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Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #29

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Whewell's Masthead

Volume #29

Monday 05 January 2015

Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #29

 

EDITORIAL:

Well our editorial staff has survived New Years Eve and they are back on the treadmill generating electricity so that we can bring you the first edition of your weekly #histSTM links list for the year 2015, which a couple of the mathematics buffs on Twitter have pointed out in a palindrome in binary code the universal language of computers, 11111011111. Its also rather nice in base eight 3737 and base four 133133.

 

Quotes of the Week:

Quote of the week

They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and this is a good argument against atheism. I think it’s a better argument against foxholes. – Kurt Vonnegut

‘The authorities of the British Museum have had another abuse to contend against & that is the practice of families sending a harmless lunatic member to spend the day in the Reading Room, thus providing them with an asylum…at the cost of nothing’ ‪1890s – @britishlibrary

“When it comes to science most of the jingoists and religious fanatics-particularly Hindus and Muslims, just love to revel in the past. There have been biases in writing of history and history of science but this can’t be set right by dubious claims. Stick to facts not fantasies”. – @irfhabib

 Birthdays of the Week:

Andreas Vesalius born 31 December 1514

220px-Tintorretto-Andreas-Vesalius-engrav-Tavernier

Special Collections & Archives at Mizzou: Happy Birthday Andreas Vesalius

News Works: Skepticism in medicine turns 500

RCS: Vesalius: 500 years on Lecture by Professor Vivian Nutton

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Space Age Archaeology: Shadows of the Moon: an ephemeral archaeology

Dawn Journal: December 29

Giuseppe Piazzi points the way to his discovery, the planet Ceres. (Dawn’s route there is more complex than Piazzi might have guessed.) Credit: Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo - S

Giuseppe Piazzi points the way to his discovery, the planet Ceres. (Dawn’s route there is more complex than Piazzi might have guessed.) Credit: Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo – S

 

Space Watchtower: New Year did not always begin on January 1

The Eclipse Expeditions of the Lick Observatory and the Dawn of Astrophysics (PDF)

Science 2.0: A Brief History of Exo-Earths and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Preach truth – serve up myths

British Library: Medieval manuscripts blog: Cicero’s Map to the Stars

jamesungureanu: Vision of Science: Mary Somerville

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

MEDICINE:

The Embryo Project: Harry Hamilton Laughlin (1880–1943)

Chemical Heritage Magazine: Mummies and the Usefulness of Death

Center for Israel Education: First nursing graduates in the Land of Israel

December 7, 1921 Twenty-two women graduate from the Nurses’ Training Institute at Rothschild Hospital in Jerusalem

December 7, 1921
Twenty-two women graduate from the Nurses’ Training Institute at Rothschild Hospital in Jerusalem

Of Microbes and Men: The Curious Case of Tiny Tim Cratchit

The Recipes Project: How to Translate a Recipe (2)

The Conversation: Ancient hangover cures to get you through the new year

Early Modern Medicine: Infertility, Miscarriage and Men

Instagram: meta4rn: The first Australian mental health nurse

Atlas Obscura: Numbers Instead of Names on the Forgotten Graves of Asylum Patients

CHEMISTRY:

About Education: History of Fireworks

The Recipes Project: Dyeing to Impress: Hair Products and Beauty Culture in Nineteenth-Century America

"Bogles Hair Dye" in Walton's Vermont Register and Farmers' Almanac for 1862 (Montpelier: S. M. Walton, 1862). Image courtesy of Archive.org:

“Bogles Hair Dye” in Walton’s Vermont Register and Farmers’ Almanac for 1862 (Montpelier: S. M. Walton, 1862). Image courtesy of Archive.org:

 

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

NewsWorks: Volcanoes may have contributed to dinosaurs’ demise, Princeton scientists find

 

History of Geology: A tribute to the Year of Crystallography – Haüy’s Models

 

National Geographic: The Plate: What’s Best for Baby’s Tummy? The History of Baby Food

Road to Paris: A very short history of climate change research

The TrowelBlazers 2014 Review

Dumbarton Oaks: The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century

580d1114-2984-4215-a193-7dd02070e7fb

Woods Hole Museum: Cornelia Clapp and the Earliest Years of the MBL

Fossil History: Happy Birthday Marcellin Boule

jamesungureanu: Visions of Science: Charles Lyell

 

These Bones of Mine: Interview with Liz Eastlake: Dental Delights and Estonian Escapades

 

TECHNOLOGY:

The Royal Society: Microscope and oxy-hydrogen lamp projector

 

Image number: RS.10747 Credit: © The Royal Society

Image number: RS.10747
Credit: © The Royal Society

Conciatore: Faux Pearls Reprise

Conciatore: Neri the Scholar

Atlas Obscura: The 19th-Century Iron Balls Still Cleaning The Paris Sewers

The Institute: Five Famously Wrong Predictions About Technology

Flickr: Sani-Phone Hygienic Telephone Discs

The Conversation: A history of fireworks: how about some flaming artichokes to blast in the new year?

Fireworks on the River Thames, Monday May 15 1749.

Fireworks on the River Thames, Monday May 15 1749.

Live Science: Ancient Middle East Shipwrecks Shed Light on Shipbuilding History

Georgian Gentleman: What is your hobby?

Ackermanns-repository-1819

Chemical Heritage Magazine: In the Pink

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Museum of the History of Science: January Newsletter

Voices: Gone in 2014: Remembering 10 Notable Women in Science

British biologist Lorna Casselton  Credit: Bruce Sampson/Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY)

British biologist Lorna Casselton
Credit: Bruce Sampson/Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY)

TCP: EEBO-TCP Phase I Public Release: What to expect on January 1

Ether Wave Propaganda: The “MIT and the Transformation of American Economics” Conference and Maturation in the Historiography of Economic Thought

Michael Crichton: Why Politicized Science is Dangerous

IEEE: Bell Labs’ milestones dedications ceremony held Dec. 18 in Murray Hill

Mental Floss: Winston Churchill’s 1932 Predictions for 50 Years Hence

Nature: Time for the social sciences

Cultures of Knowledge: Merry Christmas and Glad Tidings

Robert Boyle (1627-91): Welcome to the Boyle Papers Online!

Journal of Universal Rejection

Wellcome Trust: Image of the Week: Happy New Year 2015!

Ancient Chinese wooden geomantic compass and perpetual calendar

Ancient Chinese wooden geomantic compass and perpetual calendar

LaCrosse Tribune.com: Museum to spotlight Wisconsin science

Blink: Can India have a scientific revolution?

The Guardian: Ivor Gattan-Guinness obituary

Pacific Standard: The Science of Society: What Is the Point of Academic Books?

JHI Blog: What Does Early Modern Bibliography Have to Do With a Blog?

Homunculus: There goes the neighbourhood

Reading the History of Western Science: A List of Good Places to Start

Motherboard: Should Unprovable Physics be Considered Philosophy?

C Net: Ancient Indian aircraft on agenda of major science conference

Plans for an ancient Indian flying machine Wikimedia Commons

Plans for an ancient Indian flying machine
Wikimedia Commons

Audra Wolfe: Doing Scholarship from Outside Academe

ESOTERIC:

The History of Phrenology on the Web: Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832)

Special Collections & Archives at Mizzou: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them in Special Collections

BOOK REVIEWS:

Empathy Library: A History of Bombing

Forbes: John Farrell: Book of the Year: Alice Roberts On Evolution and the Making of Us

Science Book a Day: Steam-Powered Knowledge: William Chambers and the Business of Publishing, 1820-1860

steam-powered-knowledge NEW BOOKS:

Historiens de la santé: Schreiben am Rand: Die »Bernische kantonale Irrenanstalt Waldau« und ihre Narrative (1895-1936)

Historiens de la santé: The Antibody Molecule: From Antitoxins to therapeutic antibodies

Ashgate: Australia Circumnavigated: The Voyage of Matthew Flinders in HMS Investigator, 1801-1803

Pickering & Chatto: The Correspondence of John Tyndall

Historiens de la santé: Medicine and Public Health in Latin America: A History

THEATRE:

The Guardian: After Turing and Hawking, now it’s the stage story of Robert Oppenheimer, the man behind the bomb

Robert Oppenheimer, right, with Albert Einstein in 1947. Photograph: Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Getty

Robert Oppenheimer, right, with Albert Einstein in 1947. Photograph: Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Getty

FILM:

Indiegogo.com: A Film and Interactive Media Project about Navy Rear Admiral and Computer Pioneer, Grace Hopper.

Grace Murray Hopper at the UNIVAC keyboard, c. 1960 Source: Wikimedia Commons

Grace Murray Hopper at the UNIVAC keyboard, c. 1960
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Scientific American: Guest Blog: Stephen Hawking, Hawking Incorporated, and the Myth of the Lone Genius

The Theory of Everything, film review: Eddie Redmayne plays Stephen Hawking brilliantly

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

VIDEOS:

RADIO:

BBC: Wittgenstein’s Jet

Ludwig Wittgenstein Photographed by Ben Richards, Swansea, Wales, 1947 Source: Wikimedia Commons

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Photographed by Ben Richards, Swansea, Wales, 1947
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

PODCASTS:

NPR: Mae Keane, The Last ‘Radium Girl,’ Dies at 107

Employees of the U.S. Radium Corp. paint numbers on the faces of wristwatches using dangerous radioactive paint. Dozens of women, known as "radium girls," later died of radium poisoning. The last radium girl died this year at 107. Argonne National Laboratory

Employees of the U.S. Radium Corp. paint numbers on the faces of wristwatches using dangerous radioactive paint. Dozens of women, known as “radium girls,” later died of radium poisoning. The last radium girl died this year at 107.
Argonne National Laboratory

History of the Earth: December 31. The 6th Extinction

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Sixth International Workshop on the History of Human Genetics Glasgow, UK (Scotland), June 5-6, 2015 CfP: ‘Human Gene Mapping’ and ‘Oral History of Human Genetics’

ECREA: CfP: Communications History Bridges and Boundaries Conference 16-18 September 2015

The Royal Society: Conference: Publish or Perish? The past, present and future of the scientific journal 19-21 March 2015

 

Historiens de la santé: CfP: Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine – 14th Annual Conference Sydney 30 June-4 July 2015

 

LOOKING FOR WORK:

UCAR: Senior Science Writer and Public Information Officer

 

The Bibliographical Society: Katharine F Pantzer Jr Research Awards

RCP: Project Coordinator – – UK Medical Heritage Library (UK-MHL) project

Uppsala University: Postdoctoral associate

M-Phi: Jobs at LMU Munich: Three assistant Professorships in Logic and Philosophy of Language

M-Phi: Jobs at LMU Munich: Two Postdoctoral Positions in Philosophy of Mathematics

The Morgan Library & Museum: Assistant Curator, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #30

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Whewell's Masthead

Volume #30

Monday 12 January 2015

EDITORIAL:

The week that is covered by the thirtieth edition of Whewell’s Gazette the weekly #histSTM links list is one that saw a sad loss in the #histSTM community with the death of the historian of science David C. Lindberg at the age of 79 on 6 January 2015.

Lindberg an expert for the history of optics, medieval history of science in general and the relationship between science and religion in the Middle Ages was one of the true giants of the discipline whose scholarship influenced all of those who came into contact with him or his writings. I personally never had the honour of meeting him but my own development as a historian of science has been heavily influenced, certainly for the better, in particular by Lindberg’s writings on the history of optics. His Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler is one of my all time favourite history of science books and I like, many, many others, have a copy of his The Beginnings of Western Science always close at hand. We have lost one of the greats but through his writings he will remain part of our community for a long time to come.

I humbly dedicate this edition of Whewell’s Gazette to the memory of David C. Lindberg, a fine scholar and a great teacher.

David Lindberg, History of Science, teaching class. © UW-Madison University Communications  608/262-0067 Photo by:  Jeff Miller Date:  9/00     File#:   0009-171c-16a

David Lindberg, History of Science, teaching class.
© UW-Madison University Communications 608/262-0067
Photo by: Jeff Miller
Date: 9/00 File#: 0009-171c-16a

University of Wisconsin-Madison: Death of Professor David C. Lindberg

UWMadScience: Lessons of a Lifetime

 

Birthdays of the Week:

Alfred Russel Wallace born 8 January 1823

A photograph of A.R. Wallace taken in Singapore in 1862

A photograph of A.R. Wallace taken in Singapore in 1862

History of Geology: The Forgotten Naturalist: Alfred Russel Wallace

History of Geology: A.R. Wallace on Geology, Great Glaciers and the Speed of Evolution

Fossil History: Wallace, Darwin, and Human Origins

 

Yovisto: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Natural Selection

http://blog.yovisto.com/alfred-russel-wallace-and-the-natural-selection/

The Alfred Russel Wallace Website: Plants and animals named after Wallace

Youtube: Alfred Russel Wallace’s personal cabinet

Nicolas Steno born 11 January 1638

Steno as Bishop J. P. Trap 1868 derivative work Source: Wikimedia

Steno as Bishop
J. P. Trap 1868 derivative work
Source: Wikimedia

Yovisto: Nicolas Steno and the Principle of Modern Geology

History of Geology: Nicolas Steno and the Origin of Fossils

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Great American Eclipses: American eclipse observations of the 17th and 18th centuries

Uncertain Principles: Science Story: Night Owls

Magic Transistor: Thomas Orchard, The Astronomy of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’

tumblr_nhl0v0Jjop1rtynt1o3_1280

The Renaissance Mathematicus: If you’re going to blog about history of science then at least do the legwork

ScienceNews: Bell’s math showed that quantum weirdness rang true

Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Bog: When bad history meets bad journalism

The Renaissance Mathematicus: The Simon Marius Anniversary Celebratios 2014 have been a great success

The Collation: From comet tales to bear tails

Nautilus: The Vulgar Mechanic and His Magical Oven: A Renaissance alchemist pioneers feedback control

ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHON ROSEN

ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHON ROSEN

Nautilus: The Glassmaker Who Sparked Astrophysics

Chronologia Universalis: Serendipity in provenance research, part 3

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

arXiv.org: The search for longitude: Preliminary insights from a 17th Century Dutch perspective (pdf)

Annie Smith Peck: A Woman’s Place is at the Top

“Men, we all know, climb in knickerbockers. Women, on the contrary, will declare that a skirt is no hindrance to their locomotion. This is obviously absurd… For a woman in difficult mountaineering to waste her strength and endanger her life with a skirt is foolish in the extreme.”  Peck, Outing Magazine, “Practical Mountain Climbing,” 1901.

“Men, we all know, climb in knickerbockers. Women, on the contrary, will declare that a skirt is no hindrance to their locomotion. This is obviously absurd… For a woman in difficult mountaineering to waste her strength and endanger her life with a skirt is foolish in the extreme.”
Peck, Outing Magazine, “Practical Mountain Climbing,” 1901.

British Library: American studies blog: Christmas, locked in the ice Nova: Shakleton’s Voyage of Endurance

 

MEDICINE:

Conciatore: The French Disease Reprise

The Times Scotland: Lunatic who exposed the asylum

Dittrick Museum: The Stomach and its Discontents: Digesting the Winter Holidays

Chom News: Oedipus and the Spjinx: a Gift for Isador H. Coriat

 

English Historical Fiction Authors: Witches and Midwives in Early Modern England

The Recipes Project: Something old – something new: Greek and Roman recipes in focus

NYAM: Louis Braille and His System: The Quest for a Universal Script

A competing English system of encoding text for the blind, using symbols close to legible letters. In William Moon, Light for the Blind, 1879, opposite page 66.

A competing English system of encoding text for the blind, using symbols close to legible letters. In William Moon, Light for the Blind, 1879, opposite page 66.

distillatio: Medieval treatments for sore joints

CHEMISTRY:

Philly.com: Restoration of 17th-century painting at Villanova reveals mysteries

 

Chemical Heritage Magazine: Gas Stations

Detail of a photo displaying gas masks developed during World War I. (Othmer Library)

Detail of a photo displaying gas masks developed during World War I. (Othmer Library)

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

History of Geology: January 6, 1912: Happy Birthday Continental Drift

 

The Embryo Project: Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples Italy 

Yovisto: Johan Christian Fabricius and his Classification System for Insects

Ptak Science Books: The Future of Oil in 1921

The Irish Times: Intrigue and egos in a tussle over Irish amphibian fossils in 1866

Old Weather Blog: A history of the World in 1,399,120,833 observations

The Embryo Project: “Experimental Studies on Germinal Localisation” (1904), Edmund B. Wilson

 

Yovisto: Elizabeth Gertrude Britton Knight and the Study of Mosses

Renaissance Utterances: Lecture: Exotic birds and animals in the 18th Century garden

Letters from Gondwana: A Brief Introduction to the Origins of Birds

Space: io9: This Geological Field Notebook is an Elegant Look at Mountain-Building

The Guardian: Earthquakes, tsunamis and a naked tribe. It’s Chile – and not just Galápagos – that inspired Darwin

Fuegian tribespeople encounter members of Darwin’s expedition in a 1839 illustration by members of the crew. Photograph: British Library/Rex

Fuegian tribespeople encounter members of Darwin’s expedition in a 1839 illustration by members of the crew. Photograph: British Library/Rex

TECHNOLOGY:

Slate: The Vault: How Photographs Tried to Capture the Terror of Night Zeppelin Raids During WWI

Science Museum: Drawn by Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection

History News Network: The Nuclear Disaster You Never Heard of

 

Priceonomics: The Invention of the Slinky

Images from James’ patent, filed in August 1946 and approved January 1947

Images from James’ patent, filed in August 1946 and approved January 1947

Conciatore: Anatomy of a Misconception

Fig. of glass drop, Thomas Hobbes, Problematica Physica, 1662

Fig. of glass drop,
Thomas Hobbes, Problematica Physica, 1662

Conciatore: Le Fritte

BT’s Let Talk: Information Age – a turning point for society

Thick Objects: The Chambers’ Micromanipulator (1921)

 

Yovisto: Joseph Weizenbaum and his famous Eliza

BBC: “I was there” At the launch of the ‘worst gadget in history’ in 1985

Yovisto: The Watches of Abraham-Louis Bréguet

Ether Wave Propaganda: Schaffer on Machine Philosophy, Pt. 6: The Ideology of Charles Babbage

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:Inside Higher Ed: Pop History

U.S. National Library of Medicine: History of Medicine Finding Aids Consortium

 

Project Muse: Casebooks in Early Modern England: Medicine, Astrology, and Written Records

Journal of Digital Humanities: A Distinction Worth Exploring: “Archives” and “Digital Historical Representation”

jamesungureanu: Visions of Science: Epilogue

Early Modern Experimental Philosophy: Experimental Philosophy and Mechanical Philosophy I: The Case of Henry More and Henry Stubbe

Notches: 365 Notches: (re)marks on our 1st anniversary

 

The Recipes Project: First Monday Library Chat: New York Academy of Medicine

International Commission on the History of Meteorology: History of Meteorology – Volume 6 (2014)

Homunculus: The birth of the scientific journal

Museum Two: What I Learned about Strangers from Jane Jacobs on my Winter Vacation

Wellcome History: Issue 54: Winter 2014

New: The Cultural History of Philosophy Blog: Altruism

 

Early Television Museum: Ed Reitan – Obituary

About 40 years ago, when Ed got his Model 5

About 40 years ago, when Ed got his Model 5

The Quad Video Tape Group: Restoring the Earliest Know Color Quad Tape: The Dedication of WRC-TV/NBC Washington DC

HASS: STS Reading List

Museum of Cycladic Art: Exhibition: Hygieia: Health, Illness, Treatment from Homer to Galen 19.11.2014–31.5.2015

ESOTERIC:

Wellcome Library: Spotlight: the power of angels – a charm against plague

A charm against the plague from Leech Book I, folio 30v, MS. 404, late 15th century. Wellcome Images L0073819.

A charm against the plague from Leech Book I, folio 30v, MS. 404, late 15th century. Wellcome Images L0073819.

Dis/unity of Knowledge: Models for the study of modern esotericism and science (pdf)

BOOK REVIEWS:

Time to Eat the Dogs: Inventing the American Astronaut

9781137025272

Heterodoxology: The Occult World – a new reference work for heterodoxologists

Brain Pickings: Albert Einstein’s Little-Known Correspondence with W.E.B. Du Bois on Race and Racism

 

NEW BOOKS:

The University of Chicago Press: Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the Anthropology of the Knowing Subject

Historiens de la santé: The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919: Perspectives from the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas

Notre Dame Press: The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters

P03151

Historiens de la santé: Healing Bodies, Saving Souls: Medical Missions in Asia and Africa

University of Pittsburgh Press: New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies

THEATRE:

FILM:

The Guardian: Every great individual stands on the shoulders of others

Science Observed: The opposite of a “lone genius”

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

Ron Townsend: From Problems to Solutions: Recruiting, Training, and Placing History PhDs in Non-Faculty Careers

VIDEOS:

Youtube: Jonathan Foyle discusses RCP ceremony and tradition

 

RADIO:

PODCASTS:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

University of Munich: Environmental Histories of Design: A workshop in Munich 19 June 2015

University of Cambridge: CRASSH: Lent 2015 Programme

 

University of Budapest: The CEU Summer University invites applications from MA and PhD students to the course “Cities and Science: Urban History and the History of Science in the Study of Early Modern and Modern Europe” 29 June-4 July 2015

Diseases of Modern Life: CfP: Working with Nineteenth-Century Medical and Health Periodicals St. Anne’s College, Oxford 30 May 2015

La Lettre de L’Ehess: Mardi 27 Janvier 2015 Une autre histoire: Jacques Le Goff Journée d’étude organisée par la BnF et l’EHESS

The Swedenborg Society: Talks and Readings: Professor Simon Schaffer: Swedenborg’s Lunars542d2a9e819b0

The registration deadline for attending the 6th Norwegian Conference on the History of Science, which will take place in Oslo, Norway, 11-13 February 2015, is fast approaching.

Digital Humanities Awards 2014 Nominations

H-Sci-Med-Tech: CfP: Medicine, Translations and Histories 11-12 June 2015 CHSTM Manchester

H-Sci-Med-Tech: CfP: Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) now accepting open panel proposals for 2015 meeting Denver Colorado 11-15 November

Society for Social Studies of Science (4S): Call for Open Panels: Denver 2015

University of Birmingham: Seminars and Conferences: Thursday 29 January Dr Clare Hickman: ‘Dr John Coakley Lettsom and the Mangle-Wurzel: Botany, Agriculture and Medical Practitioners in the Eighteenth-century’

Fourth Conference on History of Quantum Physics: Donostia/San Sebastian (Spain), 16-18 July, 2015. Palacio de Miramar

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens: CfP: University Heritage and Cultural Engagement of European Universities 11‐13 June 2015

Confessions of a Curator: Call for Chapter Proposals: The 21st Century Special Collections Reader: contemporary approaches for special collections Due 1 Feb 2015

‘Maps and Society’ Lectures: 15 January Dr Yossef Rapoport (Queen Mary, University of London). ‘The World Map in the Fatimid Book of Curiosities (c.1050): Mathematical Geography between Late Antiquity and Islam’

University of Leeds: CfP: The History and Future of Rationing 25 March 2015

 

Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy): CfP: “Medical Terminology and Epistemology for a Dictionary of Genetics and its Degenerations from Hippocrates to ICD-10” 4-6 May 2015

8th Munich-Sydney-Tilburg (MuST) Conference: OBJECTIVITY IN SCIENCE Tilburg University, The Netherlands10–12 June 2015

Making Science Public: Citizen Science

Hektoen International: Third Hektoen Grand Prix Essay Competition

8TH  EUROPEAN SPRING SCHOOL ON HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND POPULARIZATION CfP: LIVING IN A TOXIC WORLD (1800-2000) EXPERTS, ACTIVISM, INDUSTRY AND REGULATION Maó (Menorca), 14-16 May 2015

LOOKING FOR WORK:

University of Oxford: Directorship of the Pitt Rivers Museum

Institute for Humanities Research Arizona State University (2015-2016) “Monsters and Monstrosity” Fellows Call for applications

 

 The School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds is pleased to inform potential applicants for postgraduate study that it is able to offer up to 18 fully-funded PhD scholarships for UK/EU students for 2015-16 entry, plus further scholarships for international students.

 

Durham Visual Culture Studentship: If you are interested in researching the history of science and visual culture, please contact me and I can direct you to an appropriate department which might be interested in your project.  I note that the deadline is 28 January 2015.

Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine Fellowships

CHoM News: 2015-2016 Women in Medicine Fellowship: Application Period Open

CHoM News: 2015-2016 Countway Fellowships: Application Period Open

New York University: Post Doctoral Fellowship in the History of Science and Technology

ConsortiumHSTM: Fellowships

H-Sci-Med-Tech: Duke University History of Medicine Travel Grants

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #31

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Whewell's Masthead

Volume #31

Monday 19 January 2015

EDITORIAL:

Welcome to Volume #31 of the world’s numero uno #histSTM weekly links list, Whewell’s Gazette. Yesterday, 18 January, was the 107 anniversary of the birth of Polish-British polymath Jacob Bronowski. As I said on more than one occasion I became interested in the history of mathematics when I read a copy of Eric Temple Bell’s Men of Mathematics, at the age of sixteen. Two books did more than anything else to cause me to widen my horizons to a more general history of science, one was Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers and the other was Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man.

Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man was originally a much praised television series but in my case it was the book to the series that had a major impact. Later I would go on to read two books by Bronowski on the philosophy/sociology of science, The Common Sense of Science and Science and Human Values, both of which influenced my interest in science studies. When I discovered that Bronowski had also written books on William Blake, then and now my favourite poet, my fate was sealed, I was definitely a fan. I don’t do heroes but if I did Bronowski would be a serious candidate.

In many discussions over the years both on blog comment columns and on Twitter I have become aware that The Ascent of Man played an important role in the career decision of quite a few historians of science and so I have decide to dedicate this edition of Whewell’s Gazette to the memory of Jacob Bronowski (18 January 1907 – 22 August 1974)

Jacob Bronowski Source: Wikimedia Commons

Jacob Bronowski
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

The Sloane Letters Blog: Storms, Sounds and Authorship

Ptak Science Blog: Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, 1961

National Geographic: A Half Century of Martian Invasions

Corpus Newtonicium: All was light – but was it?

