Edward Jenner, who by his discovery of vaccination has pre-eminently acquired a right to the title of the "Benefactor of Mankind," was born at the vicarage house of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, and was the third son of the Rev. Stephen Jenner, rector of Rockhampton, and vicar of Berkeley. Jenner's father died when he was only five years old, leaving him to be brought up under the care of his uncle. At eight years of age he was put to school at Wotton-under-Edge, from whence he was removed...

Classics of Modern Science: (Copernicus to Pasteur) is an illuminating anthology that traces the intellectual revolution of modern science from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century through seminal texts by figures such as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Harvey, Darwin, and Pasteur. Rather than merely summarizing discoveries, it presents science as a literary and philosophical enterprise, revealing how observation, experiment, and mathematical reasoning gradually displaced inherited authori...