Although historians have long recognized the importance of long-range scientific expeditions in both the practice and culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century science, it is less well understood how this form of scientific organization emerged and became established in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the late seventeenth century new European scientific institutions tried to make use of globalized trade networks for their own ends, but to do so proved difficult. This paper offers a case history of one such expedition, the voyage sponsored by the French Académie royale des sciences to Gorée (in modern Senegal) and the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1681–3. The voyage of Varin, Deshayes and de Glos reveals how the process of travel itself caused problems for instruments and observers alike.

In January 1729 a paper written by James Bradley was read at two meetings of the Royal Society. On a newly discovered motion of the fixed stars, later described as the theory of the aberration of light, it was to transform the science of astrometry. The paper appeared as a narrative of a programme of observation first begun at Kew and finalized at Wanstead, but it was, in reality, a careful reconstruction devised to enhance his reputation in response to a recognition that the programme was initially conducted in terms that were inimical to what he conceived to be his interest. The planned attempt to repeat Robert Hooke's celebrated experiment by James Pound, Samuel Molyneux and George Graham was set up at Molyneux's residence in Kew with James Bradley replacing Pound after his untimely and sudden demise. The unexpected and counterintuitive behaviour of the object star γ Draconis and the eradication of any suspicion of instrumental or systemic error led to the abandonment of the attempt to measure annual parallax and the initiation of new conjectures. An annual nutation was proposed but after the observation of a control star, 35 Camelopardalis, this conjecture was abandoned. Unknown to Bradley and Graham a premature approach was made by Molyneux to Newton claiming that the ‘nutation’ negated the whole of Newton's system. In the abandonment of the nutation yet another conjecture opposed to Newtonian theory was proposed and abandoned. Bradley determined to use his own instrument designed on different principles by Graham to observe the phenomenon in Wanstead. At Wanstead Bradley observed many stars to determine the parameters of the phenomenon. With the law of the motion described, Bradley proposed a hypothesis to explain it. Drawn from his earlier work on the ephemerides of Jupiter's satellites his hypothesis of the ‘new-discovered motion’ was quickly presented to the Royal Society as Bradley was working on a later and more definitive version of his paper. It is this later, third, unpublished version that is commonly referred to throughout this essay. It issued a challenge to ‘anti-Copernicans’ to offer an explanation of the observed phenomenon in geostatic terms. One such astronomer, Eustachio Manfredi, had examined the phenomenon of ‘aberrations’ in detail, the term being his. It was Bradley who first applied the term to the ‘new-discovered motion’ and within a short time ‘aberration’ was being applied by astronomers in the reduction of their observations. Annual aberration was widely accepted as evidence of the motion of the Earth. The paper enhanced Bradley's reputation and projected him into the forefront of European astronomers.

In his influential Laws of Thought (1854), the mathematician George Boole presented a formulation of logic using algebraic expressions and manipulations. His widow, Mary Everest Boole, undertook an ambitious project of disseminating his ideas by introducing lay audiences to the law of pulsation, a prescription for correct reasoning that incorporates two of his fundamental insights. Contemporary scholarship presents a fragmented picture of Mary Boole, regarding her largely as a source of information on the religio-psychological impetus for her husband's contributions to logic, among other matters. Some studies rightly acknowledge that her better-known commentary on educational reform relates to a promotion of the Laws of Thought, yet these typically fail to expand on how she articulated such relationships for readers. This paper provides a more complete understanding of her efforts by examining texts on various subjects motivated by a dedication to propagating as much as fulfilling the intellectual legacy she associated with her husband. In doing so it considers her interventions – like those undertaken by other Victorian women who sought to cultivate scientific enterprises – within a contextual framework broad enough to include strategic responses to cultural realities and possibilities.

The Danish Galathea Deep Sea Expedition between 1950 and 1952 combined scientific and official objectives with the production of national and international narratives distributed through the daily press and other media. Dispatched by the Danish government on a newly acquired naval ship, the expedition undertook groundbreaking deep sea research while also devoting efforts to showing the flag, public communication of science, and international cooperation. The expedition was conceived after the war as a way in which to rehabilitate Denmark's reputation internationally and to rebuild national pride. To this end, the expedition included an onboard press section reporting the expedition to the Danish public and to an international audience. The press section mediated the favourable, post-war and postcolonial image of Denmark as an internationalist, scientific, modernizing and civilizing nation for which the expedition planners and many others were hoping. The expedition, therefore, was highly relevant to, indeed fed on, the emerging internationalist agenda in Denmark's foreign policy. Bringing out these aspects of the historical context of the expedition, this paper adds important perspectives to our knowledge about the expedition in particular and, more generally, about scientific exploration in the immediate post-war and postcolonial period.