Uncertain Principles: Science Stories: Letters to Famous Physicists

Medium.com: When Einstein met H.G. Wells

Conciatore: Torricelli and Glass

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Hugh Taylor’s Interview

Making Waves: Oliver Lodge and the Cultures of Science, 1875-1940: The Alternative Path: Lodge, Lightning, and Electromagnetic Waves

Irish Philosophy: Small and Far Away: Thomas Kingsmill Abbott

New York Review of Books: Los Alamos Declassified

Atomic Heritage Foundation: Hanford, WA

Medieval Books: Medieval Apps

British Library, Egerton MS 848 (15th century)  Source: British Library

British Library, Egerton MS 848 (15th century)
Source: British Library

Greenwich.co.uk:blogs: The Grave of John Flamsteed

The Institute: A History of the Magnetic Compass

O Say Can You See?: What emerging science got the public excited in the 1860s? Spectroscopy!

The Indian Express: In the word “sine”, we see interconnection of three mathematical traditions – Indian, Arabic and European

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

B7rJXHjCEAAO0-d

Richard Who?: Editing Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations: A 8nearly) 10-year Progress Report

SvD Kultur: Se de okända bilderna från Andrées polarfärd

Livescience: Treasured 16th-Century ‘Lenox Globe’ Gets a Digital Makeover

Slate Vault: Pitching a Potential Donor, Shackleton Sketched This Expedition Map

Channel Asia News: NLB launches its first festival on maps

MEDICINE:

Physician Gerolamo Mercuriale holding Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica c 1600 Painter: Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614)

Physician Gerolamo Mercuriale holding Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica c 1600
Painter: Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614)

Mental Floss: Five Medical Innovations of the Civil War

MBS Birmingham: Saving teeth, removing inequalities: Fluoridation in Birmingham, 1964–2014

From the Hands of Quacks: Actina: A Wonder of the 19th Century

Discover: The Tragic History of Surgery for Schizophrenia

Fiction Reboot: MedHum Monday Presents: A Little Drop of Poison

The Recipes Project: Flower power: Cato’s medicinal recipes

AWH: Fe del Mundo, first female student at Harvard Medical School

The Recipes Project: Wild Thyme, Bitter Almonds, and Extract of Beavers – The Medicinal Recipes of Scribonius Largus

Wired: Strange Antique Medical Devices That Promised to Cure Everything with Electricity

 

 

Multi-purpose electrotherapy machine (Italy, 1922). This device could be used to treat muscle conditions, alleviate pain, or cauterize wounds.

Multi-purpose electrotherapy machine (Italy, 1922). This device could be used to treat muscle conditions, alleviate pain, or cauterize wounds.

CHEMISTRY:

Chemistry Hall: Discovery and Synthesis of LSD

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Rosetta Stones: Wallace’s Woeful Wager: How a Founder of Modern Biology Got Suckered by Flat-Earthers

Darin Hayton: A. R. Wallace and “preter-human intelligences”

Notches: Umutoni: Why Histories of African Homosexualities Matter

The Embryo Project: Ross Granville Harrison

Ptak Science Books: A Cloud Map (1873)

Image from Arnold Guyot, Physical Geography, Scrinber's, New York, 1873

Image from Arnold Guyot, Physical Geography, Scrinber’s, New York, 1873

Evolution Institute: Yes, Darwinian Feminism Is Real. And It’s Growing

Dr Alun: ‘Rhythmical Essays on the Beard Question’: Beard haters in the 1860s!

Embryo Project: Edwin Stephen Goodrich (1868–1946)

 

Trowelblazers: Zonia Baber

Zonia Baber University of Chicago Photographic Archive, [apf1-00303], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

Zonia Baber
University of Chicago Photographic Archive, [apf1-00303], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

Notches: The King’s Favourite: Sex, Money and Power in Medieval England

 

History of Geology: “What a confusion for Geologists” – Geologizing with Darwin

Chemical Heritage Magazine: The Mummy That Wasn’t There

Yovisto: Lewis Terman and the Intelligence Quotient

Embryo Project: August Friedrich Leopold Weismann (1834-1914)

Cartooning Evolution Home 1861–1925

Harper's Weekly, August 19, 1871

Harper’s Weekly, August 19, 1871

TECHNOLOGY:

The Appendix: The Aviator’s Heart

Conciatore: Enamel Reprise

Ptak Science Books: Intel vs. Obelisk: The Renaissance Beauty of the Single-Chip Microprocessor

My medieval foundry: Real and possible misrepresentations about medieval copper alloy castings

Science Comma: Industrial Gas Museum, Athens – Creating and sharing knowledge about society

Mental Floss: Toilet Paper History: How America Convinced the World to Wipe

Ancient Origins: Ten amazing inventions from ancient times

Brain pickings: The Mirror and the Meme: A 600 Year History of the Selfie

Ptak Science Book: The Coming of Broadcast Television (1929)

Ptak Science Books: Killing London with the Future: City Planning with the Bressey Report, 1937

 

Ptak Science Books: Bicycle Story Without Words, 1869

6a00d83542d51e69e201bb07dcaa0c970d-500wi

Yovisto: Thomas Augustus Watson – Recipient of the Very First Phone Call

 

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

The many-headed monster: Thinking about doing a PhD: who, where and how?

Live Mint: Mythology, history & science

Wonders & Marvels: Agnodice: Down and Dirty?

Chronologia Universalis: A Warning, part 1, or: Read the catalogues!

The Atlas of Early Printing

OUP Blog: Making the case for history in medical education

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Scientists as celebrities: Bad for science or good for society?

dhq: Beyond Gutenberg: Transcending the Document Paradigm in Digital Humanities

Today I found out: The Mysterious Fate of the Library of Alexandria

Discover: The 5 Retro Science Kits That Inspired a Generation of Tinkerers

Bridges, derricks and robots were common early Erector set projects. Even newer Meccano sets have spawned impressive projects, like the airplane below. Yale medical student William Sewell really thought outside the box when he used Erector parts to build the first artificial heart pump. Erector U.S./Meccano

Bridges, derricks and robots were common early Erector set projects. Even newer Meccano sets have spawned impressive projects, like the airplane below. Yale medical student William Sewell really thought outside the box when he used Erector parts to build the first artificial heart pump.
Erector U.S./Meccano

The New York Times: ‘Izzy, Did You Ask a Good Question Today?’

Irish Philosophy: Berkeley’s Foray into Experimental Philosophy

Ptak Science Books: A Half-Alphabet of Color by Isaac Newton and What the Colors “Naked” and “Dead” Are (1659)

The #EnvHist Weekly

Conciatore: Michel Montaigne

The New York Times: Dorothy Thomas, the ‘Mother’ of Bone Marrow Transplants, Dies at 92

Dorothy Thomas and her husband, Dr. E. Donnall Thomas. The couple worked together on research into transplants that could cure dying patients of leukemia.  Credit Jim Linna

Dorothy Thomas and her husband, Dr. E. Donnall Thomas. The couple worked together on research into transplants that could cure dying patients of leukemia.
Credit Jim Linna

 

HSS: Saton Medal Speech: Steven Shapin: “Praising Famous Men”

The Frailest Thing: Do Artifacts Have Ethics?

The Finch & Pea: Sunday Science Poem: Lord Byron’s Post-Apocalyptic Vision

Leaping Robot: Lasers, Pot Smoke, and the “Visual Art of the Future”

Athene Donald’s Blog: Science Policy and Impact: Lessons from History

ESOTERIC:

History of Alchemy: Cornelius Drebbel

academia.edu: Intermediary Beings (ch. 64, The Occult World) pdf

Heterodoxology: Esotericism in Antiquity: An Aries Special Issue

 

 

Tauroctony

Tauroctony

BOOK REVIEWS:

Remedia: Unassigned Reading

 

The Lancet: A history of chronic diseases

Science Book a Day: Downs: The history of a disability

Chemical Heritage Magazine: The Electric Wizard

Nikola Tesla lived a life of contradictions. Tesla was equal parts showman and inventor, and these qualities underpinned his success and contributed to his downfall. A multiple-exposure photograph shows Tesla in his Colorado Springs laboratory, where he explored wireless telegraphy and produced artificial lightning.  (The Tesla Collection)

Nikola Tesla lived a life of contradictions. Tesla was equal parts showman and inventor, and these qualities underpinned his success and contributed to his downfall. A multiple-exposure photograph shows Tesla in his Colorado Springs laboratory, where he explored wireless telegraphy and produced artificial lightning.
(The Tesla Collection)

NEW BOOKS:

Juan Biquert’s Blog: Ramon Llull: From the Ars Magna to Artificial Intelligence

Science Book a Day: Women in Science: Then and Now

women-in-science

THEATRE:

FILM:

The Guardian: Jane Hawking: ‘I firmly believed in Stephan and his brilliance’

Jane Hawking, Stephen Hawking’s first wife, at the premiere for The Theory of Everything last month. Photograph: Ian West/PA Wire

Jane Hawking, Stephen Hawking’s first wife, at the premiere for The Theory of Everything last month. Photograph: Ian West/PA Wire

TELEVISION:

The Telegraph: Wolf Hall programme-makers insist on straight, white teeth

SLIDE SHARE:

From Compass to Cellphone: A 4000 Year Journey @fadesingh

VIDEOS:

Manchester 1824: Kathleen Mary Drew (1901–1957) was a phycologist at Manchester

Royal Society: The Volcano Diaries – Objectivity ‘2

Vimeo: 120 years of watching movies together

Scientists You Must Know: Gordon Moore on Moore’s Law

RADIO:

The Guardian: A Selfish turn around CERN

PODCASTS:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Chronologia Universalis: Early Modern Chronologies: RSA 2015 Annual Meeting, Berlin 26-28 March 2015

Wellcome Library: Pre-modern medicine seminars: Spring 2015 programme

 

Tokyo Institute of Technology: The International Workshop on the History of Chemistry, “Transformation of Chemistry from the 1920s to the 1960s,” March 2–4, 2015

St Cross College: University of Oxford: Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science: “Voltaire and the Newtonian Revolution” One-Day Conference 28 Feb 2015

SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL OF EARLY MODERN STUDIES: CfP: “The Care of the Self in Early Modern Philosophy and Science”

Villa Dohrn, Ischia, Italy: Call for Applications: The Fourteenth Ischia Summer School on the History of the Life Sciences 27 June – 3 July 2015

 

LGBT: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History: 2016 AHA CfP: Queer Migrations

Royal Institute of Navigation: Lecture: The Golden Age of Celestial Navigation, Edinburgh 4 Feb 2015

 

Wellcome Collections: Lecture: Wellcome’s Collectors 22 January 2015

National Library Board Singapore: Exhibition: Geo – Graphic: Celebrating Maps and their Stories 16 Jan–19 Jul 2015

map-festival-2-data

Historiens de la santé: CfP: NYAM: Fifth Annual History of Medicine Night 11 March 2015

Durham University: Final CfP: The History of Thermodynamics and Scientific Realism 12 May 2015

issuu: CfP: Pulse: A History of Sociology, and Philosophy of Science Journal: Open Issue (Vol. 3 2015)

Making Waves: Oliver Lodge and the Cultures of Science, 1875-1940: Workshop 4:  Scientific Lives: Oliver Lodge and the History of Science in the Digital Age 6 March 2015 Leeds Art Gallery

Kent CHOTS: 4th Annual H. G. Wells lecture in Science and Society FIGHTING FOR VOTE: SCIENCE AND SUFFRAGE IN WORLD WAR ONE Dr Patricia Fara 4 March 2015

Historiens de la santé: History of Pre-Modern Medicine Seminar Series: Programme for Spring 2015 Wellcome Library

OU History of Science Collection: Announcing the Galileo’s World exhibition

James Gregory Public Lectures on Science and Christianity: The science-and-religion delusion: towards a theology of science Tom McLeish 16 Feb 2015

Institute Of Historical Research: Lecture: “Captain Cook, Pyrotechnist” 27 Jan 2015

University of Sheffield: CfP: A History of Public Parks 11-12 September 2015

UCL: CfP: Brno Latour and Environmental Governance Workshop 18-19 May 2015

LOOKING FOR WORK:

University of Bristol: Postdoctoral Research Assistant, History of Medicine (Life of Breath) based in the Department of Philosophy

Centre for the Study of the Book: Bodleian Libraries: Fellowships and Prizes

Harvard Kennedy School: STS Fellows Program

BSHS: Undergraduate Dissertation Archive Grants 2015

H-Environment: University of Alberta: Department of History and Classics: Doctoral Funding Opportunity – Northern Exposure

Conecta: Duke University History of Medicine Travel Grants

BSPS Doctoral Scholarship Competition 2015

Newton International Fellowships

Chemical Heritage Foundation: Digital Collections Archivist

The Heritage Consortium: 12 Fully Funded PhD Studentships In Heritage Studies

University of Oxford: CMRS Career Development Fellowship in Renaissance History

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #32

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Whewell's Masthead

Volume #32

Monday 26 January 2015

EDITORIAL:

Welcome dear readers to the thirty second edition of the Internet’s finest #histSTM weekly links list Whewell’s Gazette. The year 2015 is the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of the first ever geological map of an entire country by the surveyor and amateur geologist William Smith (1769–1839). Smith work for various mining companies and he realised that different geological strata were characterised by the fossils to be found in them, an important discovery in the history of geological dating. Given the importance of his work and the bicentenary of his map this edition of Whewell’s gazette id dedicated to William ‘Strata’ Smith.

 

Smith's famous 1815 geological map of part of Great Britain Source: Wikimedia Commons

Smith’s famous 1815 geological map of part of Great Britain
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Combe Down Heritage Society: William Smith Project

The Geological Society: The William Smith Map Bicentenary (1815–2015)

D News: 200-Year-Old Map Changed How We See the World

Ars Technica: Scientific Method/Science & Exploration: The first major geological map turns 200

The Washington Post: This beautiful map traces North America’s geological history

Quotes of the week:

“It’s never too late to procrastinate” @DublinSoil

“If there is one history of science show or book you must get acquainted with; it is “The Ascent of Man” by Jacob Bronowski. Please do it.” @fadesingh

Birthdays of the week:

Simon Marius born 20 January (ns) (10 January os) 1573

Simon Marius portrait from Mundus Iovialis 1614 Source:Wikimedia Commons

Simon Marius portrait from Mundus Iovialis 1614
Source:Wikimedia Commons

Simon Marius Portal

Yovisto: Simon Marius and his Astronomical Discoveries

Robert Boyle born 25 January 1627

Johann Kerseboom - Chemical Heritage Foundation, Photograph by Will Brown.

Johann Kerseboom – Chemical Heritage Foundation, Photograph by Will Brown.

Early Modern Experimental Philosophy: The formation of Boyle’s experimental philosophy

Chemical Heritage Foundation: Robert Boyle

Wallifaction: Happy Birthday to Robert Boyle!

The Royal Society: The Repository: What Scientists Want: Robert Boyle’s to-do list

Early Modern Experimental Philosophy: Experimental philosophy and Religion

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Chronologia Universalis: In the year 252525…, or: How to bore your opponent to death

The Renaissance Mathematicus: The specialist in causing pain

Ptak Science Books: The Dots Between the Sun and the Stars

Atomic Heritage Foundation: Innovation Through Teamwork

Astrolabes and Stuff: Precision and accuracy in medieval astronomy

Slate Vault: Beguiling 19th-Century Space Art, Made by a Self-Taught Astronomical Observer

"Aurora Borealis. As observed March 1, 1872, at 9 h 25m P.M.” E.L. Trouvelot, 1881–82.

“Aurora Borealis. As observed March 1, 1872, at 9 h 25m P.M.” E.L. Trouvelot, 1881–82.

Yovisto: Pierre Gassendi and his Trials to reconcile Epicurean atomism with Christianity

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Harold Fidler’s Interview

Space Watchtower: Part of Historic Westinghouse Van de Graaff ‘Atom Smasher’ Preserved

National Post: Incredible discovery of the oldest depiction of the universe almost lost to the black market

Atlas Obscura: Essential Guide: Ruins of Space Exploration

Scientific American; Cross-Check: Did Edgar Allen Poe Foresee Modern Physics and Cosmology?

Atomic Heritage Foundation: University of California, Berkeley

The Conversation: Let there be light! Celebrating the theory of electromagnetism

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

British Library: Maps and views blog: Fruits of Espionage in the K.Top

The Soft, Warm, Wet Technology of Native Oceania (pdf)

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Raemer Schreiber’s Interview

Medievalist.net: A 16th century view of North America in the Vallard Atlas

vallard-atlas-north-America

MEDICINE:

NYAM: A Letter from Benjamin Franklin

BetaBoston: Leech bleedings and weather reports: Inside the first issue of the New England Journal of Medicine

Diseases of Modern Life: ‘Pearls before swine’ or heavenly messengers? The work of the Victorian Flower Missions

Robert Gavin, The Flower Mission

Robert Gavin, The Flower Mission

Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh: Surgeons’ Hall Museum: Object of the Week: Knuckle Duster

Medievalist.net: Toxicology and Treatment: Medical Authorities and Snake-bite in the Middle Ages

Morbid Anatomy: The Curiously Anatomized Bodies of John Ardene

History Today: The Dreaded Sweat: the Other Medieval Epidemic

Royal College of Physicians: The new light

The Guardian: Death in the city: the grisly secrets of dealing with Victorian London’s dead

The Quack Doctor: ‘Eat! Eat! Eat!’ Those notorious tapeworm diet pills

Taenia saginata Internal-medicine a work for the practicing physician on diagnosis and treatment 1920

Taenia saginata Internal-medicine a work for the practicing physician on diagnosis and treatment 1920

CHEMISTRY:

Mirror: Six ridiculously dangerous science experiments from kid’s old chemistry sets

Chemistry Blog: 23 Million Times Slower than Molasses

Pitch Drop

Pitch Drop

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Synapse: 125,660 Specimens of Natural History

Embryo Project: “A Plant Genetically Modified that Accumulates Pb Is Especially Promising for Phytoremediation” (2003)

Horniman Museum: Bookblitz: Early Entomology

The monochrome images in 'Johannes Godartius of Insects' (published 1682) were printed from careful copper etchings made by a 'Mr F Pl'.

The monochrome images in ‘Johannes Godartius of Insects’ (published 1682) were printed from careful copper etchings made by a ‘Mr F Pl’.

Embryo Project: Edwin Stephen Goodrich (1868–1946)

Letters from Gondwana: The Great Acceleration

Audra J. Wolfe: Bentley Glass Project

Wired: Fantastically Wrong: The Silly Theory That Almost Kept Darwin From Going on His Famous Voyage (Read comment by @friendsofdarwin!)

National Geographic: Phenomena: Laelaps: How Paleontologists Uncovered the World’s Biggest Rhino

TrowelBlazers: Audrey Williams: Trowelblazing the Temple of Mithras

TwilightBeasts: Joseph Leidy’s atrocious baby

American lion reconstruction by Sergiodlarosa via Wikimedia Commons

American lion reconstruction by Sergiodlarosa via Wikimedia Commons

Embryo Project: Paul Kammerer’s Experiments on Salamanders (1903-1912)

Slate Vault: The Documents That Trapped Poor Southern Farmers in a Dangerous Form of Debt

Embryo Project: Theodora (Theo) Emily Colborn (1927-2014)

BBC Earth: The 25 Biggest Turning Points in Earth’s History

Notches: Heterosexuality and Americanisation: “Social Education” for Immigrant Youth in the 1920s

Yovisto: Andrija Mohorovičić and the Mohorovičić Discontinuity

The Guardian: The secret history of same-sex marriage

The Friends of Charles Darwin: Charles Darwin on the family tree of languages

The Guardian: A language family tree – in pictures

Minna Sundberg

Minna Sundberg

Big History Project: Chapter 3 LIFE

Renaissance Utterances: Dresden Conference: Chimeric Blobs, biological art or where I go off script

TECHNOLOGY:

Atlas Obscura: Objects of Intrigue: The Infernal Machine

Collectors Weekly: Flipping Out Over Handheld Movies, a Century Before Smartphones

Yovisto: John Fitch and the Steam Boat

Motherboard: Happy Birthday to the Cold War’s Most Eerie Technology: The ‘Atom Sub’

My Medieval Foundry: Bronze casting at the Experimental Archaeology Conference

Wired: These Priests’ Invention Could Help Us Drill Into Icy Alien Worlds Someday

Northwest Public Radio: Beware of Japanese Balloon Bombs

BBC: Goldsworthy Gurney: Inventor took hot air out of parliament

People on board Sir Goldsworthy's steam carriage on its journey from London to Bath in 1827

People on board Sir Goldsworthy’s steam carriage on its journey from London to Bath in 1827

Smithsonian.com: Exploring the Titanic of the Ancient World

Amazing Women in History: Sarah Guppy, Eclectic English Inventor

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

SuperScholar: Paul Halpern Interview

Renaissance Utterances: Dresden Conference: Part One Cabinets of Curiosity/Wunderkammern/Kunstkammern

British Library: Help For Researchers: Concise History of the British Newspaper in the Seventeenth Century

Ships, Clocks and Stars Visitors Survey

Washington Post: Crowdfunding propels scientific research

Fiction Reboot: Daily Dose: MedHum Monday Presents: The Power of Story

Atlas Obscura: Collegium Maius

Collegium Maius Photo by Andreas Welch on Flickr | Copyright: Creative Commons

Collegium Maius
Photo by Andreas Welch on Flickr | Copyright: Creative Commons

The Guardian: How Britain’s world war spirit benefited science

The apparatus used by Robert Watson-Watt in 1935 to demonstrate radar technology. Photograph: Jennie Hills/Science Museum

The apparatus used by Robert Watson-Watt in 1935 to demonstrate radar technology. Photograph: Jennie Hills/Science Museum

Science Museum: Churchill’s Scientists

Wired: Exhibition reveals Churchill’s secret love of science

Inside the Science Museum: Celebrating Churchill’s Scientists with Sir Winston’s great-grandson

CBC News: Winston Churchill’s love of science helped Britain in WWII

The Alan Turing Internet Scrapbook

News.com.au: Code-breaker Alan Turing’s notes will be auctioned

AEON: Trick of the Eye: Optical illusion such as magic lanterns taught the Victorians what o trust. What can they teach us today?

Two Temple Place: Exhibition: Cotton to Gold: Extraordinary Collections of the Industrial North West 31 January-19 April 2015

JHI Blog: The Gay Past and the Intellectual Historian

Curie: In the business of looking to the past

The Sloane Letters Blog: A Most Dangerous Rivalry

BSHS Travel Guide

Communiqué No. 88, Summer 2014: Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science

Boston Review; The Virtue of Scientific Thinking by Steven Shapin

Recipes Project: Translating Recipes 7: Recipes in Time and Space, Part 1

Recipes Project: Translating Recipes 7: Recipes in Time and Space, Part 2 – WITH

Renaissance Utterances: Dresden Conference: Wildgoose Memorial Library

HUB: Johns Hopkins adds new interdisciplinary major: Medicine, science, and humanities

THE: The rise of the medical humanities

Design Week: Revelations: an exhibition of scientific discovery

Ether Wave Propaganda: Wakefield’s Nightmare, Pt. 1: The Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution Chain

Wikimedia Blog: Wellcome Library donates 100, 00 medical images to Wikimedia Commons

Dr Alun Withey: Fart Catchers and Duck F***ers! The World of 18th-century slang

The Royal Institution: A fond farewell

The #EnvHist Weekly

Crux: Priest-scientists are at the crossroads of faith and reason

ESOTERIC:

Conciatore: The Kabbalah Reprise

Kabbalistic Sephiroth Tree, from Portae Lucis, Paulus Ricius (Trans.) Augsburg, 1516.

Kabbalistic Sephiroth Tree,
from Portae Lucis, Paulus Ricius (Trans.)
Augsburg, 1516.

