Benjamin Franklin is known as a leading figure in the American Revolution, a diplomat, a printer and publisher, and an inventor. But in a lecture Thursday, historian Joyce Chaplin made the case that Franklin’s role as a man of science was central not only to his life but also to American independence.

Science gained cultural significance in the 18th century, as Europe embraced Enlightenment ideals, and Franklin made himself into one of the best-known scientific minds of his era, said Chaplin, James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History. That reputation, shaped in part by the publication of the pamphlet “Experiments and Observations on Electricity” in 1751, would pay dividends during the Revolution and beyond. 

“Franklin did experiments that provided the first convincing explanations of electricity, including its manifestation as lightning,” said Chaplin. “Within the context of enthusiasm for science in the 18th century, this was important. His work in science gave Franklin unparalleled authority to defy a monarch who seemed to have become a tyrant … setting off the first political revolution in an age of revolutions that would continue into the early 19th century.”

The event, a nod to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, was sponsored by the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture.

“Franklin was interested in science because he was ambitious and knew he needed some extraordinary accomplishment to achieve any kind of prominence.”

Joyce Chapman

Franklin was born in Boston in 1706. After a yearslong apprenticeship, he moved to Philadelphia at age 17 to establish himself as an independent printer. A year later he traveled to London, where he not only mastered the printing trade, but also developed a fascination for science to the point where he became “desperate to meet Isaac Newton,” said Chaplin, whose books include “The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius.” Newton had published “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica” in 1687, in which he formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, and London was a hub of discovery and innovation.

It was a time when “participation in science was widespread and unspecialized,” Chaplin said. It was in London that Franklin learned “what a reputation in science might do for him,” she added.

“Franklin was interested in science,” Chaplin said, “because he was ambitious and knew he needed some extraordinary accomplishment to achieve any kind of prominence.”

When Franklin returned to Philadelphia, he quickly became a successful printer. In 1729, he purchased “The Pennsylvania Gazette,” and in 1732, he published “Poor Richard’s Almanack” to share his interest in science, including weather forecasts, and discoveries of the era.

Inspired by the Royal Society of London, which was founded in 1662 to promote scientific research, in 1731 Franklin created the Library Company of Philadelphia, which collected scientific instruments and sponsored lectures in science. He helped establish the American Philosophical Society and the Academy of Philadelphia, which later evolved into the University of Philadelphia.

Franklin’s work with electricity, including the kite experiment, secured him prominence first in Philadelphia and later in Europe, where he was respected and admired. In time, his fame would spread “into Russia and through the Americas, including the Spanish and Portuguese colonies,” said Chaplin.

When Immanuel Kant called Franklin a modern Prometheus for “having drawn fire or electricity from the heavens,” the German philosopher “was implying a similar defiance of the natural and supernatural order of things,” according to Chaplin. The same theme occupied Mary Shelley, who might have had Franklin in mind when she published “Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus,” in 1818. Shelley’s novel presented “a darker vision of the man of science,” Chaplin noted, and delivered a “rather dire warning about scientific prowess.”

“Shelley had many possible targets in mind for this accusation,” she said. “Franklin is definitely one, maybe the major one, in this book. … If anyone ever asked me how Franklin is different from the other American founders, I’d say, in perfect truth, ‘Well, he’s a subtitle to Frankenstein.”’

And yet, as Franklin’s scientific fame grew, so did his political power. In 1753, he was appointed deputy postmaster general of North America. The year after, he was elected to represent the Pennsylvania assembly at the Albany Congress, “something that had never happened when he was just a printer,” Chaplin said. Franklin served as agent of the Pennsylvania assembly in London between 1757 and 1762.

During the Revolution, Franklin’s scientific reputation was an asset in his diplomatic efforts to secure France’s support for the insurgent colonies. He was a key figure in the founding and early years of the republic, helping draft the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but all his political power stemmed from his scientific prowess, Chaplin said.

“I do think the United States of America would have come into existence even if Benjamin Franklin never existed,” she said. “But I think most Americans are today unaware of the heavy lifting, starting in 1776, that Franklin’s reputation, as a famous man of science, performed for the United States. Science helped to make a powerful case for the nation at the dawn of its birth.”