Kathryn Harkup is a chemist and author. Kathryn completed a doctorate on her favourite chemicals, phosphines, and went on to further postdoctoral research before realising that talking, writing and demonstrating science appealed a bit more than hours slaving over a hot fume-hood. For six years she ran the outreach in engineering, computing, physics and maths at the University of Surrey, which involved writing talks on science topics that would appeal to bored teenagers (anything disgusting or dangerous was usually the most popular). Kathryn is now a freelance science communicator delivering talks and workshops on the quirky side of science.
Lucidly illuminates Shelley’s investment in the rapidly expanding knowledge of chemistry, biology and electricity of her times, and reminds us of how Frankenstein helped inspire technological developments, such as the pacemaker. * Wall Street Journal * Making the Monster reassembles the intellectual toolkit Shelley had at her disposal ... everything she could have known about alchemy, spontaneous generation, phlogiston, physical decomposition, anatomy, transplant surgery, galvanism and human reanimation, digested for the 21st-century reader. * Literary Review * An engaging account of the facts and fears of the 19th century that lay behind the composition of Mark Shelley's Frankenstein. A telling reminder that although science has moved on, fears about what it might soon do have scarcely changed. -- Steve Jones FRS, Emeritus Professor of Genetics at UCL, author and broadcaster A fascinating and educational journey through the shadowy twists and turns of medical history. The odours of the dissection rooms and the sounds of the public executions are brought to life just as vividly as the monster himself. -- Carla Valentine, Mortician and Pathology Museum Curator