Gowing was based at Linacre College. Her appointment, Roy MacLeod wrote, "struck a conspicuous blow for modern, as against medieval and early modern, science, and for a reading of history that favoured social, economic and political perspectives, as against the examination of scientific practice." She delivered her inaugural lecture, "What's Science to History or History to Science?", on 27 May 1975. In this lecture, she examined the reasons why the history of science had grown apart from other forms of history, and endeavoured to reconcile them and bring them together again. In her subsequent Wilkins Lecture in 1976 she examined the history of British prejudice against science dating back to Victorian times.