History of Alchemy: Archimastry – Giovanni Panteo

BOOK REVIEWS:

George Campbell Gosling: Healthcare: Private and Public from the Early Modern Period to 2000

Science Book a Day: In The Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette

SomeBeans: Sextant by David Barrie

Chemical Heritage Magazine: Lost at Home: Istan Hargittai: Buried Glory: Portraits of Soviet Scientists

Portrait of Soviet scientists Petr Kapitza (left) and Nikolai Semenov by Russian painter Boris Kustodiev (1921). Both scientists were later awarded Nobel Prizes, Semenov for chemistry in 1956 and Kapitza for physics in 1978

Portrait of Soviet scientists Petr Kapitza (left) and Nikolai Semenov by Russian painter Boris Kustodiev (1921). Both scientists were later awarded Nobel Prizes, Semenov for chemistry in 1956 and Kapitza for physics in 1978

Science Book a Day: 10 Great History of (European) Science Books and more

Somatosphere: Daniel P. Todes’ Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science

Publishers Weekly: The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer

NEW BOOKS:

The MIT Press: H.G. Bronn, Ernst Haeckel, and the Origins of German Darwinism

Conciatore: Conciatore: The Life and Times of 17th Century Glassmaker Antonio Neri: An Excerpt

Conciatore 200x300

The University of Chicago Press: Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud

THEATRE:

The Guardian: Oppenheimer five-star review – father of atomic bomb becomes tragic hero at RSC

Intoxicating excitement' … John Heffernan as Robert Oppenheimer and Ben Allen as Edward Teller in Oppenheimer at Stratford. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Intoxicating excitement’ … John Heffernan as Robert Oppenheimer and Ben Allen as Edward Teller in Oppenheimer at Stratford. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

The Telegraph: Oppenheimer, RSC Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon, review: ‘a dazzling spectacle’

The Independent: Oppenheimer, RSC Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon, review: Immaculately acted

homunculus: Are you ready? Then I’ll begin…

FILM:

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

How To Make A Scientific Revolution: Lessons From 3000 Years of History @fadesingh

VIDEOS:

Youtube: Scientists You Must Know: Robert Gore Discovers ePTFE

Laughing Squid: Tom Scott Describes the British Rail Flying Saucer, A Scientifically Improbable Spacecraft Design

Youtube: Under The Knife: Episode 5 – Human Skin Books

RADIO:

Free Thinking: BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Dick Mills, BBC Radiophonic Workshop reunion live at the Roundhouse in 2009. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Dick Mills, BBC Radiophonic Workshop reunion live at the Roundhouse in 2009.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

BBC: A History of Ideas: Simon Schaffer on Humans, Apes and Carl Linnaeus

BBC Radio 3: The Essay: Sir Paul Nurse on Conjectures and Refutations

PODCASTS:

CIGI: Webcast: Discovering the Erebus: Mysteries of the Franklin Voyage Revealed 3 February 2015

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Department of History and Philosophy of Science University of Cambridge: History of Medicine Seminars Lent Term 2015

MPIHS Berlin: Technical Art History: 26 January Erma Hermens: Technical Art History and Materials as Markers, a 16th-Century Material Travel Log

London Medieval Society: Magic & Miracles 28 February 2015

CENTRE FOR HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE (HPS) School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds HPS SEMINAR PROGRAMME, 2014–15, Semester 2 Wednesdays, 3.15–5.00pm, Baines Wing G.36

University of Marburg: CfP: Shared Practices, Entangled Spaces, Circulating Objects, Translated Theories: Relocating German-Polish Scientific Relations 28-30 Oct 2015

University of Cambridge; Department of History and Philosophy of Science: Seminars

University of Cambridge: History of Medicine Seminars

H-Sci-Med-Tech: CfP: Southern History of Science and Technology (SoHoST) Meeting 10-11 April 2015 Richmond VA

H-Sci-Med-Tech: CfP: Empty Spaces A one day conference Institute of Historical Research London 10 April 2015

Royal Society: The experience of scientific publishing: A public oral history event: 19 March 2015

Royal Society: The future of scientific publishing: Roundtable discussion 20 March 2015

The Royal Institution: John Tyndall resurrected: Talks: 4 March 2015

Historiens de la santé: CfP: Working with Nineteenth-Century Medical and Health Periodicals St Anne’s College Oxford 30 May 2015

h-madness: CfP: Does the History of Psychology Have a Future? History of Psychology Special Issue Deadline 15 July 2015

Hektoen International: A journal of Medical Humanities: Third Hektoen Grand Prix Essay Competition

The Huntington: Exhibition: Samuel F. B. Morse’s “Gallery of the Louvre” and the Art of Invention 24 Jan-4 May 2015

Samuel F. B. Morse, Gallery of the Louvre, (1831–1833

Samuel F. B. Morse, Gallery of the Louvre, (1831–1833

Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine Library: TORCH Humanities and Science: In Conversation

Natural History Museum: Talk: Letters of Note: Alfred Russel Wallace 27 January 2015

LOOKING FOR WORK:

BSPS Doctoral Scholarship Competition 2015

Yale Medical History Library: Ferenc Gyorgyey Research Travel Grants

CHoM News: 2015-2016 Countway Fellowships: Application Period Open

University of Leeds: Faculty of Arts: 110 Anniversary Research Scholarships

The Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford: Co-curator/researcher

National Museum of Natural History: Peter Buck Deep Time Postdoctoral Fellowship

The Royal Institution: BBSRC Professional Internship for PhD Students, Spring 2015

The University of Edinburgh: Full time Post Doc Research Fellows Science, Technology and Innovation Studies

University of Wuppertal: Doctoral studentships (PhD) in STS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #33

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Whewell's Masthead

Volume #33

Monday 02 February 2015

EDITORIAL:

Another seven days have past and it’s time again for the latest edition of Whewell’s Gazette the unique #histSTM weekly links list brought to you by the Whewell’s Ghost editorial team. I’m going to go a bit C.P. Snow on you in this week’s editorial.

Most educated people in Europe or America on hearing the theme music to the film Chariots of Fire would know that it was composed and recorded by the Greek keyboard wizard Vangelis. Likewise they would associate the terms Hobbit or Hogwarts with J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling respectively. However when it comes to modern science or technology their response would be more hesitant if they responded at all.

The laser is an iconic symbol of post World War Two technology. Whether it be slicing a table in two and threatening to do the same to 007’s genitalia in the lair of the baddy in a James Bond movie or providing the weapons of choice in the form of light sabres in the Star Wars epics, the laser in a favourite of Hollywood film makers. It is also a favourite of gigantomaniac rock bands in the form of laser light shows. No lecture, these days, is complete without a laser pointer and astronomers measure the distance between the earth and the moon to an unbelievably accurate level by bouncing laser beams off a mirror left on the moon by American astronauts. The laser is an all-present piece of high-tech in our world but who invented it? On the tip of your tongue? No idea!

Based on a theoretical concept published by Albert Einstein, he gets in on the act all over the place, the maser, the microwave predecessor of the laser, was developed by Charles Hard Townes and others in 1953. In 1957 Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow went on to develop the laser or ‘optical maser’ as they first called it. Townes who went on to have a very distinguished career in physics received the Physics Nobel Prize for the maser in 1964. Schawlow received it for the laser in 1981. Townes died on 27 January 2015 at the venerable age of 99. The edition of Whewell’s Gazette is dedicated to the memory of Charles Hard Townes.

Townes in 2007

Townes in 2007

UC Berkeley: News Center: Nobel laurate and laser inventor Charles Townes dies at 99

Nature.com: From the maser to the laser

The Washington Post: Charles H. Townes, Nobel laureate and laser pioneer, dies at 99

LA Times: Charles Townes, physicist who invented the laser, dies at 99

The Guardian: Laser inventor Charles Townes dies

The New York Times: Charles H. Townes, Who Paved Way for the Laser in Daily Life, Dies at 99

IEEE Spectrum: Maser Man Charles Townes Dead at 99

Believed to be the 1st photograph of a laser beam. Photo appeared on cover of Electronics, McGraw-Hill Weekly 1963.

Believed to be the 1st photograph of a laser beam. Photo appeared on cover of Electronics, McGraw-Hill Weekly 1963.

 

Since I wrote the editorial above another giant of twentieth century science has passed away, the chemist. Carl Djerassi who contributed substantially to the development of the oral contraceptive pill. Just how much this invention has influenced the world is shown by the fact that when we refer to it we just say ‘the pill’ and nobody asks which pill?

As one of those whose sex life (in the pre-aids era) benefited from the freedom granted by this wonderful invention I wish to also dedicate this edition to Carl Djerassi.

 

Carl Djerassi, recipient of the AIC Gold Medal, 2004  Source: Wikimedia Commons

Carl Djerassi,
recipient of the AIC Gold Medal, 2004
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Die Welt: The co-inventor of the “pill” is dead

University of Wisconsin-Madison: Carl Djerassi, UW grad who helped create “the pill”, dies at 91

The New York Times: Carl Djerassi, at 91, a Creator of the Birth Control Pill, Dies

Stanford News: Carl Djerassi, Stanford professor and world-renowned chemist, dead at 91

CHF: CHF Remembers Carl Djerassi

ChemBark: RIP Carl Djerassi…and the Importance of the Nobel Prize

The Guardian: Casrl Djrassi, chemist who developed the birth control pill, dies at age 91

 

The Guardian: Father of the pill

The Curious Wavefunction: Carl Djerassi (1923-2015): Chemist, writer, polymath, cultural icon

Quotes of the week:

“As for everything else, so for a mathematical theory: beauty can be perceived but not explained” Arthur Cayley

You know you’re a scientist when you attempt to explain what a thesaurus is and find yourself saying “It’s full of, you know, word isotopes” @marekkukula

Birthdays of the week:

Roy Chapman Andrews born 26 January 1884

Roy Chapman Andrews Source: Embryo Project

Roy Chapman Andrews Source: Embryo Project

The Embryo Project: Roy Chapman Andrews (1884– 1960)

History of Geology: Roy Chapman Andrews and the Kingdom of the Cretaceous Skulls

Fossil History: Meet the Naturalist: Roy Chapman Andrews

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Dannen:com: A Physicist’s Lost Love: Leo Szilard and Gerda Philipsborn

Jacob Philipsborn family, Wildbad 1910. Front row, left to right: unidentified woman, Gerda. Back row: unidentified man, Claire, Ida, unidentified woman, Jacob. Photo courtesy Gerry Brent.

Jacob Philipsborn family, Wildbad 1910. Front row, left to right: unidentified woman, Gerda. Back row: unidentified man, Claire, Ida, unidentified woman, Jacob. Photo courtesy Gerry Brent.

Yovisto: Henry Biggs and the Popularization of Logarithms

Gallica tourne rond

Lunar and Planetary Institute: To a Rocky Moon: A Geologist’s History of Lunar Exploration

Yovisto: Johannes Hevelius and his Selenographia

The Royal Society: The Repository: Julian to Gregorian

Wired: The Challenge of the Planets, Part Three: Gravity

Uncertain Principles: Surprise!

I.I. Rabi at a blackboard; somewhat ironically, as he was famously a terrible lecturer.

I.I. Rabi at a blackboard; somewhat ironically, as he was famously a terrible lecturer.

Motherboard: When Einstein Proposed a Limit to the Universe

Gizmodo: The Theft and Half-Century Journey of Einstein’s Brain

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Grace Grove’s Interview

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

British Library: Untold lives blog: Colonial Knowledge: Lorimer’s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia

Oxford Dictionaries: Exploring the language of longitude

Georgian Gent: 1st February 1709 reprised – a red letter day for Alexander Selkirk!

 

selkirk1

MEDICINE:

The Royal Society: The Repository: Rabies, the Royal Society and the renown of Louis Pasteur

19th Century-Disability: The Palmer Patent Leg

Wallifaction: Happy birthday to Thomas Willis

Frontispiece to Thomas Willis' 1663 book "Diatribae duae medico-philosophicae – quarum prior agit de fermentatione", engraved and published by Gerbrandus Schagen in Amsterdam Source: Wikimedia Commons

Frontispiece to Thomas Willis’ 1663 book “Diatribae duae medico-philosophicae – quarum prior agit de fermentatione”, engraved and published by Gerbrandus Schagen in Amsterdam
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Gibson Girl’s Guide to Glamour: Mystery Solved – Cold Cream is from Galen!

The Recipes Project: Syphilis and seiseinyū: manufacturing a mercurial drug in early modern Japan

Smithsonian.com: The First Woman in America to Receive an M.D. Was Admitted to Med School as a Joke

Elizabeth Blackwell was a pioneer of women in medicine. (Bettmann/CORBIS)

Elizabeth Blackwell was a pioneer of women in medicine. (Bettmann/CORBIS)

Boingboing: Stiffs, Skulls and Skeletons – Over 400 medical portraits taken in the 1800s and early 1900s

 

Yovisto: Thomas Willis and the Royal Society

Medical History: The Impact of Tuberculosis on History, Literature and Art

The Public Domain Review: When Chocolate was Medicine: Colmenero, Wadsworth and Dufour

Seat 6A: Mondays in Maryland: The Medical Museum

Gizmodo: Terrifying Medical Instruments Found on Blackbeard’s Sunken Ship

D News: Blackbeard’s Pirate Ship Yields Medical Supplies

Smithsonian.com: How Halitosis Became a Medical Condition With a “Cure”

The H-Word: Medical Training: How long does it take to make a doctor?

 

The Sloane Letters Blog: Measles in History

Discover: Body Horrors: Abracadabra

Scientific American: Medical Technology, 1915 [Slideshow]

CHEMISTRY:

distillatio: Purification of Saltpetre, part one

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Embryo Project: Nikolai Ivanovic Vavilov (1887–1943)

Notches: Radical Relations: An Interview with Daniel W. Rivers

Concocting History: Beauty spot

A More Human Nature: How the Invention of the Telegraph Led to our Modern Conception of “Weather”

Palaeoblog: Died This Day: Adam Sedgwick

Haaretz: The Nazi commandments for a pure Aryan society

Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs: ‘Sophie’

Sophie

Sophie

Embryo Project: Carol Widney Greider (1961-)

Notches: Beyond the Binary: Trans* History in Early America

BBC: Museum’s ‘Dippy’ dinosaur makes way for blue whale

Atlas Obscura: Anthropomorphic Taxidermy: How Dead Rodents Became The Darlings of the Victorian Elite

Niche: William McKay’s Character Book: Tracing Environmental Change in Archival Fragments

Rapid Uplift: Darwin: An Encounter With Beetles

 

Yovisto: The Phantastic Travels of Adelbert von Chamisso

American Museum of Natural History: Loch Ness Outdone

 

Embryo Project: Wilhelm Friedrich Phillip Pfeffer (1845–1920)

 

Trowelblazers: Gertrude Caton Thompson

TECHNOLOGY:

Picture: Slide rule on the rim of a snuff box, described in 1816 by Jomard as being invented & made by the ‘mécanicien’ Hoyau

Picture: Slide rule on the rim of a snuff box, described in 1816 by Jomard as being invented & made by the ‘mécanicien’ Hoyau

Ptak Science Books: “The World’s First Game Developer” and the First Computer Chess Machine, 1915

The Conversation: The female enigmas of Bletchley Park in the 1940s should encourage those of tomorrow

Jean Valentine, a bombe operator at Bletchley in the 1940s. Rui Vieira/PA

Jean Valentine, a bombe operator at Bletchley in the 1940s. Rui Vieira/PA

Stories from the Stores: Alexander Parkes: Living in a material world

Conciatore: Scientific Glassware

Culture 24: National Museum of Computing enlists sound artist Matt Parker to create sound archive of computing

DPLA: Unexpected: Snow Removal

National Geographic: Human Ancestors May Have Used Tools Half-Million Years Earlier than Thought

99% Invisible: Episode 150: Under the Moonlight

Atlas Obscura: Schwäbisches Turmuhrenmuseum

Conciatore: Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

Blink: Telegraphic tales from the Raj

Ptak Science Books: The History of the Future of Skyscrapers: Thomas Nast, 1881

Mashable: c.1957–1970 The Soviet Union’s Dog That Conquered Space

Spitalfields Life: Frost Bros, Rope Makers & Yarn Spinners

IEEE Spectrum: Innovation Magazine and the Birth of a Buzzword

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Ether Wave Propaganda: Wakefield’s Nightmare, Pt. 2: Divided Opinion on the Political Economic Importance of Enlightenment Intellectual Culture

Andre Wakefield

Andre Wakefield

The Finch & Pea: On Beauty in Technical Science Writing

ChoM News: Southard in the Spotlight

 

The National Museum of American History: Exhibition: “Hear My Voice”: Alexander Graham Bell and the Origins of Recorded Sound 26 Jan–25 Oct 2015

The Washington Post: Milton Rosen, rocket engineer and NASA executive dies at 99

Mosaic: Science for the people!

British Library: The Newsroom blog: Into the void

The Science and Entertainment Laboratory: Evangelizing the Cosmos: Science Documentaries and the Dangers of Wonder Overload

BSHS: BJHS Themes inaugural issue “Intersections: Science and Technology in Twentieth Century China and India”

 

Communications of the ACM: The Tears of Donald Knuth

Bodleian Libraries: Thousands of early English books released online to public by Bodleian Libraries and partners

Atlas Obscura: Secret Libraries in Rome

 

Storify: The dinosaur in the “iconic Victorian Hintze Hall”

Early Modern Medical Humanities Research Network New Blog

History Applied: Domains of Literature – Geographies of Science

Until Darwin: Science & the Origins of Race: Eight classic works from Archive.org

The Nation: Latin Lives

Unique at Penn: An Occult and Alchemical Library

Forbes: How Chronologists Moved From Ancient Text to Ancient Earth

Arts Journal: An Ambitious Plan To Bring Out-Of-Print Academic Books Back to Life

 

Making Science Public: Science communication and ‘vulgarisation scientifique’: Do words matter?

ESOTERIC:

Conciatore: The Desert Knows Me Well

Sotheby’s: Alchemical Manuscript

Fine Books& Collections: Penn Library Acquires Collection of 18th-Century Occult and Alchemical Manuscripts

Forbidden Histories: The Mathematician and the World Beyond: The Visions of Girolamo Cardano

Gerolamo Cardano Source: Wikimedia Commons

Gerolamo Cardano
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Darin Hayton: Astrologer Ralph Kraum’s Copy of the Tuckerman Tables

BOOK REVIEWS:

Roots of Unity: Learning to count like an Egyptian

Count Like an Egyptian by David Reimer. Image: Princeton University Press.

Count Like an Egyptian by David Reimer. Image: Princeton University Press.

Kestrels and Cerevisiae: Book Thoughts: Leviathan and the Air-Pump

Science Book a Day: Earth’s Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why it Matters

strategy+business: The Hard Work of Invention

Scientific American: The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World

NEW BOOKS:

CUP: The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book

New Books in Astronomy: Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth Century

Chicago Journals: Osiris Volume 29: Chemical Knowledge in the Early Modern World51+9TpA1aeL._AA160_THEATRE:

The Guardian: After Turing and Hawking, now it’s the stage story of Robert Oppenheimer, the man behind the bomb

Robert Oppenheimer, right, with Albert Einstein in 1947. Photograph: Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Getty

Robert Oppenheimer, right, with Albert Einstein in 1947. Photograph: Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Getty

FILM:

Inside the Science Museum: How Eddie Redmayne Mastered Stephen Hawking’s Voice

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

VIDEOS:

Youtube: What is the History of Emotions?

 

ESPN Video: Signals: The Queen of Code (Grace Hopper)

Grace Hopper on Letterman

 

RADIO:

PODCASTS:

Student Society for Science: Scientists Say: Coprolite

Cabinet: Conversation: “Lives in the Margins”, with Anthony Grafton and William Sherman

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Charles University in Prague: CfP: Material Perspectives on Culture: Making Archaeology Relevant 12 May 2015

University of Wisconsin-Madison: CfP: 2015 Midwest Junto for the History of Science

The Royal Society: CfP: Archival Afterlives: Life, Death and Knowledge-Making in Early Modern British Scientific and Medical Archives 2 June 2015

University of Kent: School of History: Victorian magic lantern show 24 February

Spencer Museum of Art: Hybrid Practices in the arts, sciences, & technology from the 1960s today 10-13 March 2015

The Royal Society: Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture: Andrea Stella – Is chemistry really so difficult? 9 February 2015

H-Environment: CfP: Workshop for the History of Environment, Agriculture, Technology, and Science (WHEATS) 2015 CU Boulder 2-4 October 2015

Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: Glasgow History of Medicine Group – Spring Meetings 2015

St John’s University: CfP: World History Theory and Practice: Gender, Technology, Culture

Saint Louis University & Washington University in St. Louis: Vesalius and the Invention of the Modern Body 26-28 February 2015

 

Royal Geographical Society: International Conference of Historical Geographers 2015 5-10 July

The Royal Institution: Talks: John Tyndall: In the sky, not under it 4 March 2015

LOOKING FOR WORK:

Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main: Three PhD positions in the field of History of Science

BSHS: Undergraduate Dissertation Archive Grants 2015

CHF Center for Oral History Fellowship Announcement

BSHS Strategic Conference Grants

University of Western Australia: Research Associate Emotions in Early Modern Colonial Encounters 1600–1800

Yale University: Two Postdoctoral Positions in Biological Anthropology

University of London: Huguenot Scholarship (Hint: There were Huguenot scientists!)

Newcastle University: Research Assistant/Associate (Historical and Cultural Landscapes)

MPIHS Berlin: Two month postdoctoral fellowships deadline 16 March

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #34

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

A Pair of Skating Owls, first half of 17th century, Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne

Volume #34

Monday 09 February 2015

EDITORIAL:

Another seven days have passed both in the real world and in cyberspace and Whewell’s Gazette your weekly #histSTM links list has returned for the thirty-fourth time to bring all of the latest in the histories of science, medicine and technology out of the Internet.

The last week saw the appearance of an interesting paper analysing a brief comment made by Newton in one of his early notebooks on how the water in plants is transferred from the roots to the leaves. (Nature Plants, Newton and the ascent of water in plants, David J. Beerling)  Unfortunately he proceeds to ruin an interesting article by invoking the myth of the lone genius in his closing sentence.

“Reclusive and secretive, it’s doubtful he gained botanical inspiration from conversations with others at Cambridge University interested in plants.”

ABC Science: Newton’s journal reveals seeds of plant biology

Science: Scienceshot: Gravity-defying trees explained by Newton

Business Insider: Newly unearthed writings show that Isaac Newton figured out how trees work 200 years before botanists

I also got to see The Imitation Game last week and was deeply upset by the lousy quality of the history of science in the film as I tweeted on my return home the film is an insult to the memory of both Alan Turing and all those who worked in Bletchley Park during the war. Here the concept of the lone genius is taken to the extreme. Turing single-handedly breaking the Enigma code and thus winning the war whilst his colleagues stand on the side-lines initially jeering and then later cheering him on. In reality Bletchley Park was a collaborative effort with Turing part of a large and very dedicated team.

Perhaps the most stupid version of the lone genius myth was delivered up this week by Neil deGasse Tyson:

Not enough of us reflect on how modern civilization pivots on the discoveries of just a few intellectually restless people.

To which Anna Goldstein (@apgolst) delivered the perfect comment:

Thank goodness for all those brave lone geniuses.

On this topic read the excellent blog post by Evelyn Lamb on her Roots of Unity blog:

The Media and the Genius Myth

This one by Julia R. Bursten:

Genius and Imitation

And this one from Darin Hayton:

Moving beyond Heroic Geniuses

The lone genius myth is a piece of romantic rubbish that has nothing to do with the history of science and should be stamped on every time it raises its ugly little head.

As you might have noticed, it being winter our masthead owl has gone skating this week with a friend

Quotes of the week:

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves and wiser people so full of doubt – Bertrand Russell

Repeat after me: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. – @alisonatkin

But when one accepts one theory and rejects another which is equally consistent with the phenomenon in question, it is clear that one has thereby blundered out of any sort of proper physics and fallen into mythology – Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Uncertain Principles: Science Stories: Commercial Instincts

Artist's conception of Heinrich Hertz's experiment demonstrating electromagnetic waves in 1887. Image from Wikimedia.

Artist’s conception of Heinrich Hertz’s experiment demonstrating electromagnetic waves in 1887. Image from Wikimedia.

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Arthur Squires’ Interview – Part I

Leaping Robot: Physics at the Frozen Fringe

Live Science: Taj Mahal Gardens Found to align with the Solstice Sun

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Eleanor Irvine Davisson

The Guardian: The H-Word: The Great Moon Hoax and the Christian Philosopher

Holy lunarians, bat-men! An illustration produced for a later edition of the New York Sun’s “Great Astronomical Discoveries”. Illustration: Wikimedia

Holy lunarians, bat-men! An illustration produced for a later edition of the New York Sun’s “Great Astronomical Discoveries”. Illustration: Wikimedia

AIP: From the Physics Today Archive – February 2015

Inside MHS Oxford: Regiomontanus: The Man in the Moon

Uncertain Principles: Science Stories: Impossible Conditions

University of Chicago: Microcosmos

Board of Longitude Project: 250 years ago today: Nevil Maskelyne becomes Astronomer Royal

Atomic Heritage Foundation: The Soviet Atomic Program – 1946

Ptak Science Book: Dr Strangelove’s Computer

The Hindu: The man behind the laser saga, and more

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

ABC News: Unearthed grave sheds light on Batavia shipwreck mass murder

PHOTO: A skeleton found on Beacon Island is believed to be from the Batavia shipwreck massacre. (ABC News: Sarah Taillier)

PHOTO: A skeleton found on Beacon Island is believed to be from the Batavia shipwreck massacre. (ABC News: Sarah Taillier)

Linguistic Geographies: The Gough Map of Great Britain and its Making

MEDICINE:

Darin Hayton: “Nothing New” is “Really Bad”

The Recipes Project: Making Drinkable Gold for the King of Siam

King Narai receiving the French Embassy, 1685. Wikimedia Commons

King Narai receiving the French Embassy, 1685. Wikimedia Commons

NYAM: Cholera Comes to New York City

Greg Jenner: Coincidental

University of Minnesota HSTM: Visualising the Body

Early Modern Medicine: Beauty Spots and French Pox

The Recipes Project: Recipes in the Inquisition Records

UMJ: Dr William Drennan – His Life in Georgian Ireland

Yovisto: Alfred Adler and the Individual Psychology

J Walker words 2: The effects of infant mortality in the nineteenth century as seen in the non-gendering of babies in literature

Science 2.0: Honoring Carl Djerassi: The Pill Was A Revolution For Women And Men

Nature: A View From the Bridge: Carl Djerassi 1923–2015

The Star.com: Tech News: 2,700-year-old marijuana found in Chinese tomb

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Environment & Society Portal: Anthropocene Milestones No. 28: Mass spectrometry and geological eras – Nika Korniyenko

History of Geology: Mount Etna: Significance in the history of volcanology

Topographic map of Mount Etna in 1823 (reprinted in 1844 by Leonhard "Vulkan Atlas") by Mario Gemmellaro, displaying lava flows, cones and villages in the surroundings of the volcano.

Topographic map of Mount Etna in 1823 (reprinted in 1844 by Leonhard “Vulkan Atlas”) by Mario Gemmellaro, displaying lava flows, cones and villages in the surroundings of the volcano.

Embryo Project: Charles Manning Child (1869–1954)

Notches: Sex and the Single Man in Late Medieval England

Laelaps: Sciencespeak: Lazarus taxon

Fossil History: Fossils, Museums, & History: Dippy the Diplodocus

Du Pont: History of Biotechnology

Macroevolution: Raymond Arthur Dart (1893–1988)

Paleeoblog: Died This Day: Ernst Mayr

Medievalist.net: Blood beliefs in early modern Europe

Trowelblazers: Winifred Brunton

New World Encyclopedia: Arthur Keith

Yovisto: John Lindley and his Love for Plants

Nautilus: The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic

Trowelblazers: Mary Leakey

Doing History in Public: Homosexuality in the ‘Enlightenment’?

Penelope: Da Costa and the Venus dione: The Obscenity of Shell Description

dacosta

The Guardian: Inflame her to venery with wanton kisses: the joy of sex, 1684-style

Horniman Museums and Gardens: Get Involved: Uncovering our Fossil Collection

Daarjeeling: The soldier who preferred flowers to guns

American Museum of Natural History: Shelf Life: Episode Three: Six Ways to Prepare a Coelacanth

CHEMISTRY:

Yovisto: Dmitri Mendeleev and the Periodic Table of Elements

Yovisto: Joseph Priestly and the Discovery of Oxygen

Equipment used by Joseph Priestley in his experiments on gases

Equipment used by Joseph Priestley in his experiments on gases

TECHNOLOGY:

120 Years of Electronic Music

BBC: Lost chunk of pioneering Edsac computer found

Greg Jenner: Wakey, Wakey!

Conciatore: Like Snow From Heaven

Popular Science: The Disappearance of the Instruction Manual

Yovisto: Henri Giffard and the Giffard Dirigible

Yovisto: Charles Lindbergh and his Spirit of St. Louis

Conciatore: 16-17th Century Glass Furnace

From "De re metallica"  Agricola (Georg Bauer) 1556.

