An independent scientist (historically also known as gentleman scientist) is a financially independent

scientist A scientist is a person who Scientific method, researches to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engag ...

who pursues scientific study without direct affiliation to a public institution such as a university or government-run

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in some countries as OKB, experiment and design, is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products. R&D constitutes the first stage ...

body. The term "gentleman scientist" arose in post-

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, but became less common in the 20th century as government and private funding increased. Most independent scientists have at some point in their career been affiliated with some academic institution, such as

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

, who was affiliated with the

Geological Society of London The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe, with more than 12,000 Fellows. Fe ...

History

Self-funded scientists practiced more commonly from the Renaissance until the late 19th century, including the

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the ...

, especially in

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, before large-scale government and corporate funding was available. Many early fellows of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

were independent scientists.

Modern

Modern-day independent scientists who fund their own research on an independent basis include, for example,

Stephen Wolfram Stephen Wolfram ( ; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer algebra and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical So ...

who funds his research through the sale of

Mathematica Wolfram (previously known as Mathematica and Wolfram Mathematica) is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allows machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network ...

software,

Julian Barbour Julian Barbour (; born 1937) is a British physicist with research interests in quantum gravity and the history of science. Since receiving his PhD degree on the foundations of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity at the University o ...

Aubrey de Grey Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey (; born 20 April 1963) is an English biomedical gerontologist. He is the author of ''The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging'' (1999) and co-author of '' Ending Aging'' (2007). De Grey is known for ...

, Barrington Moore,

Susan Blackmore Susan Jane Blackmore (born 29 July 1951) is a British writer, lecturer, sceptic, broadcaster, and a visiting professor at the University of Plymouth. Her fields of research include memetics, parapsychology, consciousness, and she is best known f ...

James Lovelock James Ephraim Lovelock (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) was an English independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating syst ...

, and John Wilkinson who funds his research on "molecular synergism in nature" by running a regulatory scientific consultancy in natural products. Peter Rich said of Peter D. Mitchell: "I think he would have found it difficult to have gotten funding because his ideas were rather radical."Cohen (1998). Mitchell went on to win the

Nobel Prize in Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry () is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outst ...

in 1978. Chemist Luis Leloir funded the research institute he headed, the Institute for Biochemical Research, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1970. There are today several virtual research institutes for independent scientists, including the Ronin Institute and the National Coalition of Independent Scholars.

Benefits and drawbacks

Self-funding has the disadvantage that funds may be more restricted and the advantage of eliminating a number of inconveniences such as teaching obligations, administrative duties, and writing grant requests to funding bodies. It also permits the scientist to have greater control over research directions, as funding bodies direct grants toward interests that may not coincide with that of the scientist. Furthermore, the

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

of the inventions belongs to the inventor and not the employer. Modern science requires competence and may require access to scientific equipment. Independent scientists may have past careers as funded scientists, cooperate with funded colleagues, obtain partial equipment-only grants, or choose directions where the most expensive resource required is the researcher's time. If the research succeeds, independent scientists may publish results in the same

peer-reviewed journal An academic journal (or scholarly journal or scientific journal) is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. They serve as permanent and transparent forums for the dissemination, scr ...

s as funded scientists do. Scientists may choose to work on unusual projects with a high risk of failure also when the grant system does not fund them. A scientist could be attributed the status of an independent scientist if they work on such projects during a gap between two academic positions, for example.

Notable examples

Mary Anning Mary Anning (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) was an English fossil collector, fossil trade, dealer, and palaeontologist. She became known internationally for her discoveries in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Cha ...

* Elizabeth Garrett Anderson *

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

* Hertha Ayrton *

Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered ...

Robert Boyle Robert Boyle (; 25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, Alchemy, alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the foun ...

* James Braid *

Mark Catesby Mark Catesby (24 March 1683 – 23 December 1749) was an English natural history, naturalist who studied the flora and fauna of the New World. Between 1729 and 1747, Catesby published his ''Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama ...

Henry Cavendish Henry Cavendish ( ; 10 October 1731 – 24 February 1810) was an English experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. He is noted for his discovery of hydrogen, which he termed "inflammable air". He described the density of inflammable a ...

John Dalton John Dalton (; 5 or 6 September 1766 – 27 July 1844) was an English chemist, physicist and meteorologist. He introduced the atomic theory into chemistry. He also researched Color blindness, colour blindness; as a result, the umbrella term ...

* Christopher J. Date * Robert C. Edgar *

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

* Carlo Fornasini *

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...

* Goldsworthy Gurney *

Oliver Heaviside Oliver Heaviside ( ; 18 May 1850 – 3 February 1925) was an English mathematician and physicist who invented a new technique for solving differential equations (equivalent to the Laplace transform), independently developed vector calculus, an ...

* Caroline Herschel * Robert Kraichnan *

George Frederick Kunz George Frederick Kunz (September 29, 1856 – June 29, 1932) was an American mineralogist and mineral collector. Biography Kunz was born in New York City, USA, and began an interest in minerals at a very young age. By his teens, he had amas ...

Antoine Lavoisier Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794), When reduced without charcoal, it gave off an air which supported respiration and combustion in an enhanced way. He concluded that this was just a pure form of common air and that i ...

* Alfred Lee Loomis * A. Garrett Lisi *

Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-pur ...

Gregor Mendel Gregor Johann Mendel Order of Saint Augustine, OSA (; ; ; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was an Austrian Empire, Austrian biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinians, Augustinian friar and abbot of St Thomas's Abbey, Brno, St. Thom ...

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...

Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, Unitarian, Natural philosophy, natural philosopher, English Separatist, separatist theologian, Linguist, grammarian, multi-subject educator and Classical libera ...

* David Rittenhouse * David E. Shaw *

Alexander Shulgin Alexander Theodore "Sasha" Shulgin (June 17, 1925 – June 2, 2014) was an American biochemist, broad researcher of synthetic psychoactive compounds, and author of works regarding these, who independently explored the organic chemistry and ph ...

Mary Somerville Mary Somerville ( ; , formerly Greig; 26 December 1780 – 29 November 1872) was a Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and in 1835 she and Caroline Herschel were elected as the first female Honorar ...

Henry Fox Talbot William Henry Fox Talbot (; 11 February 180017 September 1877) was an English scientist, inventor, and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th c ...

Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla (;"Tesla"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 10 July 1856 – 7 ...

* John Wilkinson (scientist) *

* Thomas Young *

Lord Salisbury Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (; 3 February 183022 August 1903), known as Lord Salisbury, was a British statesman and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United ...

* Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovsky

References

Sources