Abstract: science; image of science; scientists Summary/Abstract: In the contemporary world of science, reflecting on the image of science and scientists has become almost routine – a task so commonplace that it’s sometimes regarded as an “inevitable evil” of research. However, in the mid-1990s when Kristina Petkova and Pepka Boyadjieva embarked on their groundbreaking study, this was far from the case. Their article, “The Image of the Scientist and Its Functions,” published in Public Understanding of Science in 1995, was among the fi rst to address this theme in a systematic, scholarly way.