From “De re metallica”
Agricola (Georg Bauer) 1556.

BBC: Rediscovered plans aid Edsac reconstruction

M Library Blog: An Early Example of a Portable Calculator? Indeed, the Arithmographe just Arrived!

Louis Troncet. Arithmographe Troncet. Pour les quatre opérations. Calculateur mécanique instantané. Librairie Larousee. Paris, 19 rue Montparnasse, 19, ca. 1900

Louis Troncet. Arithmographe Troncet. Pour les quatre opérations. Calculateur mécanique instantané. Librairie Larousee. Paris, 19 rue Montparnasse, 19, ca. 1900

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Aberystwyth University: £750,000 to study how science fiction writers and readers anticipate the future

ChoM News: Countway and University of Alberta team up to bring hidden medical data to light

Ptak Science Books: Inventory of the Apocalypse (1964)

Ether Wave Propaganda: Sutton vs. Jacob: Was John Desagulier a Prophet of Industrialization?

Diagram from a lecture concerning friction in mechanical engines, from Desaguliers, A Course of Experimental Philosophy. Click through for an online exhibit on Desaguliers at the Cambridge Whipple Library website.

Diagram from a lecture concerning friction in mechanical engines, from Desaguliers, A Course of Experimental Philosophy. Click through for an online exhibit on Desaguliers at the Cambridge Whipple Library website.

Ambix: Volume 62 Number 1

The New York Times: General Relativity’s Big Year?

Tecnoscienza: Our Common Future: Joining Forces for Histories of Sustainable Design

BSHS: Postgraduate Conferences New Hosts Required!

Nautilus: Art’s Biggest Wheel Turns Toward Science

AEON: Absolute English: Science once communicated in a polyglot of tongues, but now English rules alone. How did this happen – and at what cost?

The Art of Science App: Butterfly and Moth Paintings by the Scott Sisters

Science Book a Day: Interviews Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Science Comma: Science criticism, or, what is this thing about science called?

RCS: War, Art and Surgery: Exhibition, Conference, Book

Historiens de la santé: Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Vol. 70 Issue 1

The New York Times: Is Book Reviewing a Public Service or an Art?

ESOTERIC:

Academia.edu: CONSTRUCTING ESOTERICISMS SOCIOLOGICAL, HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL APPROACHES TO THE INVENTION OF TRADITION

Conciatore: The Golden Sun Reprise

QDL: Sahl Ibn Bishr and the Rise of Astrology in Abbasid Times

Horoscope with planetary positions corresponding to about 3am, 4 July 824 in Baghdad (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Arabic MSS 523, f. 50a)

Horoscope with planetary positions corresponding to about 3am, 4 July 824 in Baghdad (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Arabic MSS 523, f. 50a)

HNN: Prehistoric High Times: Early Humans Used Magic Mushrooms, Opium

Vox: These 5 men were scientific geniuses. They also thought magic was real.

Cambridge Historians: The Society for Psychical Research’s Cambridge Roots

BOOK REVIEWS:

Fiction Reboot: Daily Dose: MedHum Mondays Presents: Rhetoric in the Flesh

BMJ Blogs: The Reading Room: Performance, Madness and Psychiatry

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LRB: Anti-Condescensionism: Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England, 1853–1907

NEW BOOKS:

Springer.com: Foot Steps of the Ancient Great Glacier of North America

9783319131993

Historiens de la santé: Encyclopedia of Asylum Therapeutics, 1750–1950s

THEATRE:

Broadway World.com: San Francisco: Theatre Rhino to Present Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code 4-21 March 2015

FILM:

Ursula Writes: The Imitation Game, or, the Inventing Things That Didn’t Happen Game

The Guardian: Berlin 2015: Queen of the Dessert review – a towering Nicole Kidman goes there and back again

d6c51602-5a34-4bbb-8bce-b56f316b7745-620x372

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

VIDEOS:

Skepchick: A trio of badass scientists you should know

Youtube: Harry Potter and the History of Alchemy

Atomic Heritage Foundation: Producing Plutonium

Amphibol: Das Innere der Erde

RADIO:

PODCASTS:

Royal Society: R. Science podcast: January 2015: Scientific anniversaries

Boxcar Aldous Huxley: The Great Moon Hoax of 1835

Science Friday: Remembering ‘The Father of the Pill’

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Werkgroep Zeventiende Eeuw: CfP: Uit de Europese mal. Europese hypes in de Nederlanden 29 August 2015

Chronologia Universalis: Early Modern Chronologies in Berlin – updated schedule

Historiens de la santé: Université d’Angers: Call for Abstracts: 34th Annual Meeting of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences (ESHHS) 7-10 June 2015

The Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference, CfP: Panel: Apocalyptic knowledge (To what extent was “science,” as it emerged in the early-modern period, end-times knowledge?) Vancouver B.C., October 22-25, 2015

CRASSH: CfP: Mater and Materiality in the Early Modern World

School of Advanced Studies University of London: Institute of English Studies: Biennial London Chaucer Conference: Science, Magic and Technology 10-11 July 2015

Call For Artists: Komunitas Salihara, Jakarta, invites artists to propose projects for the upcoming exhibition 125,660 Specimens of Natural History, premiering at the Gallery in mid-August 2015.

Info Clio.ch: The Technology of Information, Communication and Administration – An Entwined History 26-27 March 2015 Swiss Federal Archives

CRASSH: CfP: The Making of Measurement 23-24 July 2015 Cambridge

CRASSH: Drinking Things 11 February 2015

Historiens de la santé: Workshop: Psychopathological fringes. Historical and social science perspectives on category work in psychiatry 13-14 February 2015 Berlin

LOOKING FOR WORK:

Fellowships at the Edward Worth Library, Dublin: Early modern medicine, early modern science

University of Rochester: Master’s in Medical Humanities Program

Support for Research at the Bakken Library and Museum: Research Travel Grant and Visiting Research Fellowship

CHF: Career Opportunities at CHF

Manchester University: CHSTM: Open days: March 2015 taught Master’s introduction and taster session

University of Illinois at Chicago: Postdoc position in philosophy of quantum gravity


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #35

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

6a00e54fcdd9e188340115719d3b2c970b-320wi

Volume #35

Monday 16 February 2015

EDITORIAL:

It seems like only yesterday that we posted the thirty fourth edition of Whewell’s Gazette the preeminent weekly #histSTM links list and here we are back again with Volume #35.

Last weeks editorial touched upon the theme of the lone genius myth in the history of science and it has raised its head again in the last seven days with the celebration of Darwin Day on 12 February, the anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. The international devoting of a day to one nineteenth century natural historian does rather smack of a lone genius cult, which thought provoke Rebekah “Becky” Higgitt (@beckyfh) to suggest that there should be a #histSTM #NOLONEGENIUSESDAY.

Now I do understand that this day was created as part of the promotion of the scientific theory of evolution against the encroachment of creationism and intelligent design, particularly in the US. However by placing it on Darwin’s birthday and naming the day after him does rather make it look as if he created the theory all on his ownsome.

There was already a rather sweet comment from the Alfred Russel Wallace Twitter account (@ARWallace):

Wallace Day

International Business Times: Darwin Day 2015: Alfred Russel Wallace, the forgotten evolutionist overshadowed by Charles Darwin

There are however many others who deserve more than a mention if talking about the evolution of the theory of evolution starting with James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon moving forward over Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck and Darwin’s own grandfather Erasmus, the geologists Adam Sedgwick and Charles Lyell and the evolutionists Robert Chambers and Patrick Matthew and other less prominent figures. To this list we could add Captain Robert Fitzroy and other members of the crew of the Beagle.

Beagle Crew

Darwin was anything but a lone genius.

My suggestion, which will undoubtedly be totally ignored, is that we replace Darwin Day with an Evolution Day on the anniversary of the reading of the joint Darwin-Wallace paper at the Linnean Society in London, 1 July 1858, and on that day celebrate all of those who contributed to the evolution of this great theory.

As you can see our masthead owl is still on his skating holiday and this week has sent us a colour photo of himself and his partner.

Birthdays of the week:

Charles Darwin born 12 February 1809

Charles Darwin, six years old — February 12 1815

Charles Darwin, six years old — February 12 1815

“The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career”. Charles Darwin

“Scarcely anything in my life made so deep an impression on me. I sometimes think general & popular treatises are almost as important for the progress of science as original work” Darwin on reading John Herschel’s book on scientific method.

“What Lyell did for the inorganic world, Darwin did for the organic.” — Emil du Bois-Reymond “Exposition of the Darwinian Theory,” 1877

“I cannot understand why you scientific people make such a fuss about Darwin. Why, it’s all in Lucretius!” — Matthew Arnold, 1871

The Royal Society: Notes and Records: The many lives of Charles Darwin: early biographies and the definitive evolutionist

University of Wisconsin-Madison: Darwin Day celebration focuses on islands, isolation

Peddling and Scaling God and Darwin: Charles Darwin through Christian spectacles

Darwin Correspondence Project: Darwin and Religion: an introduction

Darwin Correspondence Project: Darwin, C. R. to Gray, Asa

 

Darwin Correspondence Project: Earthworm activity

Irish Philosophy: The Evolution of Evolution: Darwin’s philosophical forebears

Yovisto: Charles Darwin and the Natural Selection

Letters from Gondwana: Darwin and the Strangest Animal Ever Discovered

Twilight Beast: The bizarre elongated llama

University of Reading: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin

 

Until Darwin: Darwin, Slavery, the HMS Black Joke, and Seaman Morgan

History of Geology: Charles Darwin – the Monster Slayer

Science Friday: A Year of Darwin

Life Traces of the Georgia Coast: Of Darwin, Earthworms, and Backyard Science

Origins a history of beginnings: When Darwin Met a Neandertal

Brain Pickings: A Graphic Biography of Darwin

darwingraphicbiography1The Mountain Mystery: Charles Darwin, the Geologist

The Public Domain Review: The Naturalist and the Neurologist: On Charles Darwin and James Crichton-Brown

Letters from Gondwana: Darwin, Owen and the ‘London Specimen’.

Krulwich Wonders: Charles Darwin and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Ocean Portal: Charles Darwin’s Ocean Upwelling

 

Emil du Bois_reymond, “Darwin and Copernicus”

American Museum of Natural History: Darwin’s Kids Doodled All Over His “Origins of Species” Manuscript

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Geological Society of London Blog: Happy Darwin Day!

The Irish Times: Unthinkable: Why Charles Darwin is a threat to religion

Herald media: Science and Society: Darwin’s sacred cause – and Lincoln’s also.

The Friends of Charles Darwin: The Darwin bicentennial oak, 6 years on

Join the Friends of Charles Darwin

The twelfth of February is also the birthday of other prominent figures in the history of biology, Jan Swammerdam for example. Whereas my Twitter stream was flooded with tweets about Darwin, my own were the solitary tweets celebrating Swammerdam.

Jan Swammerdam born 12 February

The Renaissance Mathematicus: A Biological Birthday

Jan Swammerdam (1637–1680)

Quotes of the week:

“There’s a story told about a distinguished cardiac surgeon who, about to retire, decided he’d like to take up the history of medicine. He sought out a historian friend and asked her if she had any tips for him. The historian said she’d be happy to help but first asked the surgeon a reciprocal favor: “As it happens, I’m about to retire too, and I’m thinking of taking up heart surgery. Do you have any tips for me?”” – Steven Shapin in his WSJ review of Steven Weinberg’s “To Explain the World”

“Mr. Weinberg identifies his account as a personal view, and there’s no reason why people shouldn’t want to know how an eminent modern scientist (and public intellectual) thinks about all sorts of things. What is interesting is that these different stories about the historical development of science persist, with no prospect that professional historians of science will ever own their subject as, say, art historians own the history of art. Science remains almost unique in that respect. It’s modernity’s reality-defining enterprise, a pattern of proper knowledge and of right thinking, in the same way that—though Mr. Weinberg will hate the allusion—Christian religion once defined what the world was like and what proper knowledge should be. The same circumstance that gives science its immense modern cultural prestige also ensures that there will be an audience for its idealization and celebration. “To Explain the World” is for that audience.“ – Steven Shapin in his WSJ review of Steven Weinberg’s “To Explain the World”

Valentine’s Day

STM historians are not heatless and delivered up some Valentine’s day contributions

The Heart, plate from 'Anatomy of the Visceras,' by Arnaud Eloi Gautier D'Agoty, 1745

The Heart, plate from ‘Anatomy of the Visceras,’ by Arnaud Eloi Gautier D’Agoty, 1745

1746 years ago today, St Valentine was beaten with clubs and beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate in Rome. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! @BarnabyEdwards

Dr Jennifer Evans: Aphrodisiacs, Fertility and Medicine

 

The Recipes Project: Lizards and lettuces: Greek and Roman recipes for Valentines Day

Darwin Correspondence Project: Darwin’s notes on marriage

Valentine's Day

Atomic Heritage Foundation: Donald & Martha Ross

The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice: The Chimps & The Surgeon: A history of Heart Transplants

Lapham’s Quarterly: Mutual Interest: The courting of Marie Curie

The H-Word: Marriage and the making of scientific careers

O Say Can You See: How do you mend a broken heart?

A double cordiform (heart-shaped) world map made by Mercator in 1550

A double cordiform (heart-shaped) world map made by Mercator in 1550

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

The Washington Post: Val Logsdon Fitch, physics pioneer and Nobel laureate, dies at 91

Val Logsdson Fitch, who won the Nobel Prize for physics, at Princeton University in 1980. (Kanthal/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Val Logsdson Fitch, who won the Nobel Prize for physics, at Princeton University in 1980. (Kanthal/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

 

The New York Times: Val Fitch, Who Discovered Universe to Be Out of Balance, Is Dead at 91

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Val Fitch’s Interview

Scientific American: How a Wire Was Used to Measure a Tiny Force of Gravity

The Nature of Reality: The Big Bang’s Identity Crisis

Philly:com: Year of Light marks a turning point

Starts with a Bang: The Tragic Fate of Physicist Paul Ehrenfest

APS Physics: J Willard Gibbs

 

Uncertain Principles: Science Story: Not a Bath House

Emmy Noether on a boat in 1930.

Emmy Noether on a boat in 1930.

 

Yovisto: Leo Szilard and the Atomic Bomb

 

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Louis Turner’s Interview

http://manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/louis-turners-interview

Scientific American: How 2 Pro-Nazi Nobelists Attacked Einstein’s “Jewish Science” [Excerpt]

Yovisto: Fritz Zwicky and the Dark Matter

Math Buffalo: Physicists of the African Diaspora

Atomic Heritage Foundation: The Science Behind the Atom Bomb

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

Medievalists.net: The Universal Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado

Medievalists.net: Medieval Maps of Britain

British Library: American studies blog: Forgotten histories of the Passage: the whalers

Above: frontispiece from vol. 2 of Scoresby's, 'An Account of the Arctic Regions' [copy on display in Lines in the Ice, G.2602 & G.2603]. Image from Archive.org - See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/americas/2015/02/forgotten-histories-of-the-passage-the-whalers.html#sthash.BQkLShUI.dpuf

Above: frontispiece from vol. 2 of Scoresby’s, ‘An Account of the Arctic Regions’ [copy on display in Lines in the Ice, G.2602 & G.2603]. Image from Archive.org – See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/americas/2015/02/forgotten-histories-of-the-passage-the-whalers.html#sthash.BQkLShUI.dpuf

 Medievalists.net: Top 10 Medieval Places That Don’t exist

MEDICINE:

The Sloane Letters Blog: On Tooth Worms

George Campbell Gosling: Perceptions of Pregnancy

Royal College of Physicians: A physicians cane and the secrets it contained

Consultation of physicians or the arms of the undertaker, engraving by William Hogarth, 1736.

Consultation of physicians or the arms of the undertaker, engraving by William Hogarth, 1736.

Huffpost Science: Shifting the Old Debate over Vaccines

Renaissance Utterances: ‘Poky pigges and stynkynge makerels’: Food standards and urban health in medieval England

NYAM: Tattoo Removal: Method or Madness?

University of Minnesota: HSTM: Eating through the Archives: Milk Pancakes (1820)

Ancient Origins: Ancient skull was drilled and harvested for medicine in the 18th century

The Recipes Project: The Torture of Therapeutics in Rome: Galen on Pigeon Dung

 

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Conciatore: Botanical Gardens Reprise

iiTVidya: Henry Walter Bates

Notches: Sexual Politics in the Era of Reagan and Thatcher: Marc Stein in Conversation with Jeffrey Weeks

Niche: One Flew Over The City: Sensorial Experiences of Urban Space

Wonders & Marvels: Humanness in the Age of Discovery: Dog-Headed Men

cynocephali

The Public Domain Review: Neandethals in 3D: L’Homme de La Chapelle

Nautilus: Safecracking the Brain: What neuroscience is learning from code-breakers and thieves

American Museum of Natural History: Barnum Brown: The Man Who Discovered Tyrannosaurus rex

Yovisto: Barnum Brown and the Tyrannosaurus Rex

Palaeo-Wanderer: A blog about the past, living in the present: Introduction

CHEMISTRY

The Royal Society: Philosophical Transactions A: The periodic table: icon and inspiration

The periodic table of ‘endangered elements’. Adapted from the original version created by Mike Pitts of the UK’s Chemistry Innovation Knowledge Transfer Network [6]; apart from uranium, the abundances of all radioactive elements have been ignored. (Online version in colour.)

The periodic table of ‘endangered elements’. Adapted from the original version created by Mike Pitts of the UK’s Chemistry Innovation Knowledge Transfer Network [6]; apart from uranium, the abundances of all radioactive elements have been ignored. (Online version in colour.)

TECHNOLOGY:

Gizmodo: A Secret Stash of Moon Artefacts Has Been Found in Neil Armstrong’s Wardrobe

NYAM: Recipes for Cooking by Electricity (Item of the Month)

IEEE Global History Network: Walter H Brattain

 

AIP: Oral History Transcript – Dr Walter Brattain

Inside the Science Museum: Winston Churchill: Up In The Air

Winston Churchill after his arrival by air at Portsmouth, from Upavon, Wiltshire, 1914. Image credit: Science Museum / SSPL

Winston Churchill after his arrival by air at Portsmouth, from Upavon, Wiltshire, 1914. Image credit: Science Museum / SSPL

Science Museum: Online Science: Wall telephone with Blake transmitter, 1880–1900

Grantland: The Difference Machine: Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, and Women in Tech

Grist: Meet Lewis Latimer, the African American who enlightened Thomas Edison

Nautilus: The Future of the Web Is 100 Years Old

Endgadget: Annie Easley helped make modern spaceflight possible

To celebrate Black History Month, Engadget is running a series of profiles honoring African-American pioneers in the world of science and technology. Today we take a look at the life and work of Annie Easley.

To celebrate Black History Month, Engadget is running a series of profiles honoring African-American pioneers in the world of science and technology. Today we take a look at the life and work of Annie Easley.

Yovisto: Henry Steinway and the Grand Pianos

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Niche: Landscapes of Science: the first in a series of posts considering the intersection between environmental history and the histories of science, technology, and medicine.

Tincture of Museum: 1. Natural History Museum Library and Archives – Tinc in Museum Library Land

MBS Birmingham: “How are we meant to educate ourselves?” What Libraries did for us

 

Early English Books Online:

Darin Hayton: Explaining A Good Question

King’s College London: Current Maughan Library exhibition: The great leveller: humanity’s struggle against infectious disease

Histscifi.com: Seeing From Afar

BSHS: BSHS Travel Guide

Storify: The research culture is not ready for signed peer review.

THE: World’s oldest scientific journal is focus of new exhibition

scientific-journal-011214-ful_450

The Scientist: Scientific Publishing, 1665

The Guardian: 350 years of publishing from the world’s oldest science journal – in pictures

Early Modern Letters Online: The Correspondence of Athanasius Kircher

American Science: A Very Recent History of Histories of the Future

iai news: Beauty is Truth?

Gothamist: Two-Faced Kitten & Cigar-Smoking Squirrels On View At Morbid Anatomy Museum

Two-headed kitten in a Belljar, photo courtesy of Chris Bradley

Two-headed kitten in a Belljar, photo courtesy of Chris Bradley

The Atlantic: A Failed Metaphor for Intelligent Design

Society for the Social History of Medicine: Career Development Service

Brill History of Modern Science Series: Call for Book Proposals

Making Science Public: Science, politics and science communication

Science & Religion @ Edinburgh: Science, Religion and the Changing Conceptions of Nature – John Hedley Brooke lectures

ESOTERIC:

Bottle Rocket Science: Giordano Bruno on Prudence

Conciatore: Caterina Sforza

Caterina Sforza, by Lorenzo di Credi (now in the Museum of Forlì.)

Caterina Sforza, by Lorenzo di Credi
(now in the Museum of Forlì.)

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Do you believe in magic?

Conciatore: Iron into Copper

BOOK REVIEWS

JHI Blog: Annotations and Generations John Winthrop’s interactions with the marginalia of John Dee

PopMatters: God’s Planet: In Conversational Orbit of ‘God’s Planet’ With Owen Gingerich

Gonit Sora: Seduced by Logic: Emilie du Chatelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution

Seduced-by-Logic-Emilie-du-Chatelet-Mary-Somerville-and-the-Newtonian-Revolution

Science Book a Day: Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found

Marx and Philosophy: Review of Books: Ted Benton, Alfred Russel Wallace: Explorer Evolutionist, Public Intellectual – a thinker for Our Own Times?

What’s in John’s Feezer?: Owning Owen

Ether Wave Propaganda: Patrick McCray’s The Visioneers

Brain Pickings: A Radical Journey of Art, Science, and Entrepreneurship: A Self-Taught Victorian Woman’s Visionary Ornithological Illustrations

PLATE XXVIII. Progne Purpurea – Purple Martin

PLATE XXVIII.
Progne Purpurea – Purple Martin

 

The Independent: To Explain the World by Steven Weinberg, book review: A bracing and necessary guide to the discoveries of the 17th century

The Wall Street Journal: Why Scientists Shouldn’t Write History

(If you run into a pay wall google the title, Why Scientists Shouldn’t Write History, and click on the first link!)

NEW BOOKS:

Historiens de la santé: Healthcare in Ireland and Britain from 1850: Voluntary, regional and comparative perspectives

Enfilade: Commercial Vision in the Dutch Golden Age

9780226117744

THEATRE:

Wellcome Collections Blog: Tammy Wants You

FILM:

Nature: And the winner is: not science

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

VIDEOS:

Vimeo: Ruth Bourne Turing and Bletchley Park

Youtube: BBC – My Father the Bomb and Me

Youtube: Thomas Edison interviewed at the age of 84

VOX: The origins of the anti-vaccine movement, in 3 Minutes

RADIO:

PODCASTS:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

H-Net: CfP: Perspectives for the history of the life sciences: New themes, new sources, new approaches Munich 30 October–1 November 2015

AAHM: CfP: Working Across Species: Comparative Practice in Modern Medical, Biological and Behavioural Sciences

University of Cambridge: Science Festival: Longitude Found 21 March 2015

University of Cambridge: Science Festival: Infectious knowledge: science in popular culture 22 March 2015

Warwick: Humanities Research Centre: Ruling Climate: The theory and practice of environmental governmentality, 1500–1800 16 May 2015

York University Toronto Canada: Science Technology, and the Modern Canada 24-25 April 2015

NI Science Festival: Lecture: How To Make a Dwarf Mammoth 20 February 2015

Perspectives of Science: Special Issue: CfP: The Second Metaphysical Club and its Impact on the Development of American Science and Philosophy

 

University of Oulu Finland: Testing Philosophical Theories Against the History of Science Workshop 21 September 2015

University of Lisbon: CfP: 2nd Portuguese-Brazilian Meeting on the History of Tropical Medicine 14-16 October 2015

CHF: Alien Abduction and Psychic Spies: Lecture: On the Edges of Cold War Science 26 February 2015

Making Waves: Workshop 4: Scientific Lives: Oliver Lodge and the History of Science in the Digital Age

 

Senate House Library: CFP: Marginal presences: unorthodox belief and practice, 1837–2014 23 April 2015

Denver: Victorian Self-Fashioning 22-24 October 2015 Gabriel Finkelstein (@gabridli) is looking for partners for a #histsci session

UCL: Professor Sheila Jsanoff: The Constitutional Place of Science – the 2015 UCL STS Haldane Lecture 12 March 2015

Institute of Historical Research: Lecture: History and Biography – Professor Lawrence Goldman 19 March 2015

Penn State University: Polar Day 2015 27 March

LOOKING FOR WORK:

Royal Holloway: University of London: Eighteenth Century British History and Gender History Teaching Fellow

Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and Apothecaries Hall of Ireland launch PhD Fellowship in the history of medicine in Ireland

Royal Museums Greenwich: Intern Programme: History of Science & Technology

Birkbeck: University of London: History of Science and Medicine (MA)

CHF: Director, Center for Applied History

British School at Rome: Giles Worsley Rome Fellowship

University of Swansea: Lecturer in Medical History

Metropolitan New York Library Council: Reference Archivist, Manuscript Department – The Patricia D. Klingenstein Library

Science Museum: Library and Research Administrator

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol: #36

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

James Collins

Volume #36

Monday 23 February 2015

EDITORIAL:

Whewell’s Gazette your weekly #histSTM links list comes around again for the thirty-sixth time; a packed full gateway to the best in the histories of science, technology and medicine in the Internet.

This week somebody drew our attention to a video, in the Huffington Post, of a Saudi Arabian Cleric explaining why we live in a geocentric cosmos and not a heliocentric one. Naturally our first reaction was to mock and poke fun, which we preceded to do with various friends on Twitter offering further arguments to support the our Saudi friend.

This caused us to briefly stop and take stock. The arguments bandied about, including the one used by the cleric (Ptolemaeus uses birds not planes!) can all be found in Ptolemaeus’ Syntaxis Mathematiké written in the second century CE. Moving on from there is the awareness that the history of seventeenth-century physics is acquisition of the knowledge necessary to refute those arguments. Maybe one shouldn’t be so quick to mock and instead take this video as an opportunity to teach people why it was scientifically so difficult for people in the Early Modern Period to accept the heliocentric hypothesis.

