Ask anyone why Benjamin Franklin is famous and they will likely mention his role in the American Revolution. Yet Franklin’s celebrity began with his science. Decades before independence, Immanuel Kant hailed him as “the Modern Prometheus,” a bold defier of nature whose scientific experiments made him an international star and helped launch his political career. In this lecture, Joyce Chaplin, author of The Franklin Stove: An Unintended American Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025), traces Franklin’s scientific pursuits, showing the central role of science in Franklin’s life—and in the revolutionary era more broadly. She will also discuss how Franklin’s reputation lived on in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), a powerful meditation on the rewards and risks of scientific ambition.
This lecture is presented to mark the 250th Anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence.