1 Edmond Halley: Time is unravelling?! Can we stop it?
2 Isaac Newton: There is only one way to find out. We must gather the greatest natural philosophers from all eras of history and assemble in the 1940s.
3 Edmond Halley: Surely you jest, Mr Newton!
4 Isaac Newton: Do I look as though I am jesting, Mr Halley?

Of course in Newton and Halley's time, the word scientist had not yet been coined. The word was invented in 1833 by William Whewell, as a shorter description for the people previously known as natural philosophers. Whewell was a prolific coiner of new words in the scientific disciplines - several terms commonly used in science nowadays are his inventions.

---

2024-11-23 Rerun commentary: Some of the words William Whewell invented:

• anion, anode, cathode, cation, conductivity, dielectric, electrode, electrolysis, ion
• consilience, linguistics, physicist, scientist
• catastrophism, uniformitarianism
• astigmatism, osmosis
• Pliocene, Miocene, Eocene

Many of these terms are related to electricity and electrochemistry. Whewell maintained a correspondence with Michael Faraday, and suggested many of these terms directly to the great master of electrical experimentation.

Seeking names for the two different positive and negative electrodes of his experiments, Faraday wanted initially to called them the alphode and the betode, using his rudimentary knowledge of Greek word roots. Whewell, more fluent in Ancient Greek, responded that alphode and betode only served to indicate that the two electrodes were different. His suggestion of anode from the Greek ἀνα- (ana-, meaning "up") and cathode from the Greek κατα- (kata-, meaning "down") had the advantage, Whewell explained, of carrying the meaning that not only were the two electrodes different, but that they were opposites. Faraday accepted this argument, and used the terms anode and cathode in his experimental write-ups, thus cementing their place in the English language.

References and further reading:

• The Science Show: William Whewell, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2018.
• Heilbron, J. "Coming to terms." Nature 415, 585 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/415585a.
• Snyder, Laura J., "William Whewell", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/whewell/.
• Ashworth, William B., "Scientist of the Day: William Whewell", Linda Hall Library, 2019. https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/william-whewell/