Quotes of the week:

“Books are Uniquely Portable Magic” ― Stephen King

Writing under deadline. (Courtesy of @john_overholt)

Writing under deadline. (Courtesy of @john_overholt)

Birthdays of the week:

Ernst Haeckel born 16 February 1834

Haeckel (left) with Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai, his assistant, in the Canaries, 1866

Haeckel (left) with Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai, his assistant, in the Canaries, 1866

Letters from Gondwana: Ernst Haeckel, The Scientist As An Artist

Haeckel

Video: Proteus 2004 (The Life and Work of Ernst Haeckel)

Kunstformen der Natur (1900) 100 Tafeln mit Text Ernst Haeckel

Letters from Gondwana: Haeckel and the Legacy of Early Radiolarian Taxonomists

Embryo Project: Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel

Embryo Project: Ernst Haeckel’s Biogenetic Law

Haeckel Tree

Alessandro Volta born 18 February 1745

Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta Source: Wikimedia Commons

Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Guardian: Alessandro Volta: Google lights up for inventor of the battery

Volta Google doodle

The Royal Institution: Alessandro Volta’s voltaic pile

The H-Word: Alessandro Volta. A welcome but misleading Google doodle

Science Museum: Galvani’s voltaic pile

Alessandro Volta demonstrating his battery (called the “Voltaic Pile”) to Napoleon, 1801 by Giuseppe Bertini

Alessandro Volta demonstrating his battery (called the “Voltaic Pile”) to Napoleon, 1801 by Giuseppe Bertini

 

Nicolaus Copernicus born 19 February 1473

1580 portrait (artist unknown) in the Old Town City Hall, Toruń Source: Wikimedia Commons

1580 portrait (artist unknown)
in the Old Town City Hall, Toruń
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Renaissance mathematicus: Nicky was an Ermländer

About Education: Copernicus the Geologist

The Copernicus Room in the Krakow Academy, where Copernicus studied between 1491 and 1495

The Copernicus Room in the Krakow Academy, where Copernicus studied between 1491 and 1495

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Nature.com: In Retrospect: Book of Optics

Science 2.0: Neutrinos from an Atomic Bomb

Atomic Heritage Society: Trinity Site

National Academy of Science: Biographical Memoir of Albert Abraham Michelson 1852-1931

Lucid Thoughts: Romantic science’s electric moment: the speculative physics of Ørsted, Ampère and Faraday

Ørsted: Artist and Source unknown

Ørsted: Artist and Source unknown

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Patricia Hansard’s Interview:

Live science.com: The 11 most beautiful equations in mathematics [physics!]

Voices of the Manhattan Project: General Richard H. Groves’s Interview

Voices of the Manhattan Project: K-25 Plant

AIP: African Americans in Physics and Allied Sciences in ESVA

AHF: Maria Goeppert-Mayer

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Adrienne Lowry’s Interview

International Year of Light 2015 – Blog: Optics in Ancient China

Illustration of the reflection of light by multiple mirrors (the world’s first surveillance periscope!). Credits: Ling-An Wu, Gui-Gu Long, Quihuang Gong and Guang-Can Guo.

Illustration of the reflection of light by multiple mirrors (the world’s first surveillance periscope!). Credits: Ling-An Wu, Gui-Gu Long, Quihuang Gong and Guang-Can Guo.

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

Bodleian Libraries: Scientific analysis helps team to explore mysteries of medieval Gough Map

Gough Map Close Scanning

Gough Map Close Scanning

British Library: Maps and views blog: Intelligence Mapping of British East Africa – digitisation begins

British Library; European Studies Blog: Overwintering: the Dutch search for the Northwest Passage

Volcanic Degassing: William Dampier and the Burning Islands of Melanesia

National Geographic: 100 Years of National Geographic Maps: The Art and Science of Where

 

Yovisto: Robert E. Peary’s Artic Expedition

MEDICINE:

Gorffennol: Swansea: To what extent has the concept of ‘deformity’ affected Richard III’s image and character

All Things Georgian: Sir Peter Lalonette and His Fumigation Machine

newmethodofcurin00lalo_0158

Fiction Reboot: Daily Dose: MedHum Monday: Vaccines and History

Remedia: Lost Places

Rejected Princesses: The Women Who Conquered Whooping Cough

Early Modern Medicine: Horrible Halitosis

Digital Stories: The Death Collector

U.S. National Library of Medicine: Gallery Dream Anatomy

From the Hands of Quacks: Galvanism & Deafness

L0011438 Use of Galvanism in deafness

The British Newspaper Archive: 19th-century medical fraudsters who got caught out

The Guardian: Beyond Bedlam: infamous mental hospital’s new museum opens

Asylum and Post-Asylum Spaces: Mental Health Geography?

British Library: Untold lives blog: Sage advice regarding snakes

The National Archives: First World War hearing aids

 

Royal College of Physicians: Irascible Radcliffe

John Radcliffe (1652–1714) Oil on canvas by Godfrey Kneller, early 18th century

John Radcliffe (1652–1714)
Oil on canvas by Godfrey Kneller, early 18th century

 

Men’s Journal: Lessons from the World’s Largest Contraception Collection

BBC News: Cambridgeshire church graffiti reveals ‘heartbreaking’ find

Wellcome Library: Prevent and survive: medical activism in 1980s Britain

Smithsonian.com: The Frightening Legacy of Typhoid Mary

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Strata Smith: Lecture by Hugh Torrens

 

Wellcome Library: Sex tourism in 18th century London

Embryo Project: The Discovery of the Dikika Baby Fossil as Evidence for Australopithecine Growth and Development

Embryo Project: Francis Galton (1822–1911)

Embryo Project: Ovirator philoceratops Dinosaurs

Notches: “In My Bed”: Sexual Violence Over Fifty Years on One College Campus

The New York Times: ‘Animated Life: Pangea’

University of Minnesota HSTM: The Objective Evaluation of Pig Breeds in the Netherlands

BBC News: Forgotten fossil found to be new species of ichthyosaur

 

The H-Word: Nature and sex redefined – we have never been binary

Origins: The West without Water: What Can Past Droughts Tell Us About Tomorrow?

Brit Geo People: The historic role of women scientists at BGS and a look at what is happening today

Dr Emily Dix of the University of Wales and her assistant Miss Elsie White.  Pioneering women geologists: a rarity of their time.

Dr Emily Dix of the University of Wales and her assistant Miss Elsie White.
Pioneering women geologists: a rarity of their time.

 

Strange Science: Rodney Impey Murchison

Fossil History: Lyell & the First Neanderthal

 

The Friends of Charles Darwin: 20-Feb-1835: Darwin witnesses an earthquake

The Atlantic: Solving a Museum’s Bug Problem With Lego

Dangerous Minds: Keep it Prim and Proper in the Bedroom with this Victorian Era Sex Guide

bookofnature33333333JPG

The Guardian: Piltdown Man, Beringer’s lying stones, dinosaurs… are they all hoaxes 

CHEMISTRY:

Nobelprize.org: Frederick Soddy – Biographical

180px-Frederick_Soddy

TECHNOLOGY:

Yovisto: The Letters of Giambattista Bodoni

Homunculus: Holding Rome Together

Mashable: 1920s–1930s “War Tubas”

1930s Three Japanese acoustic locators, colloquially known as "war tubas," mounted on four-wheel carriages, being inspected by Japanese Emperor Shōwa. IMAGE: PUBLIC DOMAIN

1930s
Three Japanese acoustic locators, colloquially known as “war tubas,” mounted on four-wheel carriages, being inspected by Japanese Emperor Shōwa.
IMAGE: PUBLIC DOMAIN

Yovisto: Frederick Eugene Ives and the Halftone Printing Process

HNN: Welcome to Infinity, Limited

Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP: Ada the Amplifier

My Medieval Foundry: The rather important use of lathes by foundrymen

distillatio: Touchstones and streak testing

Yovisto: Ovtave Chanute – One of the Fathers of Aviation

IEEE Spectrum: When the Past Is Not a Preview

Conciatore: Incalmo

Tycho’s Nose: The Shiny Bits of Science: Were these Victorian train lines just a load of hot air?

Air pressure train

Air pressure train

The New York Times: Photoshop at 25: A Thriving Chameleon Adapts to an Instagram World

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Wellcome Trust: How the Wellcome Trust Spends its Money

screen-shot-2015-02-11-at-14-12-37

 

Business Insider: The First 500 Books From The Vatican Library’s Massive Digitisation Project Are Now Online

Conciatore: Saint Philip Neri

 

Genoptopia: Tweeting the life of the mind

Oxford Brookes University: Paula Kennelly MA History of Medicine 2014

Sideways Look at Science: Using Acting to Convince People You’re Better at Speaking

University of Glasgow Library: Glasgow Incunabula Project and Exhibition Update

Storify: Long Literary Centuries to Poets and Plowmen

Wellcome Collections Blog: Why the World Needs Collectors

The Sloane Letters Blog: A Peculiar Postscript

Two mothers with crying babies and one in a walking frame; comparing the human infant’s helplessness with the self-sufficiency of newborn animals. Engraving by P. Galle, c. 1563. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Two mothers with crying babies and one in a walking frame; comparing the human infant’s helplessness with the self-sufficiency of newborn animals. Engraving by P. Galle, c. 1563. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Nature: Museums: The endangered dead

The Jenks Society Presents The Lost Museum: Lost Museum at Brown University Gets Second Life

Rebecca Onion: Defining the History Beat

The Recipes Project: Translating Recipes 9: Recipes in Time and Space, Part 3 ­– IF

 

History of Psychiatry: Table of Contents March 2015 Vol. 26 (1)

Othmeralia: Gloves and rare-books?

Scroll.in: A seminar on Ancient Indian knowledge that didn’t involve jingoism and flights of fantasy

Lady Science: Issue 5. Rethinking the Makers of the Manhattan Project

CHF: Introducing Distillations Magazine

Digital Stories: The Collectors

The New York Review of Books: Scrawled Insults and Epiphanies

Ether Wave Propaganda: The Culture of Mechanism: Margaret Jacob versus “Proto-Industrialization”.

 

Historical Medical Library: Online Exhibition: Under the Influence of the Heavens: Astrology in Medicine in the 15th and 16th Centuries

Viridarium Mathematicorum, 1563

Viridarium Mathematicorum, 1563

The Scholarly Kitchen: Loaded Dice – The New Research Conundrums Posed by Mechanical Turk

Nuncius: Vol. 30 Issue 1 Table of Contents

The New York Times Books: The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of thee British Enlightenment by Roy Porter Excerpt

Bluestreak Science: Episode 0.9: The Arts and Sciences

ESOTERIC:

Corpus Newtonicum: It’s magic!

The Recipes Project: The recipes of an eighteenth-century Amsterdam alchemist(?)

Conciatore: The Duke’s Oil

The Public Domain Review: A Mongolian Manual of Astrology and Divination

“Basics of Mongolian Astrology”

“Basics of Mongolian Astrology”

Boing boing: John Dee was the 16th century’s real-life Gandalf

BOOK REVIEWS:

Science Book a Day: Pandora’s Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment

Many Headed Monster: Marooned on an Island Monographs: an Early modern Medical History Reading List:

Science Codex: Galileo’s Middle Finger

The New York Times: Disorder Rules the Universe

Science Book a Day: The 4 Per Cent Universe

Social History of Medicine: Pain and Emotion in Modern History

THE: Plucked: A History of Hair Removal

27885_book-review-plucked-a-history-of-hair-removal-by-rebecca-m-herzig

Science Book a Day: Banned: A History of Pesticides and the Science of Toxicology

 

Brain Pickings: How 17 Equations Changed the World

Science Book a Day: Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema

NEW BOOKS:

Brill: The Correspondence of Dr. Martin Lister (1639–1712) Volume One: 1662–1677

Historiens e la santé: Healthcare in Early Medieval Northern Italy: More to Life than Leeches

index

Amazon: Four Works On Llull: On the Compendious Architecture of Ramon Lull, Lullian Lamps, Scrutiny of the Subjects, Animadversions (Collected Works of Giordano Bruno) (Volume 3)

Plagrave Macmillan: Pain and Emotion in Modern History

Historiens de la santé: Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire

THEATRE:

La Opera: Anatomy Theater

FILM:

Motherboard: More Scientists Who Deserve Their Own Biopics

How We Get To Next: Ten Stories of Science and Tech Hollywood Should Tell Next

The Nature of Reality: Presenting the Physics Oscars!

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

VIDEOS:

Youtube: Is the Vinland Map a Fake?

The Vinland Map Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Vinland Map
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

RADIO:

PODCASTS:

New Books in Science, Technology and Society: Adam S. Shapiro Trying Biology

Youtube: Historical Reader Podcast Ep. 02: “The Galileo Affair”

 

Evolution Talk: The Case of Patrick Matthew

Remedia: The Tablet: Tom Koch on Ebola and Disease Maps

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Manchester 1824: Exhibition: Merchants of Print From Venice to Manchester 29 January – 21 June 2015 John Rylands Library Manchester

 

University of Worcester: CfP: The Infirmary Conferences: History of Nursing Research Colloquium 9 July 2015

Medical Humanities Summer Course: Italian Perspectives Padua & Venice 6-11 September 2015

Making Waves: Workshop 4: Scientific Lives: Oliver Lodge and the History of Science in the Digital Age Leeds Art Gallery 6 March 2015

American Museum of Natural History: Lecture Opulent Oceans 11 March 2015

The Renaissance Diary: CfP: The Making of Measurement CRASSH University of Cambridge 23-24 July 2015

Science Comma: H G Wells Annual Lecture on WWI science and suffrage Universty of Kent 4 March 2015

Wells photographed by George Charles Beresford in 1920

Wells photographed by George Charles Beresford in 1920

ChoM News: Reconstructing Medieval Medical Libraries: Between the Codex and the Computer 24-26 February 2015

AAR: CfP: Western Esotericism Group Atlanta 21-24 November 2015

Commodities History: CfP: Environmental Histories of Commodities: University of London 11 September 2015

Museum für Naturkunde Berlin: Knowing Things: Circulations and Transitions of Objects in Natural History 23-24 March 2015

 

York University & Toronto University: CfP: Binocular Conference 5-6 June 2015

The Warburg Institute: Director’s Seminar on Work in Progress 2014–2015

The Warburg Institute: Seminar: Notebooks as Handwritten Library 25 February 2015

 

University of Stavanger: CfP: Animals in the Anthropocene: Human-animal relations in a changing semiosphere 17-19 September 2015

 

Bodleian Libraries: Exhibition: Remembering Radcliffe: 300 years of science and philanthropy 28 November–20 March 2015

 

The Royal Society: Women Writing Science 10 March 2015

Portrait of Caroline Lucretia Herschel

Portrait of Caroline Lucretia Herschel

The Geological Society: Call for Abstracts: William Smith Meeting 2015 – 200 Years and Beyond: The Future of Geological Mapping

Dittrick Medical History Center: Upcoming Events

LOOKING FOR WORK:

Lancaster University: Lectureship in History (Digital Humanities)

CHoM News: 2015–2016 Women in Medicine Fellowships: Application Period Open

Johns Hopkins University: History of Medicine – Postdoctoral Fellowship

University of Edinburgh – National Maritime Museum: Collaborative PhD Research Studentship: Chronometry and Chronometers on British Voyages of Exploration c. 21815– c.1872

Scientific Instrument Society: Small Grants for research on scientific instruments

Swansea University: Lecturer in Medical History

Royal College of Physicians of Ireland: PhD Fellowships in the history of medicine in Ireland

Bodleian Library: Byrne-Bussy Marconi Fellowships

Glasgow University: The Leverhulme Trust: “Collections” Scholarships

Centre for the Study of the Book Bodleian Libraries: Fellowships & Prizes

Preserve Net: State of Vermont: Historical Resources Specialist

Five funded Collaborative Doctorates with the Science Museum Group

University of Oxford: Professorship of the History of Science

NMBU: Two Postdoctoral Fellowships in philosophy (Health Sciences)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Whewell’s Gazette: Vol: #37

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Row of Owls

Volume #37

Monday 02 March 2015

EDITORIAL:

It’s that time of the week again and your weekly #histSTM links list Whewell’s Gazette #37 is back bring you all the histories of science, technology and medicine that the Internet had on offer in the last even days.

This week saw a history of medicine story on the possible origins of the Black Death presented by the BBC thus:

BBC News: ‘Gerbils replace rats’ as main cause of Black Death

As was to be expected the popular science media fell into a feeding frenzy as to who could produce the most sensational and inaccurate headline for an equally inaccurate account of the research and its discovery. All the journalist had to do was to read the original paper or the popular account published on the Conversation by the reports authors,

The Conversation: Plague outbreaks that ravaged Europe for centuries were driven by climate changes in Asia

to get their facts right! Archaeologist and plague specialist Alison Atkin (@alisonatkin) has written two excellent posts analysing the whole sorry mess thus saving us the trouble.

Deathplanation: Avoid Gerbil Headlines like a cliche…

Gerbil

Deathplanation: Blame The Gerbils? Blame the Journalists?

As you can see above in our masthead there was a meeting of the editorial board this week.

Quotes of the week:

Sir Jonas Moore’s remedy for Sciatica, as reported by John Aubrey: “he cured it by boiling his buttock” – @borisjardine

Huizinga – “Task of history is to make past come to life. To do so it has to go beyond fact, create an image. History is not the sum of facts”. – @erik_kwakkel

“I had very good discourse with Mr. Ashmole, wherein he did assure me that frogs and many insects do often fall from the sky, ready formed.“ –Samuel Pepys

“They’re not anecdotes, that’s small batch artisanal data” – @pikelet

“The ‘scientific method’? Not a rigid sterile recipe to be taught, but an emotional and creative Art form to be nurtured.” – @Stelygs

“The finest historians will not be those who succumb to the dehumanizing methods of social sciences, whatever their uses and values, which I hasten to acknowledge. Nor will the historian worship at the shrine of that Bitch-goddess, QUANTIFICATION. History offers radically different values and methods.” -Carl Bridenbaugh, AHA presidential address, 1962 h/t @scott_bot

“History without the history of science…resembles a statue of Polyphemus without his eye.” I. Bernard Cohen h/t @embryoproject

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

AHF: Glen Seaborg

io9: The Complete History of Ceres, The Planet (?) Between Mars and Jupiter

Toledo Museum: Astronomical Compendium

Astrolabe-200x300

Energy.gov: Turning the Manhattan Project into a National Park

AHF: Reincarnation of the K-25 Plant

Science News: Islamic Science paved the way for a millennial celebration of light

APS: History of Physics Newsletter

Data is nature: Laplacian Sigils – William George Armstrong’s Electrical Discharge Experiments [1899]

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Richard Malenfant’s Interview

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Freeman Dyson’s Interview

NYAM: The Private Lives of Galileo

AHF: Gregory Breit

The Renaissance Mathematicus: A Swiss Clockmaker

Bürgi Rock Crystal Clock Source: Wikimedia Commons

Bürgi Rock Crystal Clock
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Guardian: 25 years of the Hubble telescope – in pictures

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

The Public Domain Review: Journey from Venice to Palestine, Mount Sinai and Egypt (ca. 1467)

16626533085_b7ff1e8bbe_o

Bonhams: Mnemonic Globe

Board of Longitude Project: (Re)Displaying longitude

 

MEDICINE:

Hektoen International: Elizabeth Fleischman-Aschheim

Mosaic: The troubled history of the foreskin

First Things: An Anti-Vaxx Pope?

Recipes Project: Recipes and Experiment: A Poison Trial on Dogs

Yovisto: Giovanni Battista Morgagni and the Science of Anatomy

The IHR Blog: Witchcraft and Medicine in Modern France

A Nurse at the Front: Edith Elizabeth Appleton O.B.E. R.R.C.

Edith Appleton O.B.E. R.R.C.

Edith Appleton O.B.E. R.R.C.

Freakonometrics: John Snow and Openstreetmap

Brainpickings: Geometrical Psychology: Benjamin Betts’s 19th-Century Mathematical Illustrations of Consciousness

betts16

Panacea: From Orient to Occident Part I: Acupuncture in Victorian England

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Making science public: Basic science and climate politics: A flashback to 1989

The Conversation: Proposed 1920s orphanage study just one example in history of scientific racism

Embryo Project: “Viable Offspring Derived from Fetal and Adult Mammalian Cell” (1977), by Ian Wilmut et al.

The Independent: Dolly the sheep to be honoured with a blue plaque in Edinburgh

Soure: The Independent

Soure: The Independent

Tetrapod Zoology: Spots, Stripes and Spreading Hooves in the Horse of the Ice Age

Yovisto: Andrea Cesalpino and the Classification of Plants

Dr Len Fisher: 42. Carl Djerassi on the acts of creation and procreation

Digital Stories: The curious gardener

Wonders & Marvels: Slaves Identify Elephant Fossils in America

Embryo Project: Robert Lanza (1956– )

BBC News: Sir Richard Owen: The man who invented the dinosaur

The New York Times: Eugenie Clark, Scholar of the Life Aquatic, Dies at 92

Eugenie Clark examines deep water sharks from Suruga Bay, Japan, in 1980. David Doubilet

Eugenie Clark examines deep water sharks from Suruga Bay, Japan, in 1980.
David Doubilet

National Geographic News: ‘Shark Lady’ Eugenie Clark, Famed Marine Biologist, Has Died

Storify: Malthus, West, Torrens, Ricardo –– February 1815

Fossil History: The Weird History of Oviraptors

 

Reuters: Stone Age Britons imported wheat in shock sign of sophistication

The New York Times: Libraries of Life

National Geographic: The Plate: Selling Spring Dreams: The Evolution of Seed Catalogs

 

History of Geology: A History of the Use Of Illustrations in the Geosciences I: Seeing is Believing…

Natural History Apostilles: If Darwin plagiarized Matthew, by Whiggish standards, then Matthew plagiarized Loudon

Nautilus: The Seeds That Sowed a Revolution

Darwin flowers

Scrol.in: Two decades after his death, Gerald Durrell is still making the world a better place

academia.edu: Hope Johnson LLD (1916–2010): An extraordinary Albertan amateur vertebrate palaeontologist

 

CHEMISTRY:

C&EN: Timeline: Chemical Weapons Then and Now

600 BC The Athenians besiege the city of Kirrha. They poison the besieged city’s water supply with heart-toxic extracts of hellebore plants.

600 BC The Athenians besiege the city of Kirrha. They poison the besieged city’s water supply with heart-toxic extracts of hellebore plants.

TECHNOLOGY:

Conciatore: Gold Ruby Redux

Cranberry glass or Gold Ruby  treasury chamber of the Wittelsbacher , Munich Residenz.

Cranberry glass or Gold Ruby
treasury chamber of the Wittelsbacher , Munich Residenz.

 

Conciatore: Alberico Barbini

Daytonian in Manhattan: Forensic History – No. 35 West 10th Street

My medieval foundry: Being a blog, I can ask questions that professionals won’t go near due to lack of evidence

Inside the Science Museum: Robert Watson-Watt and The Triumph of Radar

BBC Future: Why the fax machine isn’t quite dead yet

O Say Can You See?: Finding modern meaning in 130-year old sound

 

ORAU.org: Chang and Eng Neutron Detector (1940s)

Tycho’s Nose: Academics won’t be typecast no more

AnOther: The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death

Frances Glessner Lee© Glessner House Museum, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Frances Glessner Lee © Glessner House Museum, Chicago, Illinois, USA

IWM: How Alan Turing Cracked the Enigma Code

 

National Geographic: A History of Skis

Ptak Science Books: Graphic Display of U.S. Patents, 1836–1915

The Public Domain Review: Catalogue of the 68 competetive designs for the great tower for London (1890)

7583076562_72f2b1cf5c_o

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

THE: Is philosophy dead?

Imperial & Global Forum: What is Global Intellectual History – If It Should Exist At All?

The many-headed monster: Who were ‘the people’ in early modern England? Part I

EMLO: The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger (1669 letters)

Josephus Justus Scaliger, painted by Paullus Merula, 3rd librarian of Leiden University, 1597

Josephus Justus Scaliger, painted by Paullus Merula, 3rd librarian of Leiden University, 1597 Source: Wikimedia Commons

Hostelworld.com: Reiseblog: London für Fortgeschrittene: 3 weniger bekannte Museen und ihre großartigen Blogs

The Royal Society: Notes & Records: March 2015: Vol. 69 Issue 1 “Women and Science” Table of Contents

George Campbell Gosling: Flattening History

Science: AAAS: The Science Hall of Fame

NYAM: Recommended Resources

Wellcome Library: Announce several new collections on the theme of genomics

Double Refraction: Why historians shouldn’t write off scientists: on Steven Shapin’s review of Steven Weinberg’s Explain the World

 

The Royal Society: Your students past the Royal Society door

Discover Magazine: Infinity is a Beautiful Concept – And It’s Ruining Physics

infinity-band

CHoSTaM: News and Notes: Engineers as Servant-Leaders of the Old South

Society for the Social History of Medicine: New Website

The Boston Globe: Russian science is amazing. So why hasn’t it taken over the world?

In The Dark: What is the Scientific Method?

ANZSECS: The Australian and New Zealand Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies New website

Motherboard: Saving Human Knowledge at 800 Pages an Hour

The Point: The Soviet Science System

Nautilus: The Thrill of Defeat

Aeon: Can God lie? Until the Scientific Revolution, God’s power included a licence to deceive. How did science make an honest man of Him?

Blink: The Compass Chronicles: Infinity versus Ramchundra

Compass Wallah: The War on History

Inside the Science Museum: Photography and the Science Museum Group

Somerville Historian: Research & Anthropology

Report on a Boston University Conference December 7-8, 2012 on ‘How Can the History and Philosophy of Science Contribute to Contemporary U.S. Science Teaching?

