Wise is best known for his fundamental work in the history of physics. His Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge University Press, 1989, co-authored with Crosbie Smith) won the 1990 Pfizer Prize, and he followed this book with three companion articles, “Work and Waste: Political Economy and Natural Philosophy in Nineteenth Century Britain,” published in History of Science in 1989 and 1990. Together, these works set out a new way of understanding science. He showed that science is not just embedded in culture, but is also a part of it, drawing its resources from the specificity of a particular time and place. His newest book, Aesthetics, Industry, and Science: Hermann von Helmholtz and the Berlin Physical Society (University of Chicago Press) was published in 2018.