The development of one of the first X-ray machines by John and Russell Reynolds is just one in a series of remarkable contributions by amateurs in the history of science.

A century earlier Joseph Priestley, a clergyman, was inspired by “the electricity machine”, an after-dinner favourite that people used to give each other minor electric shocks. Priestley eventually derived some of the fundamental laws of electromagnetism.

Another example is Thomas Edison, who was home-schooled after being expelled at 7 for being “retarded”. He took up scientific experimentation after reading Sir Michael Faraday’s Experimental Researches in Electricity and developed the electric light and the gramophone, among other things.

There is sometimes a suggestion that the dilettante spirit is thin on the ground these days and that scientific research is now confined to academic laboratories. In reality, amateurs continue to make substantial contributions in a wide range of disciplines. Amateur astronomers are regularly credited with important observations, part-time fossil collectors vastly outnumber the professionals, as do amateur botanists and entomologists.

The internet provides a platform for selling gadgets to science enthusiasts. Backyard Brains, a company run by two US neuroscientists, is marketing a device called the SpikerBox for less than $100 (£60), for recording the neuronal signalling of insects, for instance.

Amateurs don’t always get the glory they deserve. But as Forrest Mims, an amateur scientist, wrote in Science magazine: “The term amateur can have a pejorative ring. But in science it retains the meaning of its French root amour, love, for amateurs do science because it’s what they love to do.”

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