 

Wallifaction: reflections on teaching the history of science and religion: part 1

ESOTERIC:

Forbidden Histories: Temple Medicine, Oracles and the Making of Modernity: The Ancient Greek Occult in Anthropology and Psychology

Verso: Newton’s Lost Copy of Mead, Revealed

Detail showing the future Millennium from the apocalyptic time chart found in Newton’s copy of Mede’s Works (1672). Mede’s chart likely helped inspire Newton’s own apocalyptic beliefs. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Detail showing the future Millennium from the apocalyptic time chart found in Newton’s copy of Mede’s Works (1672). Mede’s chart likely helped inspire Newton’s own apocalyptic beliefs. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Distillatio: Mountains and alchemy

 

Yovisto: Camille Flammarion and his Balancing Act between Popular Science and Science Fiction

BOOK REVIEWS:

Science Book a Day: The Lunar Men: The Friends who made the Future

From the Hands of Quacks: Institutionalizing the Insane in Nineteenth-Century England

Science Book a Day: 10 Great Books on Life Sciences

The Renaissance Mathematicus: From astronomy to literature – Bridging the gap

Tennyson

Thinking Like a Mountain: Knowing Nature in Early Modern Europe

Science Book a Day: Maria Sibylla Merian: The New Book of Flowers

News Works: A look at the development of vitamins and our unabated obsession with them

Reciprocal Space: Being mortal and being Crick

NEW BOOKS:

Catherine Price: Vitamania

SCQ: Advanced Quantum Thermodynamics (is a subject I know very little about)

Ashgate: Anatomy and Anatomists in Early Modern SpainStein

THEATRE:

Theatre Rhinoceros: Breaking the Code 4-21 March 2015

FILM:

The Science and Entertainment Laboratory: The Playing God Film Series: Science & Religion on Screen

Annex-Karloff-Boris-Bride-of-Frankenstein-The_02-300x291

Scientific American: Observations: Best Actor Eddie Redmayne on Portraying Stephen Hawking

Medium.com The Devastating Stereotype of the Artless Scientist

Slate.com: How Accurate Is The Imitation Game?

 

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

VIDEOS:

Bloomberg: Alan Turing’s Hidden Manuscript Set to Reap Millions

Youtube: Castle Bravo Nuclear Test

RADIO:

BBC: A History of Ideas: The Antikythera Mechanism

LFR 24: God’s Philosophers

 

PODCASTS:

ODNB: Lunar Society

BookLab 005: The Human Age; The Moral Landscape; Eureka!

AHF: Health and Safety Monitoring

CHF: Distillations Podcast: Episode 196: Innovation & Obsolescence: The Life, Death, and Occasional Rebirth of Technologies

NPR: Episode 606: Spreadsheets!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Making Waves: Lecture: Why Did Scientists Come to Write Autobiographies? 6 March 2015 Leeds Art Gallery

The British Library: The Eccles Centre for American Studies: Alaska, The Artic and the US Imagination 16 March 2015

CRASSH: CfP: Objects in Motion: Material Culture in Transition Cambridge University 18-20 June 2015

The Edwin Worth Library Dublin: CfP: Food as Medicine: Historical perspectives 9-10 October 2015

AAHM: New Haven 2015: Program, Registration, etc.

University of Durham: 10th Integrated History and Philosophy of Science Workshop 16-17 April 2015

UCL: STS Haldane Lecture 12 March 2015

York Minster: Faith and Wisdom in Science 8, 15 & 22 July 2015

Ischia Summer School: Fourteenth Ischia Summer School on the History of the Life Sciences Call for applications — Ischia 2015: Geographies of Life 27 June – 3 July 2015

Rijks Museum: CfP: Arts and Science in Early Modern Low Countries Amsterdam 17-18 September 2015

Wellcome Collection: Exhibition: Forensics: The anatomy of crime 26February–21 June 2015

CRASSH: What’s on at CRASSH 17-February–6 March

Resilience: Special Issue: CfP: Global Environmental Histories From Below

Committee on the Study of the Reformation: CfP. The Tree of Knowledge 28–29 May 2015 University of Warsaw

 

The Grolier Club: Exhibition: Aldus Manutius A Legacy More Lasting Than Bronze 25 February–25 April 2015

getImage.gif

The New York Times: A Tribute to the Printer Aldus Manutius, and the Roots of the Paperback

CRASSH: The Places of Early Modern Criticism 23-24 March 2015

HSS: CfP: HSS 2015 Annual Meeting 19-22 November 2015

LOOKING FOR WORK:

Kings College London: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards: Rethinking technical change in modern British agriculture, c1920–1970

University of Leicester: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships: 3 new fully-funded PhD studentships

Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellowship

University of Bristol: Postdoctoral Research Assistant. History of Medicine (Life of Breath)

 

NMBU: Two Postdoctoral Fellowships in philosophy – Causation, Complexity and Evidence in Health Science

University of Leiden: Call for Proposals: Van de Sande fellowship 2015, Brill fellowships 2015, Elsevier fellowship 2015

University of Edinburgh: Post-Doctoral Research Fellow

CRASSH: Two Research Associates: Limits of the Numerical

University of Cambridge: Isaac Newton – Ann Johnston Research Fellowship in The Humanities 2015

University of Cambridge: Research Associate (HoS) (Fixed Term)

CRASSH: two Research Associates in the Early Modern Period (History of Art and History of Science) Making Visible

UCL: 340 £10,000 bursaries available for Master’s study at UCL

Johns Hopkins University: Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Medicine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #38

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

aceo___owl_grandma_by_ashanti_whitefur-d3clqjb

Volume #38

Monday 09 March 2015

EDITORIAL:

Whewell’s Gazette your weekly #histSTM links list has been around for just thirty-eight issues counting this one but 6 March saw the three hundred and fiftieth birthday of the world’s first (maybe) and oldest (definitely) science journal the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which has been celebrating its birthday in real style. There are free open access birthday editions of both the A edition (mathematical and physical sciences) and the B edition (the life sciences) with lots of history of science content so get stuck in and download all of those goodies.

The Royal Society: Publishing Blog: Free access to 350 years of science publishing

University of Toronto: Exhibit – 350 Years of Scientific Discovery: The Royal Society’ Philosophical Transactions 6–31 March

The Guardian: 350 years of the scientific journal: celebrating the anniversary of Philosophical Transactions

Youtube: Science Stories: Publishing 350

Yovisto: The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society

Quotes of the week:

“Describe your methodology” – Well, I read things and then think about them. That good enough? @LeapingRobot

“Judging by how hard it is to get some people to do either of those things, it sounds pretty rigorous.” @TryingBiology

Women’s History Month – International Women’s Day

Google Doodle IWD

Google Doodle IWD

Sunday was International Women’s Day and March is also Women’s History Month so this edition of Whewell’s Gazette starts with a special women’s section.

A Don’s Life: International Women’s Day for historians

PLOS Blogs: Pentimento: Revealing the Women Obscured in Science History

Trowelblazers: Women in archaeology, geology, and palaeontology

Wikipedia: WikiProject Women’s History/NIH Women’s History Month Edit-a-Thon 2015

Cemistry lab at Bedford College in 1874. Photograph: Archives, Royal Holloway, University of London Source: The Guardian

Cemistry lab at Bedford College in 1874.
Photograph: Archives, Royal Holloway, University of London
Source: The Guardian

Conciatore: Women in Alchemy

The Recipes Project: “The Alchemist’s Desire”: Recipes for Health and Beauty from Caterina Sforza

Rosetta Stones: Women of the Geoblogosphere: Follow Them! For They are Awesome

News ALL Day: Mapping history’s ‘invisible’ women

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Nancy Bartlit’s Interview

Trowelblazers: Tina Negus: An eye for the Ediacaran

Royal Holloway College botany class in 1937. Photograph: Archives, Royal Holloway, University of London Source: The Guardian

Royal Holloway College botany class in 1937.
Photograph: Archives, Royal Holloway, University of London
Source: The Guardian

The Conversation: You probably haven’t heard of these five amazing women scientists – so pay attention

How We Get To Next: The Forgotten Story of the Women Who Built One of London’s Most Iconic Bridges

Advances in the History of Psychology: Women’s History Month @ Psychology’s Feminist Voices

The Sloane Letters Blog: Choosing the Countryside: Women Health and Power in the Eighteenth Century

The Guardian: International Women’s Day 2015: history of women in science – in pictures

Bedford College chemistry lab in 1920. Photograph: Archives, Royal Holloway, University of London Source: The Guardian

Bedford College chemistry lab in 1920.
Photograph: Archives, Royal Holloway, University of London
Source: The Guardian

AMNH: Women’s History Month at the Museum

TrowelBlazers: 5 TrowelBlazers You Should Have Heard of

Brain Pickings: Pioneering 19th-Century Astronomer Maria Mitchell on Education and Women in Science

io9: These 17 Women Changed The Face of Physics

flickr: Women in Science

"NOTHING IN LIFE IS TO BE FEARED. IT IS ONLY TO BE UNDERSTOOD" – Marie Curie

“NOTHING IN LIFE IS TO BE FEARED. IT IS ONLY TO BE UNDERSTOOD” – Marie Curie

Birthday of the week:

Gerardus Mercator born 5 March 1512

Gerardus Mercator's 503rd Birthday Google Doodle

Gerardus Mercator’s 503rd Birthday
Google Doodle

The Renaissance Mathematicus: The “first” Atlas

The Renaissance Mathematicus: It’s not the Mercator projection; it’s the Mercator-Wright projection!

History Today: The Birth of Gerardus Mercator

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Early Modern Experimental Philosophy: Astrology and the novatores, part 3

AHF: John R. Dunning

BSHS Travel Guide: Harvard College Observatory

Photograph of the Harvard Computers, a group of women who worked under Edward Charles Pickering at the Harvard College Observatory. The photograph was taken on 13 May 1913 in front of Building C, which was then the newest building at the Observatory. The image was discovered in an album which had once belonged to Annie Jump Cannon. Image courtesy of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Back row (L to R): Margaret Harwood (far left), Mollie O’Reilly, Edward C. Pickering, Edith Gill, Annie Jump Cannon, Evelyn Leland (behind Cannon), Florence Cushman, Marion Whyte (behind Cushman), Grace Brooks. Front row: Arville Walker, unknown (possibly Johanna Mackie), Alta Carpenter, Mabel Gill, Ida Woods (Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. This media file is in the public domain because its copyright has expired).

Photograph of the Harvard Computers, a group of women who worked under Edward Charles Pickering at the Harvard College Observatory. The photograph was taken on 13 May 1913 in front of Building C, which was then the newest building at the Observatory. The image was discovered in an album which had once belonged to Annie Jump Cannon. Image courtesy of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Back row (L to R): Margaret Harwood (far left), Mollie O’Reilly, Edward C. Pickering, Edith Gill, Annie Jump Cannon, Evelyn Leland (behind Cannon), Florence Cushman, Marion Whyte (behind Cushman), Grace Brooks. Front row: Arville Walker, unknown (possibly Johanna Mackie), Alta Carpenter, Mabel Gill, Ida Woods (Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. This media file is in the public domain because its copyright has expired).

AHF: Manhattan Project Spotlight: The Groves Family

Brown University Library: Capturing the Transit of Venus

AHF: Innovation Through Teamwork

Nature Physics: Physics, physicists and the bomb

Phys.org Aboriginal legends an untapped record of natural history written in the stars

University of Cambridge Museums: Sedwick Museum meteorite helps unravel mysteries of Solar System

Cosmos: The physicist who inflated the universe

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

British Library: Maps and views blog: Robert Adam and the King’s Topographical Collection

Robert Adam [Elevation and plan of a proposed arch at Hyde Park Corner, November 1778]  Maps K Top 27.26-c-2.  Source: British Library

Robert Adam [Elevation and plan of a proposed arch at Hyde Park Corner, November 1778] Maps K Top 27.26-c-2.
Source: British Library

MEDICINE:

Archives Hub: Continuity of Care – The Royal Scottish National Hospital

h-madness: “The Making and Travelling of Knowledge. A Biography of a Medical Case History in Nineteenth-Century Europe”

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Big–Data Project on 1918 Flu Reflects Key Role Of Humanists

Early Modern Medicine: The Stinging of a Wasp

MHL: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Lapham’s Quarterly: Contagion: A brief history of malaria, leprosy, and smallpox
08_medicine

 

The Recipes Project: Scratching “The Itch Infalable”: Johanna St. John’s Anti-Itch Cure

ChoM News: From the MHL: What Can We Learn from Hospital Reports?

The Lancet: Exhibition review: Celebrating the remarkable life of John Radcliffe

Yovisto: John Fothergill – Physician and Gardener

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Source: Unknown

Source: Unknown

The Guardian: How hunting with wolves helped humans outsmart the Neanderthals

Earth Observatory: Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927)

The Crestone Eagle: Gray & Hooker’s Blanca Peak Expedition: The Asian connection

NYAM: Proposed 1920s Orphanage Study Just One Example in History of Scientific Racism

Notches: Eugenics and Intersex: The consequences of defining “normal” bodies

Yovisto: John Murray and the Oceanography

John Murray (1841 – 1914)

John Murray
(1841 – 1914)

The Royal Institution: John Tyndall discovered the basis of global warming. Why has history forgotten him?

The Guardian: Sexing up the human pheromone story: How a corporation started a scientific myth

Source: Unknown

Source: Unknown

Dorking and Leatherhead Advertiser: Call for plaque to recognize Dorking home of evolution scientist

Diseases of Modern Life: Inside Passengers: The Girl’s Own Paper looks inside the body

Luke and Belinda explore the stomach.

Luke and Belinda explore the stomach.

Natural History Apostilles: Predator-prey selection between dogs and goats observed in 1758

Natural History Apostilles: More observations on dogs and goats from the 16th century

Skulls in the Stars: Michael Faraday and the waterspouts (1814)

Coincidence?

Coincidence?

Greg Jenner: Animals on the Wall: Cave Art & Stone Age Pets

Canadian Geographic: HMS Erebus exploration set to continue

CHEMISTRY:

Medium: A short-but-gruesome history of the match

image by flickr user Jim Chambers CC BY-NC-SA

image by flickr user Jim Chambers CC BY-NC-SA

TECHNOLOGY:

Medievalist.net: Top 10 Strange Weapons of the Middle Ages

Dr Alun Withey: Zounds how you scape! Being shaved in Georgian Britain

Yovisto: Walter Bruch and the PAL Color Television System

Ptak Science Books: Tiny Sky Nets for Attacking Aircraft, 1925

Source: Ptak Science Books

Source: Ptak Science Books

IEEE Spectrum: Eben Upton: The Raspberry Pi Pioneer

Ptak Scientific Books: Visual Display of Data: German Military Weakness, 1929

Conciatore: Filigrana

Ptak Science Books: Cut-Away Schematic: British Vickers Medium Tank, 1925

Yovisto: William Oughtred and the Slide Rule

The Atlantic: The Failed Attempt to Destroy GPS

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

WCM 1: Open Notebook History

The many-headed monster: Who were ‘the people’ in early modern England? Part II: Some evidence from manuscripts

New Statesman: No one was “gay” in the 18th century: why we must not rewrite history with today’s terms

Metamorphoses in Art & Science

Giving to Princeton: Gift Establishes the Thomas M. Siebel History of Science Professorship

OUP Blog: Creating a constructive cultural narrative for science

Islam & Science: Lessons learned from the ‘Earth does not rotate’ debate

New Statesman: Wellcome Collection: raising the cultural profile of science

Storify: Hans Sloane and His Books

LabLit.com: A bitter pill to swallow Obituary Carl Djerassi

Chemistry World: Are you sitting comfortably?

PRI: How JFK made NASA his secret weapon in the fight for civil rights in America

Clyde Foster processes telemetry at the Marshall Space Flight Center in 1965 in a photo that appeared in Ebony magazine. As a NASA employee, Foster was a leader in getting jobs and advancing engineering education for African Americans. Credit: Courtesy of Don Rutledge ©

Clyde Foster processes telemetry at the Marshall Space Flight Center in 1965 in a photo that appeared in Ebony magazine. As a NASA employee, Foster was a leader in getting jobs and advancing engineering education for African Americans. Credit: Courtesy of Don Rutledge ©

Wellcome Library: UK Medical Heritage Library

Zooniverse: Science Gossip: an investigation into the making and communication of science in both the Victorian period and today.

Science Museum: Churchill’s Scientists: Inside the exhibition

CHoM News: New Exhibit: Foundations for the History of Women in Medical Oral History

Royal College of Physicians: Exhibition: Chemistry in the garden: paintings by Nina Krauzewicz 3 March–31 July 2015

The #EnvHist Weekly

My medieval foundry: Books, blogs and communicating knowledge to the public

Ration Action: New Blog: Historical perspectives on scientific method, technology and policy design, bureaucracy, economic and behavioral analysis, optimization, theories of choice, and philosophies of mind

Ether Wave Propaganda: Rational Action: The Blog

Forbes: Ideas That Deserve to Die … But Probably Won’t

ESOTERIC:

io9: 10 Famous Scientists Who Held Surprising Supernatural Beliefs

Ptak Science Books: A Dominance of Observations from our Future Skeleton (1635)

6a00d83542d51e69e201b8d0e37121970c-500wi

History Matters: Happy 200th Deathday Franz Anton Mesmer

Chemistry World: Alchemy on the page

homunculus: Alchemy on the page (extended version)

D News: Edison’ ‘lost’ Idea: A Device to Hear to the Dead [sic]

BOOK REVIEWS:

Science Book a Day: Interviews Gabriel Finkelstein

Popular Science: Science in Wonderland – Melanie Keene

History Today: Infinitesimal

Book List Online: Eye of the Beholder

National Geographic: Is Islam Hostile to Science?

Somatosphere: Book Forum – Warwick Anderson and Ian R. Mackay’s “Intolerant Bodies”

Science Book a Day: 10 Great Books on Medicine

Reviews in History: The Politics of Hospital Provision in Early Twentieth-Century Britain

TLS: Enter John Aubrey

Science Book a Day: The Chimp and the River: How AIDS Emerged from an African Forest

Some Beans: Engineering Empires

engineering-empires_thumb

The Artic Book Review: Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony

BSHS Dingle Prize Short List:

University of Chicago Press: Earth’s Deep History

Yale University Press: Voyaging in Strange Seas

9780300173796

Harper Collins Publishers: Finding Longitude

OUP: The Man in the Monkeynut Coat

One World Publishing: The History of Medicine: A Beginners Guide

NEW BOOKS:

Johns Hopkins University Press: Exploration and Engineering: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars

Pikaia: Eternal Ephemera: Adaption and the Origin of Species…

9780231153164

THEATRE:

FILM:

The Science and Entertainment Lab: Rise of Women? Screening Female Scientists

Promotional shots of Cornelia (Judy Greer) and Ellie (Keri Russell) show ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ only named female characters comforting a baby

Promotional shots of Cornelia (Judy Greer) and Ellie (Keri Russell) show ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ only named female characters comforting a baby

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

VIDEOS:

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences: George Beccaloni & Ruth Benny – Wallace Treasures fro…

Youtube: Why do medical students have to study the history of medicine

RADIO:

PODCASTS:

The Guardian: Steven Weinberg on the history of science

Naked Scientists: Eureka! Experiments that Changed the World

15 Minute History: Episode 65: Darwinism and the Scopes “Monkey Trial”

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: Glasgow History of Medicine Group – Spring Meetings 2015

CRASSH: The Total Archive: Dreams of Universal Knowledge from the Encyclopaedia to Big Data 19-20 March

Discovery Museum Newcastle: CfP: IET Conference on the History of Engineering 6 June 2015

Warburg Institute: ‘Maps and Society’ Lectures: Katherine Parker (Department of History, University of Pittsburgh). ‘A Tricky Passage: Navigating, Mapping, and Publishing Representations of Tierra del Fuego in the Long Eighteenth Century’. 12 March

University of London: Women’s Studies Group 1558–1837: Annual Workshop: ‘What is the Place of Aphra Behn in Restoration Culture?’ 9 May 2015

IU Bloomington Newsroom: Historian of science Naomi Oreskes to present Patten Lectures at IU Bloomington

Cambridge University: Biological Discourses: the Language of Science & Literature around 1900 10-11 April 2015

Institute of Historical Research: Empty Spaces Conference Program for April 10, 2015

Canvas Network: Free Online Course: Warfare and Weapons in Ancient Egypt 6 April–5 May 2015

XVI UNIVERSEUM NETWORK MEETING University Heritage and Cultural Engagement of European Universities National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, 11‐13 June 2015

Aarhus University Centre for Science Studies: CfP: Workshop “1970s: Turn of an era in the history of science?” 14–15 September 2015

AIP: MOOC: Reimagining Einstein for Students and Teachers: The Einstein Revolution

Museum of the History of Science: Hooked on Invention: 14 March 2015

Yale University: Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Biology 27-28 March 2015

The Linnean Society: From Cabinet to Internet: Digitising Natural History and Medical Manuscripts 27-28 April 2015

Royal Museums Greenwich: Against Captain’s Orders: After Hours Exclusives (members’ event) 2 April–27 August 2015

Notches: Meet Me in St. Louis: History of Sexuality at the 1015 Organisation of American Historians Conference 16-19 April 2015

Advances in the History of Psychology: CfP: 4S Open Panel on STS, Technology & Psychology 11-14 November 2015 Denver Co.

Royal Geographical Society and Bournemouth University: The Hero’s Journey of Alfred Russel Wallace in Southeast Asia 10 March 2015 Poole

LOOKING FOR WORK:

University of Huddersfield: Location, Location, Location: The Gott Collection, Yorkshire landscapes and Connected Communities PhD studentship at the University of Huddersfield

University of Wuppertal: At the „Interdisciplinary Centre for Science and Technology Studies: Normative and historical foundations“ (IZWT) of the University of Wuppertal at the earliest date possible the position of an Assistant Professor

University of Glasgow: The Leverhulme Trust: “Collections” Scholarship

The School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science at University of Leeds invites applications to its Non-Stipendiary Visiting Fellowships scheme for the academic year 2015-16.

University of Cambridge: Two Postdoctoral Research Associates in the Early Modern Period (History of Art and History of Science)

Science Museum Group: ACD-SCM-MAR15 – Assistant Content Developers x2, Contemporary Science

IHR: Scouloudi Historical Awards: Research Awards

University of Cambridge: Research Associate in History of Modern Science (Fixed Term)

Flight Global Jobs: Historian – RAF Northolt, London

University of Leeds: AHRC Postdoctoral Researcher Project: ‘Electrifying the country house: taking stories of innovation to new audiences’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #39

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Owl in Flight

Volume #39

Monday 16 March 2015

EDITORIAL:

Welcome to the thirty-ninth edition of Whewell’s Gazette your weekly #histSTM links list brought to you on the wings of an owl. All the blog posts and Internet articles on the histories of science, technology and medicine that our hard working editorial team could round up for your pleasure in a week that saw the 136th anniversary of the birth of Albert Einstein in the year which sees the centenary of the publication of his General Theory of Relativity. This week also saw the Internet go more than a little loopy about an American form of writing the date so-called once in a century Pi day, a phenomenon that doesn’t occur in any other countries form of writing the date.

All of this raises the question, why do we consider anniversaries of all sorts to be so significant in history? Is a theory more important when it’s some multiple of 365 days old than on any other day? Should we give more thought to a scientist on her or his birthday than on other days of the year? Does our obsession with marking #histSTM anniversaries somehow trivialise the study of history. We here at Whewell’s Gazette offer no answers to these questions, but merely suggest that all STM historians should give them some thought should they feel so inclined.

Quotes of the week:

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats ~ Howard Aiken h/t @OnThisDayinMath

One Science only will one Genius fit;

So vast is Art, so narrow Human Wit – Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

Vladimir Nabokov had a ‘genitalia cabinet’ in which he kept his collection of male blue butterfly genitalia. It’s now housed at Harvard. – @InterestingLit

Heuristic: never nitpick a heuristic – @nntaleb

If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin – Charles Darwin

Birthday of the Week:

Albert Einstein born 14 March

Albert Einstein in 1921 Source: Wikimedia Commons

Albert Einstein in 1921
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

AHF: Albert Einstein

AIP Center for History of Physics: A. Einstein Image and Impact

AIP: 2015 The Centennial of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity

NJ.com: Albert Einstein’s birthday, deep connection to Princeton celebrated on special 3-14-15 Pi Day

The New York Times: Einstein Flees Berlin to Avoid Being Feted

Symmetry: Einstein’s most famous equation

The Age: Genius found inspiration in silent spaces

Yahoo News: Beyond Reletivity: Albert Einstein’s Lesser-Known Work

Fossilist of the week:

Mary Anning Died 9 March 1847

Mary Anning  Google Doodle

Mary Anning
Google Doodle

Letters from Gondwana: Remembering Mary Anning

Mary Anning

Regency History; Mary Anning (1799-1847)

Mary Anning's Ichtyosaurus communis skull, by Elizabeth Philpot, 1814

Mary Anning’s Ichtyosaurus communis skull, by Elizabeth Philpot, 1814

Evolve or Die: Mary Anning

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Berfois: Tempo Shifts:

BBC Earth: Why does time always run forwards and never backwards?

Medievalist.net: Early medieval science: the evidence of Bede

AHF: The Hydrogen Bomb – 1950

AIP: “Gravitational collapse” by Hong-Yee Chiu, May 1964

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Seth Wheatley’s Interview

Espace.net: Szilard’s Patent 12 March 1934: Improvements in or relating to the transmutation of chemical elements

Voices of the Manhattan Project: George Kistiakowsky’s Interview

APS: This Month in Physics History: March 13, 1781: Herschel Discovers Uranus

Frederick William Herschel

Frederick William Herschel

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Eugene Wigner’s Interview

Darin Hayton: Where Did De Revolutionibus Go?

Chart showing where copies of De Revolutionibus went. Created by Darin Hayton

Chart showing where copies of De Revolutionibus went.
Created by Darin Hayton

Medievalist.net: Ironing Out the Myth of the Flat Earth

Science Notes: What Is a Jiffy?

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

British Library: Maps and views blog: London through the artist’s eye

Wenceslaus Hollar, On the North Side of London , 1664  Maps K. Top. 28.9-e. - Source: British Library

Wenceslaus Hollar, On the North Side of London , 1664 Maps K. Top. 28.9-e. – Source: British Library

British Library: Maps and views blog: A Rum Lot of Maps

Yovisto: Richard E. Byrd, Jr. – Aviator and Polar Explorer

The Public Domain Review: The Maps of Piri Reis

MEDICINE:

Conciatore: The Béguines of Mechelen

A Béguine of Antwerp, from Pierre Hélyot, L'Histoire des ordres monastiques… 1719 (v.8)

A Béguine of Antwerp,
from Pierre Hélyot,
L’Histoire des ordres monastiques… 1719 (v.8)

BBC: Medieval monastic bones in Ipswich could aid arthritis research

British Library: Beautiful Minds: Alexander Fleming (1881–1951): A noble life in science

The National Archives: Death of Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, 11 March 1955

Scientific American: Neurobiology of the Placebo Effect

 

academia.edu: Augmentative, Alternative, and Assistive: Reimagining the History of Mobile Computing and Disability

CBC:ca: A History of Chimps in Medical Research

Longreads: A Very Naughty Little Girl

Blood transfusion bottle. Photo via Wellcome Trust, Wikimedia Commons.

