denis R. Alexander and Ronald Numbers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), pp. 88-113 and 372-75.
  • (with Geoffrey Cantor, Graeme Gooday, Gowan Dawson, Richard Noakes, and Sally Shuttleworth) Reading the Magazine of Nature: Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
  • (ed. with Louise Henson, Geoffrey Cantor, Sally Shuttleworth, Gowan Dawson, and Richard Noakes) Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

Full list of publications below.

Research Supervision

  • Science, technology, and medicine in periodicals and newspapers, esp. 1750-1850
  • Scientific and medical authorship, reading, and publishing, esp. 1750-1850
  • Scientific and medical education and textbooks, esp. 1750-1850
  • Science and religion, esp. in relation to public attitudes

Research Students

  • Jo Elcoat, 'Reading the Schoolbook: Rewriting the History of Science Education in England, 1780-1850' (2011-).
  • Alan Mackintosh, 'Patent Medicines and the Print Trade: Selling the Prototype Branded Goods in Late Georgian England' (2011-; jointly supervised with Adrian Wilson).
  • Rebecca Bowd, 'Subscription Libraries as Agents of Cultural Transformation in the Age of Revolutions: The Case of Leeds, 1768-1832' (2010-).
  • Juan Manuel Rodriguez Caso, 'A Metamorphosed Naturalist? Continuity and Change in Alfred Russel Wallace's Thought on Man' (2008-; jointly supervised with Greg Radick).
  • Mark Steadman, 'A History of the Scientific Collections of the Leeds Museum, 1819-1921: Acquiring, Interpreting and Presenting the Natural World in the English Industrial City' (2007-; jointly supervised with Greg Radick).
  • Efram Sera-Shriar, 'Beyond the Armchair: Early Observational Practices and the Making of British Anthropology, 1813-1871' (2011 award; jointly supervised with Greg Radick).
  • Claire Jones, 'Between Commerce and Professionalism: The Form, Role and Significance of the Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1880-1914' (2010 award; jointly supervised with Graeme Gooday).
  • Leucha Veneer, 'Practical and Economic Interests in the Making of Geology in Late Georgian England' (2010 award; jointly supervised with John Christie).
  • Josep Simon, 'Communicating Physics in Nineteenth-Century France and England: The Production, Distribution and Use of Ganot's Textbooks' (2009 award; jointly supervised with Graeme Gooday).

Recent Talks Online

Other Activities

Full List of Publications

Books and Edited Volumes

  1. (with Geoffrey Cantor, Graeme Gooday, Gowan Dawson, Richard Noakes, and Sally Shuttleworth) Reading the Magazine of Nature: Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
  2. (ed. with Louise Henson, Geoffrey Cantor, Sally Shuttleworth, Gowan Dawson, and Richard Noakes) Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
  3. Edited 'Book History and the Sciences', a special section of the British Journal for the History of Science 33 (2000): 155-222.
  4. (ed. with Frederick H. Burkhardt, Duncan M. Porter, Sheila Dean, and Sarah Wilmot) The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
  5. (ed. with Frederick H. Burkhardt, Duncan M. Porter, and Joy Harvey) The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 10 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
  6. '"An Infinite Variety of Arguments": The Bridgewater Treatises and British Natural Theology in the 1830s', unpublished PhD thesis, University of Lancaster, 1993. 

