Nineteenth-century England witnessed developments in science comparable to those during the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution and is often referred to as the Second Scientific Revolution. Advances in inductive experimentation led to the production of practical knowledge, the flourishing of scientific disciplines, and the emergence of the professional scientist. A proliferation of scientific societies and institutions disseminated these advances to scientists, the British government, and the broader English society. Thus, science, as never before, sought the support of an informed British society, women as well as men, and so were key sources of knowledge for all in a nineteenth-century English context.