Blood transfusion bottle. Photo via Wellcome Trust, Wikimedia Commons.

Royal College of Physicians: ‘From her truly affectionate friend’

Duke University Libraries: Digital Collections: Anatomical Fugitive Sheets

BBC: Five research papers that revolutionised health

academia.edu: “Obstetrical and Gynecological Texts in Middle English” (1992), with an edition of “The Nature of Womman”

Medievalist.net: Is There a Doctor in the Castle?

TECHNOLOGY:

Lapham’s Quarterly: People Will Look: The tricycle has come to stay

Wome's Trike

History Today: Time Pieces: Working Men and Watches

City Lab: Now More Than Ever, London Needs a ‘Death Pyramid’

Yovisto: Howard H. Aiken and the Harvard Mark I

The Public Domain Review: Kodak No.1 Circular Snapshots

Cram Swansea: CRAM staff explain their research…

The Guardian: Berenice Abbott: the photography trailblazer who had supersight

Culture 24: Before the Apple Watch: Six of the best timepieces used through the centuries

Balance spring pocket watch in silver case (1675-1679)

Balance spring pocket watch in silver case (1675-1679)

Wellcome Collection blog: Death in a Nutshell

AEON: American petro-topia

Conciatore: Reticello

Smithsonian.com: Would You Pass Thomas Edison’s Employment Test?

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Dating the Past: Dating is Important for Understanding Past (and Future) Climate Change

Embryo Project: Wilhelm Friedrich Phillip Pfeffer (1845–1920)

International Science Times: Wooly Mammoth Poop Analysis May Solve Extinction Mystery; Beast May Have Relied Too Much On Flowers In Their Diet

Scientists still don't know what killed off the woolly mammoth. But the latest theory suggests it had to do with their diet of little yellow flowers. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Scientists still don’t know what killed off the woolly mammoth. But the latest theory suggests it had to do with their diet of little yellow flowers. (Photo: Shutterstock)

 

Tucson.com: UA researchers use tree rings to rewrite history

Niche: The Cold that Binds: Ice, Climate History, and a Hobbit Hole

The Public Domain Review: Sex and Science in Robert Thornton’s Temple of Flora

Illustration showing “Cupid Inspiring Plants with Love”, in this case specifically the Strelitzia reginae or Queen Plant, a plate from Robert Thornton’s Temple of Flora (1807) – Source: Wellcome Library.

Illustration showing “Cupid Inspiring Plants with Love”, in this case specifically the Strelitzia reginae or Queen Plant, a plate from Robert Thornton’s Temple of Flora (1807) – Source: Wellcome Library.

NPR: Tea Tuesdays: The Scottish Spy Who Stole China’s Tea Empire

The Shells tell the Truth: Molluscs, some Stratigraphic Order and early Evolution

 

BBC: Anthropocene: New dates proposed for the ‘Age of Man’

The New York Times: Did Earth’s ‘Anthropocene’ Age of Man Begin With the Globalization of Disease in 1610?

Nature: Anthropocene: The human age

Notches: Globalizing the History of Sexology

Fossil History: Buckland’s Red Lady

The Guardian: Italian scientists ‘recreate DNA’ of fascist warrior-poet from semen stains

The Artful Amoeba: Ever Wish You Could Put Ernst Haeckel on Your Lamp Shade? Now You Can

Brown University Library: Curio: The Unicorn of the Sea Comes to Brown

The Recipes Project: Locating traditional plant knowledge in household recipes

io9: These Scientific Names Were Chosen Purely to Insult Certain People

BBC: JBS Haldane: Blue plaque for genetics pioneer

History of Geology: The Geology of the Mountains of Madness

CHEMISTRY:

Chemistry World: Dial chem for murder

Chemical evidence helped convict Marie Lafarge of poisoning her husband © Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy

Chemical evidence helped convict Marie Lafarge of poisoning her husband © Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy

Yovisto: Jeremias Richter and the Law of Definite Proportions

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

The many-headed monster: We the People, 1535–1787: Who were ‘the people’ in early modern England? Part III

Public History Commons: The AHA on the path to public history

American Science: Links for 9 March 2015

Distillation Blog

MPIFTHS: Engineering, Cartography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late-Sixteenth-Century Rome

Gresham College: The Gresham College App

UCL: STS Observatory: UK archives of post-war science – notes towards a list

Bodleian History Faculty Library: Social Media for Historians (pdf)

Bonhams: Turing, Alan Mathison. 1912-1954 Composition notebook

Now Appearing: Hit by a Newton bomb

The #EnvHist Weekly

 

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Discovery is a process not an act

Ether Wave Propaganda: “The Rational Life”: Issues in Quote Truncation

Rational Action: What did Warren Weaver mean when he spoke of “the rational life”?

Hyperjeff: Visual timelines to accompany Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy without any gaps

 

Ether Wave Propaganda: Why Joseph Agassi Is No Longer Read as Much, An Introduction

HNN: Why Historians Should Use Twitter: An Interview with Katrina Gulliver

ESOTERIC:

History of Alchemy: Faust

Laham’s Quarterly: Animal Magnetism

Franz Anton Mesmer Source: Wikimedia Commons

Franz Anton Mesmer
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Collation: Early modern eyebrow interpretations, or what it means to have a unibrow

BOOK REVIEWS:

academia.edu: Emil du Bois-Reymond and the tradition of German physiological science

academic.edu: Emil du Bois-Reymond: Neuroscience, Self and Society in Nineteenth Century Germany

Science Book a Day: Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud

New Scientist: How fudged embryo illustrations led to drawn-out lies

haeckels-embryos

History to the Public: Humdinger in the everyday: Greg Jenner’s A Million Years in a Day

Popular Science: Professor Stewart’s Incredible Numbers

Centre for Medical Humanities: The Severed Head Capital Visions

Science Book a Day: Drugged: The Science and Culture Behind Psychotropic Drugs

The Guardian: Half Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy by Frank Close – review

Biodetectives: Life science books everyone should read

The Guardian: John Aubrey: My Own Life review – the taxidermist of a dying England

Project Muse: The Princess and the Philosopher: Letters of Elisabeth of the Palatine to Rene Descartes

BSHS Dingle Prize Short List:

University of Chicago Press: Earth’s Deep History

Yale University Press: Voyaging in Strange Seas

Harper Collins Publishers: Finding Longitude

University of Chicago Press: Visions of Science

 

9780226203287

WellCome Book Prize Shortlist 2015:

The Guardian: Wellcome Trust 2015 Book Prize shortlist announced

NEW BOOKS:

Historiens de la santé: More Than Medicine: A History of the Feminist Women’s Health Movement

Taylor & Francis: Reimagining (Bio)Medicalization, Pharmaceuticals and Genetics

Ashgate: Boyle Studies

Routledge: Spaces for Feelings: Emotion and Sociabilities in Britain 1650-1850

9781138828179

University of Washington Press: Feminist Technosciences

Salon: Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing” – An Excerpt

THEATRE:

FILM:

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Why the Imitation Game is a disaster for historians

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

VIDEOS:

Youtube: Bertrand Russell – Face to Face Interview (BBC, 1959)

Youtube: Be curious… about AIR QUALITY

 

Youtube: Fifty billion chips and counting

Youtube: The Genius of Einstein: The Science, the Brain, the Man

Laughing Squid: A Look at Four Lesser-Known Scientific Discoveries and the Women Behind Them

RADIO:

PODCASTS:

Native American Medicine: The Sequah Limited: Commoditising the Native

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

University of Bucharest: Workshop: Natural History, Mathematics and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century 26-27 April 2015

Museum Boerhaave and Naturalis Biodiversity Centre: Materia medica on the move. Collecting, trading studying and using medicinal plants in the early modern period 15-17 April 2015

ChoM News: Lecture: Pregnancy and Personhood: The Maternal-Fetal Relationship in America, 1850 to the Present Harvard Medical School 2 April 2015

 

John Innes Centre: Cultivation Innovations 14 April 2015

University of Oxford: CfP: Space, place, and landscape in the history of communications 16 June 2015

University of Durham: The History of Thermodynamics and Scientific Realism 12 May 2015

University of Manchester: Stories about Science 4-5 June 2015

 

Open Quaternary: Call for Papers

IHPST: Announcements

Computer History Museum: Book Prize 2015: Call for submissions

London Medieval Society: Medieval London and the World 2015 1-4 May 2015

 

Parasynchronies: CfP: Divergent Bodies and the Making of the Middle Ages

CRASSH: Graphical Displays: Challenges for Humanists 18 May 2015

History of Education Society (UK): Conference: CfP: Science, Technologies, and Material Culture in the History of Education Liverpool Hope University 20-22 November 2015

Historiens de la santé: CfP: Food as Medicine: Historical Perspectives 9-10 October 2015 Dublin

Dittrick Medical History Centre: Upcoming Events

University of York: CfP: Epistolary cultures – letters and letter-writing in early modern Europe

 

BSHS: Conference: Leibniz-scientist, Leibniz-philosopher University of Wales Lampeter 3-5 July 2015

 

BSHS: Conference: Ruling Climate The Theory and practice of environmental governmentality 1500-1800 University of Warwick 16 May 2015

Morbid Anatomy: The Lost Museum Symposium: Providence Rhode Island 6-8 May 2015

10th International Conference on the History of Chemistry: CfP: Chemical Biography Aveiro Portugal 9-12 September 2015

 

H–Environment: CfP: Workshop: Experiencing the Global Environment MPIFTHOS Berlin 4-6 February 2016

LOOKING FOR WORK:

University of Chester: Lecturer in Early Modern Global History 1650–1800

University of Sydney: Associate Lecturer History of Science

University of Glasgow: The Leverhulme Trust: “Collections” Scholarships

University of Chester: Lecturer in Historic Landscapes and Environments

How We Get to Next: Editor and Staff Writer

King’s College London: Lecturer in the History of Science and Technology

University of Kent: Postgraduate Funding

University of Leeds: Studentship: Object Journeys: Community co-production of collections knowledge and displays at a national museum

CHF: Public History Fellow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #40

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Strutting Owl

Volume #40

Monday 23 March 2015

EDITORIAL:

The fortieth edition of your weekly #histSTM links list, Whewell’s Weekly, comes strutting out of the darkness at noon (it was actually a bit earlier but poetic licence and all that) of a solar eclipse. It was only a partial eclipse in Europe but that didn’t stop the masses going out onto the streets in hordes to stare into the heavens, their faces hidden but cardboard spectacles like something out of a third rate horror movie.

Eclipses have of course played an important role in the history of astronomy. The Babylonians developed an algebraic algorithm to successfully predict lunar eclipses. They had a similar algorithm for solar eclipses, which however was not quite as good. It could only predict when solar eclipse might occur according to celestial geometry but could not compute a further factor that prevented the occurrence of some of those potential eclipses. This was not so good given the role that eclipses played in Babylonian omen astrology, the principle motivation for Babylonian astronomical investigations.

According to Greek legend, although probably more mythological than legendary, Thales of Meletius was the first Greek to accurately predict an eclipse of the sun in the sixth century BCE.

Christopher Columbus famously used the prediction of a lunar eclipse, calculated with the help of the ephemerides of Regiomontanus, to impress some bolshie natives in the Caribbean. (see History Matters post below)

As Rebekah “Becky” Higgitt reminded us on Twitter, “Comparing times at which eclipses occurred was the first way that differences of longitude could be established”.

Medieval eclipse

Also on Twitter A Clerk of Oxford offered us this medieval explanation of solar eclipses

Ælfric explains eclipses: ‘Hit getimað hwiltidum, þonne se mona beyrnþ on ðam ylcan strican þe seo sunne yrnð, þæt his trendel underscyt ðære sunnan to ðan swiðe þæt heo eall aðeostrað, 7 steorran æteowiað swylce on nihte. Ðis gelimpð seldon, 7 næfre buton on niwum monan.’

‘It happens sometimes, when the moon is running in the same course as the sun, that its orb passes under the sun’s in such a way that it is completely darkened, and the stars appear just as at night. This happens rarely, and never except at the new moon.’ (De Temporibus Anni)

 

Sacrobosco

Sacrobosco

 

 Trinity College Library, Cambridge: Eclipses

A plain description of the Sun's appearance in the Eclipse on Fryday (in the morning) April, 1715

A plain description of the Sun’s appearance in the Eclipse on Fryday (in the morning) April, 1715

Solar Eclipses in History

Ottoman astronomer İbrahim Tiflisi in 1479

Ottoman astronomer İbrahim Tiflisi in 1479

MHS Oxford: Eclipseometer

Eclipseometer

 

Royal Society Publishing: Observations of the Late Total Eclipse of the Sun on the 22nd April Past …

Lunar and SolarEclipse described by Ottoman philosopher İbrahim Müteferrika about 300 years ago

Lunar and SolarEclipse described by Ottoman philosopher İbrahim Müteferrika about 300 years ago

The Independent: Solar eclipse: humans have been frightened and fascinated by the moon hiding the sun since beginning of time

This morning we hope to see a partial eclipse of the Sun, just like these Londoners in 1748

This morning we hope to see a partial eclipse of the Sun, just like these Londoners in 1748

History Matters: THE DARKER SIDE OF KNOWLEDGE: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SOLAR ECLIPSE

Solar eclipse from a 16th century cosmography of Qazwini

Solar eclipse from a 16th century cosmography of Qazwini

Quotes of the week:

“Dammit there are so many idiots whose asses I have to kick.” Edward Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist h/t @JoshRosenau

I’ve been a freelance writer & I’ve been a sex worker and sex work was not the career that made me feel exploited and disposable. – @avflox

“The sciences don’t try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models.” J. v. Neumann! h/t @GeorgeShiber

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled – Plutarch

The man who cannot speak both eloquently and wisely should speak wisely without eloquence, rather than eloquently without wisdom. – Augustine

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation – Thomas Hobbes

That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is true theology – Thomas Paine

Astronomy is not only pleasant but also very useful…this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God – John Calvin 1554

Does anyone suppose that any woman in all the ages has had a fair chance to show what she could do in science?… The laws of nature are not discovered by accidents; theories do not come by chance, even to the greatest minds; they are not born of the hurry and worry of daily toil; they are diligently sought, they are patiently waited for, they are received with cautious reserve, they are accepted with reverence and awe. And until able women have given their lives to investigation, it is idle to discuss the question of their capacity for original work. – Maria Mitchell

 

Birthdays of the Week:

Anna Atkins born 16 March 1799

Anna Atkins 1861 Source: Wikimedia Commons

Anna Atkins 1861
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The H-Word: Anna Atkins: Google’s tribute to a pioneer of botany and photography

Anna Atkins Google Doodle

Anna Atkins Google Doodle

The Independent: Anna Atkins: This is why British scientist who produced first photographic book has been given a Google Doodle

A cyanotype photogram made by Atkins which was part of her 1843 book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions Source: Wikimedia Commons

A cyanotype photogram made by Atkins which was part of her 1843 book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Washington Post: Anna Atkins: Google Doodle artfully celebrates a true-blue photographic pioneer

Motherboard: The Hauntingly Beautiful Photos of Anna Atkins, Creator of Botanical Photography

Caroline Herschel born 16 March 1750:

Caroline Lucretia Herschel 1829  Source: Wikimedia Commons

Caroline Lucretia Herschel 1829
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Herschel, Caroline Lucretia

Royal Museums Greenwich: Caroline HerschelC Herschel poster

Poetry Foundation: Planetarium by Adrienne Rich: Thinking of Caroline Herschel

History Today: Birth of Caroline Herschel

Caroline Herschel Letter

Caroline Herschel Letter

Starchild: Caroline Herschel

History Physics Today: Caroline Herschel’s birthday

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Science: Résumé of Observations Concerning the Solar Eclipse of May 29, 1919, and the Einstein Effect

Ptak Science Books: A Million Violinists Playing Everything at the Same Time

Yovisto: Frederick Reines and the Neutrino

Irish Philosophy: John Stewart Bell: The Nature of Reality

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Richard Yalman’s Interview

A Clerk of Oxford: The Days of Creation

God creating the world (BL Royal 1 E VII, f. 1v, 11th century, Canterbury)

God creating the world (BL Royal 1 E VII, f. 1v, 11th century, Canterbury)

Space Watchtower: Historic Brashear Telescope Factory Wall Collapses

Pittsburgh Post Gazette.com Historic Pittsburgh factory being levelled after wall collapse

Yovisto: The Life and Work of Philippe de La Hire

tekepart: A Legacy of Discovery Going Strong for More Than 150 Years

St John’s College: The Way to the Stars: Build Your Own Astrolabe

The Renaissance Mathematicus: The continuing saga of io9’s history of science inanities

 

Science Museum Group Journal: Curating the collider: using place to engage museum visitors with particle physics

AHF: Emilio Segrè

BBC News: Isaac Newton royal medal design discovery

Queen Anne Medal Source: BBC News

Queen Anne Medal
Source: BBC News

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Calendrical confusion or just when did Newton die?

The Seattle Times: Vision quest: Curator catalogs the world’s oldest telescopes

Tech Times: Corning Museum Curator Documenting Oldest Telescopes In The World

APS: This Month in Physics History: March 20, 1800: Volta describes the Electric Battery

Gigal Research: The Menkaura Stellar Observatory

AMNH Shelf Life: How to Time travel to a Star

Oxford Journals: An astronomical murder?

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

Letters from Gondwana: The Challenger Expedition and the Beginning of Oceanography

Atlas Obscura: The Most Remarkable Globe in the World is in a Brooklyn Office Building

The Public Domain Review: Elizabeth Bisland’s Race Around the World

The 18th-Century Common: What the Abyssinian Liar Can Tell us about True Stories: Knowledge, Skepticism, and James Bruce’s Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile

James Bruce by E. Topham. Etching, published 1775. NPG D13789. National Portrait Gallery, UK. Used under Creative Commons Limited Non-Commercial License.

James Bruce by E. Topham. Etching, published 1775.
NPG D13789. National Portrait Gallery, UK. Used under Creative Commons Limited Non-Commercial License.

Ptak Science Books: A Fine and Interesting Map of Air Routes, 1956

homunculus: The Saga of the Sunstones

The Viking Sunstone Compass made by researchers at the University of Rennes. Note the double bright spots in the cavity.  Source: Phillip Ball

The Viking Sunstone Compass made by researchers at the University of Rennes. Note the double bright spots in the cavity.
Source: Phillip Ball

Board of Longitude Project: Harrison Decoded: Towards a perfect pendulum clock

MEDICINE:

The Quack Doctor: The bogus lady doctor

British Library: Science blog: Shell shocked

Dr Alun Withey: Crooked or Straight: Creating the ideal posture in 18th-century Britain

The neck swing, from Timothy Sheldrake’s ‘Essay on the Various Causes and Effects of the Distorted Spine’, 1783

The neck swing, from Timothy Sheldrake’s ‘Essay on the Various Causes and Effects of the Distorted Spine’, 1783

NYAM: What Things are Good and Holesome for the Braine

academia.edu: “From Practice to Print: Women Crafting Authority at the Margins of Orthodox Medicine”

Slate: Phineas Gage, Neuroscience’s Most Famous Patient

London Evening Standard: Florence Nightingale’s medical books put online for free viewing

Yale News: Creating a malaria test for ancient human remains

Early Modern Medicine: Maternity Wear: To Conceal or Reveal?

NYAM: Brain Awareness Week

Niche: Vaccines and the Environmental History of Medicine

The Recipes Project: Spa Culture, Recipes, and Eighteenth-Century Elite Healthcare

The Comforts of Bath, 1798. Thomas Rowlandson. Image Credit: Wikigallery.org

The Comforts of Bath, 1798. Thomas Rowlandson. Image Credit: Wikigallery.org

Joanne Bailey Muses on History: Foetus: From the Sensory to the Scan

Time-Life: How Sword Swallowing Contributed to Modern Medicine

We’re History: Before Ebola, there was Yellow Fever

Explore the incredible Bethlem records

Groovy Historian: What Were Believed to be the Causes of and Treatments for Melancholy & Madness During the Renaissance and Early Modern Period?

TECHNOLOGY:

Conciatore: Sara Vincx

Tycho’s nose: There’s something in the water

Engineering and Technology History Wiki

Sage Journals: Institution of Mechanical Engineers Proceedings June 1847

History Matters: Heritage, History and Community: Engaging with the past in a former industrial village

My medieval foundry: Maybe a sighting of a double action bellows?

Conciatore: Dyed In The Grain

Dyeing wool cloth, from "Des Proprietez des Choses" Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 1482 British Library Royal MS 15.E.iii, folio 269

Dyeing wool cloth, from “Des Proprietez des Choses”
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 1482
British Library Royal MS 15.E.iii, folio 269

io9: 50 Years Ago, The First Spacewalk Nearly Ended in Tragedy

IEEE Spectrum: Moore’s Curse

Conciatore: Cristallo

Ptak Science Books: Babbage Obituary and Other Babbage Bits

Wired: Prop-Driven ‘Rail Zeppelin’ Is Many Kinds of Awesome

Schienenzeppelin

Schienenzeppelin

Slate Vault: A Telephone Map of the United States Shows Where You Could Call Using Ma Bell in 1910

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Notches: Sex and the American Quest for a Relatable Past

Embryo Project: Cornelia Clapp

Notches: Organized Labor, Gay Liberation and the Battle Against the Religious Right, 1977–1994

Natural History Apostilles: Matthew (1831) spliced Steuart’s (1828) quote of Loudon (1806)

NYAM: Roget Beyond the Thesaurus

History of Geology: Celebrating the Irish-Geological Heritage

The first published image of the Giant’s Causeway by local artist Christopher Cole Foley was used to illustrate an account by Samuel Foley, Bishop of Down and Connor, in 1694. However both the drawing and the engraving from it were considered inadequate depictions of this peculiar Irish landscape.

The first published image of the Giant’s Causeway by local artist Christopher Cole Foley was used to illustrate an account by Samuel Foley, Bishop of Down and Connor, in 1694. However both the drawing and the engraving from it were considered inadequate depictions of this peculiar Irish landscape.

Philosophical Transactions B: The unseen world: reflections on Leeuwenhoek (1677) ‘Concerning little animals’

Science Gossip: Piecing Together the Story of a Female Naturalist through Victorian Journals

The Rest Project: A 19th-century Naturalist’s Daily Schedule: Alfred Russel Wallace in Singapore

 

Thinking Like a Mountain: Enlightenment Ghosts and Ecological Utopianism in the Scottish Highlands

Londonist: How Would You Describe a Kangaroo?

Husbandry Book Blog: Marches Husbandry: Beware of birds!

Natural History Apostilles: The Naval Timber Controversies: poor Billington

Palaeoblog: Died This Day: Amadeus William Grabau

 

Embryo Project: The Human Genome Project (1990–2003)

Embryo Project: The inductive capacity of oral mesenchyme and its role in tooth development (1969-1970), by Edward J. Kollar and Grace R. Baird

Earth Touch news: These Beautiful 19th-centuary Illustrations capture Dinosaur ‘Death Poses’

Image: The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences

Image: The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences

 

UCMP Berkeley: Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873)

Famous Scientists: Agnes Arber

 

CHEMISTRY:

Othermalia: Photo essay of female lab workers 1946

1946 volume of the corporate publication Research Today by Lily Research Laboratories

1946 volume of the corporate publication Research Today by Lily Research Laboratories

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Against the division of the library of the López Piñero Institute

Clio@King’s: The History Department Blog: Who Should We Write History For?

ChoM News: From the MHL: “Seeing With a Better Eye”

 

Open Quaternary: Launching Open Quaternary

Open Quaternary: Submitting an Article Online

The Edinburgh Reporter: Writing women of science back into history

Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr

ChoM News: From the MHL: Why Digital Collections, Why Now?

The Atlantic: The Problem With History Classes

THE: Female science writers celebrated

Historiens de la santé: Medical History Volume 59, Issue 02, April 2015

Quanta Magazine: Science’s Path From Myth to Multiverse

The Conversation: Why do we need the humanities?

Fiction Reboot: Daily Dose: MedHum Mondays: Why Medical Humanities?

Society for the History of Astronomy

The Incluseum: Museums and the Reproduction of Disadvantage

The National Archives: England’s immigration records 1330–1550 now online

Love Imperial War Museum Library: Outraged about research room charges

 

Gaudy Night: Women’s History Month 2015: Science and Medicine

Concocting History: Pythagoreans, lore, science… and sadness

Ether Wave Propaganda: “I am a sadist; you are a masochist; so let us have some fun together”: Agassi on Feyerabend, Feyerabend on Agassi

 

Cross-Check: Everyone, Even Jenny McCarthy, Has the Right to Challenge “Scientific Experts”

Historians.org: AHR Exchange On The History Manifesto

JHI Blog: The Republic of Intellectual History

Darin Hayton: HistorySTM March Madness Round 1

Making Science Public: The Co-production Confusion

The #EnvHist Weekly

Chemical Connections: A quantitative analysis of how often Nature gives a fuck

ESOTERIC:

Philly.com: Delving into a 400-year-old puzzle book, through song

JHL: Science, Mysticism, and Dreams in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

distillatio: There is a lot more to research in medieval alchemical manuscripts than people know of

 

Illustation similar in intent to those in the Ripley Scrolls, which are a late 15th/ early 16th invention. (Stolen from the British Library website, they seem to be copyright free)

Illustation similar in intent to those in the Ripley Scrolls, which are a late 15th/ early 16th invention. (Stolen from the British Library website, they seem to be copyright free)

BOOK REVIEWS:

Science Book a Day: The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray’s Anatomy

THE: How to Write a Thesis, by Umberto Eco

Science Book a Day: Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen

Wellcome Library: Women, plumbers and doctors: sanitation in the home

Contaminated drinking water. Wellcome Library reference: b20424863.

Contaminated drinking water. Wellcome Library reference: b20424863.