Major Papers

  1. 'Anthologizing the Book of Nature: The Circulation of Knowledge and the Origins of the Scientific Journal in Late Georgian Britain', in Circulating Knowledge: East and West, ed. by Bernard Lightman, Gordon McOuat, and Larry Stewart (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
  2. 'Science, Medicine, and Mathematics', in History of Oxford University Press, vol. 2, 1780-1896, ed. by Simon Eliot (Oxford: Clarendon Press, forthcoming).
  3. 'Science, Print, and Crossing Borders: Importing French Science Books into Britain, 1789-1815', in Geographies of Nineteenth Century Science, ed. by David N. Livingstone and Charles Withers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 311-44.
  4. 'Natural Theology and the Sciences', in Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion, ed. by Peter Harrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 59-79.
  5. 'Science, Religion, and the History of the Book', in Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives, ed. by Thomas Dixon, Stephen Pumfrey, and Geoffrey Cantor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 221-44.
  6. 'Biology in the Service of Natural Theology: Darwin, Paley, and the Bridgewater Treatises', in Biology and Ideology: From Descartes to Dawkins, ed. by Denis R. Alexander and Ronald Numbers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), pp. 88-113 and 372-75.
  7. 'Introduction: Historicizing Popular Science [Introduction to special 'Focus' section]', Isis 100 (2009), 310-18.
  8. 'Rethinking the History of Science Popularization/Popular Science', in Popularizing Science and Technology in the European Periphery, 1800-2000, ed. by Faidra Papanelopoulou, Agusti Nieto-Galan, and Enrique Perdiguero (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 1-10.
  9. 'Scientific Books, 1800-1830', in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol. 5, 1695-1830, ed. by Michael Turner and Michael Suarez (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 827-33.
  10. 'Publishing "Popular Science" in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain', in Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences, ed. by Aileen Fyfe and Bernard Lightman (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2007), pp. 135-68.
  11. 'Authors of the Bridgewater Treatises (act. c. 1833-1836)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, Oxford University Press, Oct 2007.
  12. 'Thomas Byerley, John Limbird, and the Production of Cheap Periodicals in Regency Britain', Book History 8 (2005), 75-106.
  13. 'Scientific Readers: A View from the Industrial Age', Isis 95 (2004), 431-42.
  14. (with Gowan Dawson and Richard Noakes) 'Reading The Magazine Of Nature', in Reading the Magazine of Nature: Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical, ed. by Geoffrey Cantor et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 1-34.
  15. 'The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction and Cheap Miscellanies in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain', in Reading the Magazine of Nature: Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical, ed. by Geoffrey Cantor et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 37-66.
  16. 'The Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine and Religious Monthlies in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain', in Reading the Magazine of Nature: Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical, ed. by Geoffrey Cantor et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 67-90.
  17. Science, Natural Theology, and the Practice of Christian Piety in Early Nineteenth-Century Religious Magazines', in Science Serialized: Representations of the Sciences in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals, ed. by Geoffrey Cantor and Sally Shuttleworth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), pp. 37-66.
  18. (with Geoffrey Cantor, Gowan Dawson, Richard Noakes, and Sally Shuttleworth) 'Introduction', in Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media, ed. by Louise Henson et al. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. xvii-xxv.
  19. 'Periodicals and the Development of Reading Audiences for Science in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Youth's Magazine, 1828-37', in Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media, ed. Louise Henson, Geoffrey Cantor, Gowan Dawson, Richard Noakes, Sally Shuttleworth, and Jonathan R. Topham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 57-69. [Reproduced in Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism, 160 (2006).
  20. 'A Textbook Revolution', in Books and the Sciences in History, ed. by Marina Frasca-Spada and Nicholas Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 317-37.
  21. 'Scientific Publishing and the Reading of Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain: A Historiographical Survey and Guide to Sources', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 31A (2000), 559-612.
  22. 'Introduction [to a special section on 'Book History and the Sciences']', British Journal for the History of Science 33 (2000), 155-58.
  23. 'Two Centuries of Cambridge Publishing and Bookselling: A Brief History of Deighton, Bell and Co., 1778-1998, With a Checklist of the Archive', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 11 (1998), 350-403.
  24. 'Beyond the "Common Context": The Production and Reading of the Bridgewater Treatises', Isis 89 (1998), 233-62.
  25. 'Evangelicals, Science, and Natural Theology in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain: Thomas Chalmers and the Evidence Controversy', in Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective, ed. by Daryl Hart, David Livingstone, and Mark Noll (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 142-74.
  26. 'Science and Popular Education in the 1830s: The Role of the Bridgewater Treatises', British Journal for the History of Science 25 (1992), 397-430.

