When Whewell received a medal from the Royal Society in 1837 for his researches on tides, the president, the Duke of Sussex, seemed more captivated by the recent appearance of History of the inductive sciences. In making the award the Duke referred to Whewell's ‘last and highest vocation’ – that of the historian who had traced ‘the causes which have advanced or checked the progress of the inductive sciences from the first dawn of philosophy in Greece to their mature development in the nineteenth century’ (Todhunter 1876, 1, 87–8). But Whewell was less sure of the reception of this work. ‘Of my History of science’, he remarked in 1840, ‘the principal notice taken by men of science has been of a hostile kind; and I do not think that any practical cultivators of special sciences will feel any deference for a person who has presumed to speculate about them all’ (Whewell to Lord Northampton, 5 October 1840, in Todhunter 1876, 11, 293).