‘Essays-in-honour-of’ volumes are tricky creatures, both to review and to put together. They often display an essential tension, if we may use a lesser-known Kuhnian phrase. On the one hand there is the need to include essays from collaborators, students and colleagues, whose interests may range across several disciplines. In that case the final product may be of great interest to few, and of small interest to many. On the other hand having essays that would fall squarely within the bounds of the honoured person's field could make the final product look more like a thematic handbook and less like a tribute. Finding a balance can be a difficult task.

In the case of the volume put together by Theodore Arabatzis, Jürgen Renn and Ana Simões in honour of Kostas Gavroglu, this tension is especially evident, and no doubt compounded by the range of scholarly interests tackled by the honoured person himself. Kostas Gavroglu (b.1947) has been one of the founders of modern Greek historiography of science and has served as a teacher and adviser for generations of younger scholars in his position as a professor at the University of Athens. His research interests have ranged from the history of low-temperature physics to the Greek Enlightenment; from the history of quantum chemistry to the problems of appropriating scientific ideas and practices in the European periphery during the last three centuries. Moreover, Kostas Gavroglu is one of the founding members of STEP, a network of scholars founded in 1999 aiming to negotiate an approach to the historiography of science that would put a focus on the periphery, and not on the centre.

With such a varied and far-ranging array of interests to apprehend, it is small wonder that the volume titled Relocating the History of Science ends up being a collection of very diverse and uneven essays. Based on a conference held in Athens in 2015, the volume's 383 pages contain no less than twenty-five different essays. Among the contributors are Robert Fox, Ian Hacking, Lorraine Daston, J.L. Heilbron, Hasok Chang, Agusti Nieto-Galan and a host of other scholars from Greece, Portugal, Germany, Turkey and elsewhere. The book itself is arranged in five different units: ‘History of the modern physical sciences’, ‘STEP matters’, ‘History and philosophy of science’, ‘Historiographical musings’, and ‘Beyond history of science: mathematics, technology and contemporary issues’.

It is at this point that the discerning reader will have shaken his head at the apparent problems for the aspiring reviewer. It is very difficult to do justice to so many essays, or even to treat them with any detail. Moreover, even the units themselves seem more an attempt to find some common ground among disparate entries than categories set forth from the beginning. Some of the essays, with the one submitted by Nieto-Galan being the prime example, are very informal and personal, detailing fond memories of working with Kostas Gavroglu and the many interesting projects that came out of it. Others, like the essays on Lindemann and Einstein submitted by Robert Fox and the description of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort Sojourn in Crete by Lorraine Daston read like interesting, self-sufficient mini articles. A third category consists of essays that discuss specific aspects of Kostas Gavroglu's work in relation to current research. Thus we find José M. Bertomeu-Sánchez discussing the relationship between STEP and the history of science education, Helge Kragh and Mary Jo Nye tackling the historiographical characteristics of scientific biographies, and Manolis Patiniotis discussing the case of the movement known as Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment. Others, like Ian Hacking, make a point to present expanded versions of work that was first presented in conferences organized by, or in collaboration with, Kostas Gavroglu. Finally, a last category comprises essays from colleagues and students, whose focus can be quite diverse. Such examples are the essays by Jean Christianidis on hypostasis in Diophantus or Stathis Arapostathis's exposition of Marconi's inventions in early twentieth-century Britain.

Taken as a whole, it seems that this volume has something for everyone: science education, modern physics and chemistry, philosophy of science, historiography, technology – the list goes on. The same diversity, however, also means that very few people would find the whole volume helpful or interesting. It is also the case that some essays read more like small expositions of very specific themes, rather than fully articulated papers, while others, such as the Hacking paper, assume prior knowledge of the project under discussion. Be that as it may, I found Relocating the History of Science to be interesting and on the whole fruitful, even if many of the essays were not on subjects that fall within my research interests. Other readers would have undoubtedly focused on different parts of this volume, but I consider this to be a strength, rather than a disadvantage. All in all, Relocating the Sciences is worth perusing, even if one is not familiar with Kostas Gavroglu's work. The number and calibre of the scholars contributing to this volume make it worth the time to look more closely into it.