Other papers and essay reviews

  1. 'Wakley, Thomas (1795-1862)' in Dictionary of Nineteenth-century Journalism, ed. by Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor (London : British Library, forthcoming 2009).
  2. 'Accessing the Content of Nineteenth-Century Periodicals: The Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Project', Serials, 20 (2007), 20-26.
  3. 'Technicians of Print and the Making of Natural Knowledge' [Essay Review], Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 35 (2004), 391-400.
  4. 'Deighton, John (1748-1828)', 'Whittaker, George Byrom (1793-1847)', 'Weale, John (1791-1862)', and 'Egerton, Francis Henry, eighth earl of Bridgewater (1756-1829)' in New Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by Colin Matthew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
  5. 'Chalmers, Thomas (1780-1847)', 'Limbird, John (1794/5-1883)', 'Weale, John (1791-1862)', and 'Whittaker, George Byrom (1793-1847)', in The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, ed. by Bernard Lightman (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2004).
  6. (with Gowan Dawson) 'Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical', Literature Compass 1 (2004) VI 056, 1-9.
  7. (with Geoffrey Cantor and Sally Shuttleworth) 'Representations of Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press', Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 28 (2003), 161-68.
  8. 'Not Thinking About Science and Religion' [Essay review], Minerva 40 (2002), 203-09.
  9. (with Richard Yeo, David Miller, and Marina Frasca-Spada) 'The Encyclopedic Life' [Review Symposium], Metascience 11 (2002), 154-76.
  10. 'A Hundred and One Things to Do With a Natural History Book', in Garden Party Talks 3: Books, ed. by M. Frasca-Spada and N. Jardine (Cambridge: The Cambridge Group for the History of Natural History and the Environmental Sciences, Cambridge University, 2000), pp. 6-17.
  11. 'The Archives of the British Society for the History of Science', British Journal for the History of Science 30 (1997), 75-6.
  12. 'Charles Darwin of Woking? Emma Darwin's Recollections of House-Hunting', Darwin College Magazine 12 (March 1997), 50-4.
  13. 'More Letters of Charles Darwin', Biology History 8/2-3 (1995/6), 3-28.
  14. 'Vestiges of the History of Popular Science [Essay review]', Metascience n.s. 8 (1995), 48-55.
  15. 'The Archives of Deighton, Bell & Co.', Book Trade History Group Newsletter 22 (1994), 8-9.
  16. 'Teleology and the Concept of Natural Law: An Historical Perspective', Science and Christian Belief 1 (1989), 49-60.

Shorter Reviews

  1. [Peter Broks, Understanding Popular Science], British Journal for the History of Science, 41 (2008), 617-19.
  2. [John Issitt, Jeremiah Joyce: Radical, Dissenter, and Writer], Isis, 99 (2008), 426.
  3. [Elizabeth James, ed., Macmillan], Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 98 (2004), 388-90.
  4. [James Secord, Victorian Sensation], British Journal for the History of Science 35 (2002), 360-62.
  5. [Thornton and Tully's Scientific Books, Libraries, and Collectors, ed. Andrew Hunter], SHARP News 10/3 (Summer 2001), 11-12.
  6. [Nicolaas Rupke, Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist], Social History of Medicine 10 (1997), 176-7.
  7. [Stanley L. Jaki, God and the Cosmologists], Science and Christian Belief 4 (1992), 69-70.
  8. [John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives], Endeavour n.s. 16 (1992), 95.
  9. [David Bohm and F. David Peat, Science, Order and Creativity], Science and Christian Belief 3 (1991), 139-41.
  10. [Pietro Corsi, Science and Religion: Baden Powell and the Anglican Debate 1800-1860], Faith and Thought Bulletin 9 (1991), 19-20.