Francis Bacon’s public downfall had a surprising result – his revolutionary idea of scientific investigation.

Francis Bacon was neither a mathematician nor an experimental scientist, yet without him it is doubtful that engineering as we know it would exist today.

Bacon was born into a wealthy section of a changing world, as the son of the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England and Anne Cooke, daughter of the Renaissance humanist Anthony Cooke.

A bright boy, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1573 aged just 12, where he was personally tutored for three years by John Whitgift, the future Archbishop of Canterbury. Education at Cambridge at this time still followed the old medieval curriculum, conducted almost exclusively in Latin, but his time there did introduce him to two people who would change his life – and, in time, that of the whole scientific community.

The first was Queen Elizabeth, who was rather impressed with the young man, and whose favour would ensure him access to the...