Brain Pickings: The Illustrated Story of Persian Polymath Ibn Sina and How He Shaped the Course of Medicine

NEW BOOKS:

Historiens de la santé: Empty Sleeves: Amputation in the Civil War South

 

Basic Books: Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cats

9780465075713

Profile Books: Scientific Babel: The language of science from the fall of Latin to the rise of English

Vanderbilt University Press: Medicine and Nation Building in the Americas, 1890–1940

THEATRE:

FILM:

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

VIDEOS:

Science Dump: There’s a reason for all the madness in Alice in Wonderland, it’s maths!

Youtube: Nick Lane discusses Leeuwenhoek’s observations of “little animals” under a microscope

New York Times: Animated Life: Pangea

Youtube: Under The Knife, Episode 7 – Medieval Urine Wheels

Irish Philosophy: Why Study…James Ussher

Youtube: Using Maxwell’s Equations Before the Electron

RADIO:

BBC Radio Ulster: The Lady Computer of Strabane: Annie Maunder

PODCASTS:

Nature Podcast: Why is English the language of science?

AHF: Podcast: Manhattan Project National Historical Park

The Leonard Lopate Show: The Painter and the Philosopher Who Taught Us How to See

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

CfP: The Forum for the History of Chemical Sciences (FoHCS) and the Commission for the History of Modern Chemistry (CHMC) are setting up a panel After Ypres: the integration of science into war for the next HSS meeting in San Francisco, November 2015.

Call for Publications: Tales from the Crypt: Museum Storage and Meaning

Yale University: Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Biology 27-28 March 2015

NYAM: Lecture: Dr Vivian Nutton Vesalius Correcting Vesalius 31 March 2015

ChoM News: Lecture: Pregnancy and Personhood – The Maternal-Fetal Relationship in America, 1850 to the Present Harvard Medical School 2 April 2015

Maritime @ Greenwich: New Researchers in Maritime History Conference 10 April 2015

University of Durham: CfP: Hume and Naturalism 16-17 July 2015

University of Sydney: Rethinking Intellectual History 2015 7-9 April

King’s College London: CfP: Working Across Species: Comparative Practices in Modern Medical, Biological and Behavioural Sciences 7-8 January 2016

 

Durham University: The 10th UK Integrated History and Philosophy of Science Workshop 16-17 April 2015

Philos-L: Call for Papers The Journal of Philosophy and Medicine

CHF: Make Your Own Books of Secrets: A Workshop 13 June 2015

CHoM News: Gettysburg to Boylston Street – The Legacy of Civil War Medicine in the 21st Century Harvard Center for the History of Medicine 13 April 2015

 

UCL: STS seminar: “How Does Science Blind Itself – and Then Society Too? A Brief History of Scientific Knowledge of Radiocaesium Behaviour in Soils, and the post-Chernobyl Sheep-Contamination Prediction Fiasco” 25 March 2015

 

The Ninth Conference on The Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena 23-28 August 2015

LOOKING FOR WORK:

University of Oxford: AHRC Doctoral Studentship in collaboration with the Imperial War Museum: Contemporary Art and Conflict at IWM

Museums and the Web: Visiting Assistant/Associate Professor, Museum & Digital Culture

Society and the History of Chemistry and Alchemy: The SHAC Award Scheme

University of Kent: 50th Anniversary Research Scholarship in the History of Science

Science Museum Group: Associate Curator, Infrastructure and Built Environment

H-Net: The History Makers seek a full time Oral History Researcher

University of Warwick: Assistant Professor in the History of Medicine

Simmons: School of Library and Information Science: The James A. Lindner Digital Archive Summer Fellowship

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #41

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Whewell's Masthead

Volume #41

Monday 30 March 2015

EDITORIAL: Welcome to the forty-first edition of you weekly #histSTM links list Whewell’s Gazette, as always stuffed full of all the best that the Internet had to offer in the histories of science, technology and medicine over the last seven days.

This week we feature two science outsiders who share a birthday on 23 March and who have become historical icons over the years. First up is Amalie Emmy Noether the female mathematician from our own home base who set several milestones for women in the history of science in the early twentieth century. In a letter to the New York Times Albert Einstein wrote the following about her:

In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began. In the realm of algebra, in which the most gifted mathematicians have been busy for centuries, she discovered methods which have proved of enormous importance in the development of the present-day younger generation of mathematicians.

It is common practice to refer to Emmy as the greatest female mathematician of the twentieth century. This claim is however false, she was one of the greatest mathematicians male or female of the twentieth century.

Emmy shares her birthday with the nineteenth-century land surveyor and amateur geologist William Smith who produced the first ever geological map of an entire country; a map that celebrates its two hundredth birthday this year. Of working class origins Smith was originally treated with disdain by the gentleman of the Geological Society but they came to recognise their error and eventually awarded him their highest honour.

This edition of Whewell’s Gazette is dedicated to all those whose love of science is so great that they overcome the adversities that life throws into their paths to achieve their aims as did both Emmy and William

Quotes of the week:

When people on airplanes ask me what I do I used to say I was a physicist, which ended the discussion. I once said I was a cosmologist, but they started asking about makeup, and the title astronomer gets confused with astrologer. Now I say I make maps – Margaret Geller

‘When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.’ — Mark Twain h/t @girlinterruptin

“It’s a terrible tragedy & we can’t tell you anything meaningful so we won’t waste your time by speculating,” said no news broadcaster ever – Michael Brooks

Best panel title at Lunar & Planetary Sci Conf:”Your Last Chance to Talk about Ceres Before Data Wreck Your Theories” – Michael Robinson @ExplorationBlog

“Do not multiply emails beyond necessity” – Ockham’s Law of Academic Communication – Mark Eli Kalderon @PhilGeek

TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice. – The Devil’s Dictionary – Ambrose Brice 1906 h/t @hist_astro

Galileo annoyed people in power; Ted Cruz is a person in power who annoys people – @drskyskull

“Pure mathematics, may it never be of any use to anyone.” A toast by Henry John Stephen Smith (1826-1883) h/t @cratylus

“Whoever becomes familiar with human anatomy and physiology, his faith in God increases.” – Ibn Rushd

There comes a time in life where a person is just left alone to walk and write. That’s true, isn’t it…isn’t it? – @DublinSoil

The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact -T.H. Huxley”

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” – Richard Feynman “Members of the public can have useful insights that the experts may not have thought about” – @Roland_Jackson

“Ecclesiastical history is long, life is short” – Anthony Grafton

Birthday of the Week:

Emmy Noether born 23 March 1882 Noether   Google Doodle Archive: Emmy Noether’s 133rd Birthday Emmy Google Doodle   The Renaissance Mathematicus: The house where Emmy Lived

Emmy was born in this house on the Hauptstraße in Erlangen Photo: Thony Christie

Emmy was born in this house on the Hauptstraße in Erlangen
Photo: Thony Christie

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Emmy and the Habilitation

Time: New Google Doodle Honors Revolutionary Mathematician Emmy Noether

Vox: Emmy Noether revolutionized mathematics – and still faced sexism all her life

Galileo’s Pendulum: Emmy Noether and Symmetry, Revisited

The Washington Post: Emmy Noether Google Doodle: Why Einstein called her a ‘creative mathematical genius’

PACSL Finding Aids: Emmy Noether materials

Bitch Media: Happy birthday to brilliant mathematician Emmy Noether 3 Quarks Daily: Emmy Noether: Poet of Logical Ideas

William Smith born 23 March 1769

William Smith Source: Wikimedia Commons

William Smith
Source: Wikimedia Commons

BBC: William Smith: Seminal geological map rediscovered

Flickr: Rediscovered Smith Map

UCMP Berkeley: William Smith (1769-1839)

More than a Dodo: Celebrating Smith

Science Daily: Archivists unearth rare first edition of the 1815 ‘Map that Changed the World’

The Independent: Rare first edition of 200-year-old William Smith ‘map that changed the world’ found William Smith’s Maps – Interactive

History of Geology: A History of Geological Maps: I. From Outcrop to the first Map

The Geological Society: ‘Strata Identified by Organised Fossils…’ 1816–1819

Typical fossils found in the Lower Chalk stratum Image: Geological Society

Typical fossils found in the Lower Chalk stratum
Image: Geological Society

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY: Rundtaarn: The History

Rundetårn Copenhagen Source: Wikimedia Commons

Rundetårn Copenhagen
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Physics Today: Remembering the oil-drop experiment

Yovisto: Ulugh Beg – Astronomer

AHF: James B Conant

Intellectual Ventures Laboratory: A Story of Invention: the Laser

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Wakefield Wright’s Interview

The New York Times: Hydrogen Bomb Physicist’s Book Runs Afoul of Energy Department

Space.com: Astronomy’s Oldest Known ‘Nova’ a Cosmic Case of Mistaken Identity

A chart showing the position of a "nova" that appeared in 1670 and was dubbed Nova Vul 1670. It would later be renamed CK Vulpeculae. Its location was recorded by the famous astronomer Hevelius and was published by the Royal Society in England in its journal Philosophical Transactions.

A chart showing the position of a “nova” that appeared in 1670 and was dubbed Nova Vul 1670. It would later be renamed CK Vulpeculae. Its location was recorded by the famous astronomer Hevelius and was published by the Royal Society in England in its journal Philosophical Transactions.

Explore Whipple Collections: The parts of an astrolabe

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Rose Bethe’s Interview

AHF: Atomic Timeline

Polaroid: blipfoto: Inside Yale’s Van de Graaff Particle Accelerator

arXiv.org: The Reception of Newton’s Principia (pdf)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Who owns the time capsule found at historic Brashear factory?

Corpus Newtonicum: Elected by God

Yovisto: Aristarchus of Samos and the Heliocentric System

Luminarium.com: Medieval Cosmology

Novus Light: International Year of Light 2015: Celebrating Ibn Al-Haytham

Longitude Project Blog: Richard Dunn uncovers the story of Flamsteed’s well telescope

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

Slate Vault: A 1935 Historical Map of Shanghai, Designed by an Enthusiastic Resident Expat

Carl Crow and the Shanghai Municipal Council, “Illustrated Historical Map of Shanghai,” 1935.

Carl Crow and the Shanghai Municipal Council, “Illustrated Historical Map of Shanghai,” 1935.

Longitude Project Blog: Observing at Greenwich with Dryden Goodwin 

Longitude Project Blog: Where should you put your meridian?

MEDICINE:

The James Lind Library

Fiction Rebbot: Daily Dose: Early Ectogenesis: Artificial Wombs in 1920s Literature

Embryo Project: Elinor Catherine Hamlin (1924– )

NYAM: Lost and Found

David Livingstone (1813–1873), in Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, opposite page 1.

David Livingstone (1813–1873), in Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, opposite page 1.

Nobelprize.org: Robert Koch and Tuberculosis

NYAM: Roget Beyond the Thesaurus

The Recipe Project: Was there a recipe for Korean ginseng?

Social History of Medicine Advance Access: ‘Nature Concocts & Expels’: The Agents and Processes of Recovery from Disease in Early Modern England

The Conversation: Faecal transplants: not the first prescription of medicinal poo

TECHNOLOGY:

Nasa: Gemini A Bridge to the Moon

National Archive: Today’s Document: Radio, RCA victor, Coil Winder

Nasa: Dr Robert H Goddard, American Rocketry Pioneer

Atlas Obscura: Objects of Intrigue: Micky Mouse Gas Mask

Astrolabes and Stuff: Historical navigational instruments on trial

The Recipes Project: New-Fashioned Recipe: Angle Food Cake and Nineteenth Century Technological Innovation

Conciatore: Chalcedony Glass

17th century ribbed bottle,Brescia, Italy.

17th century ribbed bottle,Brescia, Italy.

Conciatore: Aventurine

Small amphora in aventurine glass ”,  Murano, Salviati.

Small amphora in aventurine glass ”,
Murano, Salviati.

Opposing Views: Which Way Should Toilet Paper Be Put On A Holder? Original 1891 Patent Solves The Mystery (Photos)

Tech Republic: Hacking the Nazis: The secret story of the women who broke Hitler’s codes

Georgian Gent: Knives and scissors sharpened…

Low-Tech Magazine: Email in the 18th century: the optical telegraph

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Science News: Telling stories from stone tools

The Public Domain Review: Living Lights: a Popular Account of Phosphorescent Animals and Plants (1887) 14005583845_092af70f98_b Notches: Beyond penetration: rethinking the murder of Edward II

Avidly: The Inhuman Anthropocene

H-Grad: Environmental History a reading list

Bioscience: Darwin’s Children’s Art Saved a Bit of His Science

Charles Darwin's children drew serveral pictures on the original manuscript of his historic book "On the Origin of Species." (Source: American Museum of Natural History)

Charles Darwin’s children drew serveral pictures on the original manuscript of his historic book “On the Origin of Species.” (Source: American Museum of Natural History)

Niche: Met Techs, the Environment and Science at the Joint Artic Weather Stations, 1947–1972

Notches: Reading Silences in Histories of Religion and Sexuality

History of Geology: A History of the Use of Illustrations in the Geosciences: I. Seeing is Believing…

NYAM: Happy Bird-Day Conrad Gessner

Audra J Wolfe: Germs in Space – Joshua Lederberg, Exobiology, and the Public Imagination, 1958– 1964

AIP: The Discovery of Global Warming

The Sloane Letters Blog: Of a leveret brought up by a cat V0021351 A hare. Coloured wood engraving.

CHEMISTRY:

Meteorite Manuscripts: John Dalton and the Curious Album Page

C&EN: 100 Years of Chemical Weapons

Narratively: Isabella Karle’s Curious Crystal Method

Sitting in her sunroom, Dr. Karle reviews her husband's research documents and publications.

Sitting in her sunroom, Dr. Karle reviews her husband’s research documents and publications.

The Royal Society: Rumford – the colourful Count

CHF: James Bryant Conant

Embryo Project: Diethystibestrol (DES) in the USA

Chemical Heritage Magazine: The DDT Collector

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Centre for Medical Humanities: Why Medical Humanities?

Niche: Postcards from America I Slide1 Conciatore: Mother Dianora

The Bigger Picture: Science Service, Up Close: “Stealth Authors” and An Appreciation of Honesty

Huffpost Tech: Gather Your Allies, Engage in Unorthodox Thinking – 300 Year Old Lessons in Innovation

Nature: A criticism of ‘science fandom’ prompts online reflection

CHF: Distillations: Spring 2015 Volume 1 Number 1

AHA Today: AHA Issues Letter of Support for the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine

CHoM News: Getting the Word Out

NCSE: Friends of Darwin and Friend of the Planet awards for 2015

Ptak Science Books: Great Babies: Baby Einstein, Baby Feynman, Baby Schroedinger, and More

Niels Bohr, 1890, age about 5. Source: http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/www/niels/bohr/barndom/

Niels Bohr, 1890, age about 5. Source: http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/www/niels/bohr/barndom/

The Guardian: Remembering an overlooked treaty

From Factory to the Future in Ambler Pennsylvania: History. Health. Community.

Storify: Museum objects and non-museum objects: bicycles and chairs: An exploration Mapping the Past with Linked Data in OpenHistoricalMap

The Washington Post: Ted Cruz invokes Galileo to defend climate scepticism – and historians aren’t happy

Compasswallah: The Needle and the Rainbow

Blink: The light and the sea

Reflected glory ‘The Shipwreck of the Minotaur’ (1810) by JMW Turner, who was the first to tear down the distinction between subject and object, presaging what would be later known as impressionism. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Reflected glory ‘The Shipwreck of the Minotaur’ (1810) by JMW Turner, who was the first to tear down the distinction between subject and object, presaging what would be later known as impressionism.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

JHI Blog: The Bookends of Chronicles: Decisions About Time

ESOTERIC:

Open Culture: Goethe’s Theory of Colors: The 1810 Treatise That Inspired Kandinsky & Early Abstract Painting goethe-color-first-plate-of-Zur-Farbenlehre Forbidden Histories: Carl Gustav Jung and the Clairvoyant, Mrs. Fäßler

BOOK REVIEWS:

The New York Times: Apple Opens Up to Praise New Book on Steve Jobs, and Criticize an Old One

Rosetta Stones: A Perfect Book for Hooking Kids on Rocks

Self-Awareness.com Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leuwenhoek and the Reinvention Of Seeing

Thinking Like a Mountain: Anatomy & the Organisation of Knowledge, 1500–1850

L0021649 A. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org 'Tertia musculatorum' (third muscle man). De humani corporis fabrica libri septem Andreas Vesalius Published: 1543 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

L0021649 A. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.uk
http://wellcomeimages.org
‘Tertia musculatorum’ (third muscle man).
De humani corporis fabrica libri septem
Andreas Vesalius
Published: 1543
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History

Science Book a Day: Street-Fighting Mathematics: The Art of Educated Guessing and Opportunistic Problem Solving

Science Mag: Ivan Pavlov, revealed

The Wall Street Journal: Through a Glass, Brightly

n+1 Magazine: What Did You Do In The War, Doctor?

Trowelblazers: Archaeology, Sexism, and Scandal

Popular Science: Scientific Babel – Michael D. Gordin

Science Direct: The Age of Scientific Naturalism: Tyndall and his Contemporaries Forbes: Steven Weinberg Tackles The History of Science

NEW BOOKS:

University of Chicago Press: Making Marie Curie 9780226235844 Historiens de la santé: Too Hot To Handle: A Global History of Sex Education

THEATRE:

FILM:

Exploring the Past: National Geographic Films and Historical Progress

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

VIDEOS:

Brunelleschi IMHS: Galileo’s Telescope the Invention

Youtube: AMNH: Inside the Collections: Wasps

Bloggingheads.tv: Science Faction John Hogan & Neuroskeptic

Brain Pickings: Jane Goodall Tells Her Remarkable Life-Story, Animated

BBC: A History of Ideas

Science Daily: On the hunt for astronomical artifacts

Vimeo: Engineering fiction: literature and science in interwar Britain

Youtube: Houghton Library: Starry Messengers

Youtube: Emily Winterburn discusses Caroline Herschel’s 1787 account of a new comet

Youtube: Erwin Schrödinger – Do Electrons Think? (BBC 1949)

RADIO:

Siren FM: History of Science – Power Plants

BBC: In Our Times: The Curies Graham Farmelo: Wells and the Bomb

PODCASTS:

Science Friday: Writing Women Back Into Science History

Nature: Audiofile: Music and the making of science

Physics Buzz Blog: Manhattan Project Historical Park

Blog Talk Radio: Virtually Speaking Science: Kelly Hills & Alice Dreger – Galileo’s Middle Finger

365 Days of Astronomy: Cultural Astronomy – Easter and the Missing Days

Star Date: African Astronomy

BBC: The Clocks Go Forward Tonight

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Museum Boerhaave: Registration: Materia Medica on the move: trading, studying, and using plants in the early modern period 15-17 April 2015

Pisa: CfP: HaPoC: Third International Conference for the History and Philosophy of Computing 8–11 October 2015

The Royal Society: Science on myself: Explore the history of ethics and self-experimentation in medicine 9 April 2015

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON SCIENCE AND LITERATURE DIVISION of HISTORY of SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL UNION for the HISTORY and PHILOSOPHY of SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON SCIENCE AND LITERATURE Greek island of Andros 22-26 June 2015

The Royal Society: Mendel’s legacy 2 June 2015

academia.edu: Programme: The History of the Body: Approaches and Directions Institute of Historical Research, London 16 May 2015

SIGGIS: Call for Submissions: Computer History Museum Prize

Oxford MHS: Exhibition: ‘Dear Harry…’ – Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost to War 14 May–18 October 2015

H-ArtHist: Call for Publications: Tales from the Crypt: Museum Storage and Meaning

Main Point Books: Book Launch with Paul Halpern for Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cats 18 April 2015 Bryn Mawr

Oxford University: Unique Course: The History and philosophy of Evidence-Based Health Care 15–19 June 2015

Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona: International Workshop: A Comparative Study of Nuclear Energy Programs from the 1940s until the 1970s 7-8 May 2015

AJS Annual Meeting 2015 Boston – CfP: Jewish medical knowledge and rabbinic discourse(s) in Late Antiquity

University of Edinburgh: Beyond Leeches and Lepers: Medieval & Early Modern Medicine 2 May 2015

The Royal Society: Archival afterlives 2 June 2015

Science History Publications/USA: Savant Remains: Brains and Remains of Scientists 4th Watson Seminar in the Material and Visual History of Science Organized by Marco Beretta, Maria Conforti, Paolo Mazzarello University of Pavia, Pavia, September 4th, 2015.

Atomic Heritage Foundation: Register Now for 70th Anniversary Events 2-3 June 2015

SHNH: Invitation for submissions to the Stearn Student Essay Prize 2015 for natural history

Centre for the History and Philosophy of Physics: Physics and the Great War One-Day Conference Oxford 8 June 2015

Natural History Museum: Talk: Robert Hooke and the Miracles of the Miniature 1 April 2015

CHF: First Friday: The Alchemist’s Cookbook 3 April 2015

CHoM News: Lecture: Gettysburg to Boylston Street: The Legacy of Civil War Medicine in the 21st Century Center for the History of Medicine Harvard 13 April 2015

Heterodoxology: ContERN meeting at ESSWE5 in Riga 18 April 2015

BSHM: LMS 150th Anniversary BSHM–LMS De Morgan Day 9 May 2015

SEAC 2015: Astronomy in Past and Present Cultures

New University of Lisbon: CfP: 2nd Portuguese-Brazilian Meeting on the History of Tropical Medicine 14-16 October 2015

LOOKING FOR WORK:

Swansea University: Fully-funded PhD Studentship: Swansea Science: The First 100 Years

Birkbeck: University of London: PhD Studentship

Swansea University: AHRC Funded PhD Studentship: Calculating Value: Using and Collecting the Tools of Early Modern Mathematics

ADHO: Apply to Become AHDO’s Next Communications Fellow

Conecta: History of science/history of medicine Ph. D. opportunities at University of Glasgow: deadline 03/04/15

University of Warwick: Assistant Professor in the History of Medicine

Mendeley Blog: Lets talk about science – Scopus Young Researchers’ Award for science communications

Burns Library, Boston College: Head of Public Services and Instructional Outreach

The dual carriageway to Damascus: Assistant for the public engagement project Nappy Science Gang

Queens University: Term Adjunct appointment to teach history of medicine


Whewell’s Gazettte: Vol. #42

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Whewell's Masthead

Volume #42

Monday 06 April 2015

EDITORIAL:

Back again after the long Easter weekend, it’s your weekly #histSTM links list Whewell’s Gazette #42, fuller than a basket of Easter eggs with all the best in the histories of science, technology and medicine collected by our busy bunnies from the Internet over the last seven days.

This week saw one of those sensationalist science headlines that journalists love. A medieval recipe for a salve for curing styes appears to be effective against the antibiotic resistant MRSA bacteria. This produced a flurry of activity amongst both medieval and medical historians, as well as those who are both. With Vanessa Heggie from, the by us much loved, H-Word blog leading the pack with a suggestion for “bioprospecting”. Note that word in your computer dictionaries dear readers; it’s a scientific research buzzword of the future. Remember you read it here first.

Taking the lead from Vanessa’s tweet: “Full commentary on the anglosaxon antibiotic coming soon ‪#watchthisspace – @HPS_Vanessa”, we have collected a research lab full of reports on this discovery and its consequences for your delectation to open this weeks edition of Whewell’s Weekly.

The H-Word: Anglo-Saxon antibiotics are just the start – it’s time to start bioprospecting in the past

Leeches were out of favour in Western for about 150 years, before we rediscovered them in the 20th century. Photograph: Reuters Source: The H-Word

Leeches were out of favour in Western for about 150 years, before we rediscovered them in the 20th century. Photograph: Reuters
Source: The H-Word

Panacea: What’s Old Is New Again: Medicine’s Blast From the Past

Medievalist.net: Can medieval drugs help modern patients?

New Scientist: Anglo-Saxon remedy kills hospital superbug MRSA

Medievalist.net: Anglo-Saxon medicine is able to kill modern-day superbug, researchers find

Archaeology: 100-Year-Old Salve Recipe Kills MRSA Culture

CNN: Thousand-year-old Angle-Saxon potion kills MRSA superbug

The Guardian: A medieval remedy for MRSA is just the start of it. Powdered poo, anyone?

Youtube: Antibiotics from the medieval medicine cabinet (1)

Quotes of the week:

C&H For WG

“I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way”. – Mark Twain

“Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself”.

John Locke

“If I was independently wealthy I’d be an academic”. – @DublinSoil

“Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.” – George Orwell

“Who does not understand should either learn, or be silent.” ― John Dee

“For I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new or to become a slave to defend it” – Isaac Newton h/t @KeesJanSchilt

From 1871: ‘Much of history, as usually taught to children, is too much like a bound Police Gazette, a condensed Jack Sheppard.’ h/t @harbottlestores

“Nature makes the organs to suit the work they have to do, not the work to suit the organ.” Aristotle, Parts of Animals.

“The inquisition of Final Causes is barren, and like a virgin consecrated to God, produces nothing.” — Francis Bacon

“A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections – a mere heart of stone”. – Charles Darwin (letter to Huxley)

Alchemist insult: “Hollandus had more of the fire-art in his little finger as Helmont in his whole body.” -J. Kunckel h/t Paul Engle @Conciatore_org

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words”

W Douglas, 1855.

“Libraries should be open to all – except the censor-“― J,F.K.

“The freedom of putting a book aside is closely allied to that of walking out of performances” – @publichistorian cf.

“I know I generally feel alive and emancipated when I choose to walk out of something” Maggie Nelson h/t @publichistorian

“The multitude of books is making us ignorant.” – Voltaire

“I have a three-day weekend and so many books to read”. – @publichistorian

“The pen is not only mightier than the sword, it is considerably less messy”. – John Laurie

“The pun is mightier than the sword”. – @GustavHolmberg

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Royal Observatory Greenwich Blog: Women’s History Month – Ruth Belville

Ruth’s mother Maria Belville Source: Royal Museums Greenwich

Ruth’s mother Maria Belville
Source: Royal Museums Greenwich

Tri-City Herald: Early Hanford worker turns 100

AIP: Historic Sites Initiative

Ptak Science Books: Einstein and Fermi Immigration Papers, National Archive

Dannen.com: Albert Einstein, F.B.I. Interview

Tycho’s Nose: The Nobel Prize winner at the bottom of the garden

Ptak Science Books: Einstein, Frisch, Cockcroft: Atomic Physics Film, 1948

Yovisto: Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Quantum Electrodynamics

Royal Museums Greenwich: Women’s History Month – 20th Century

Annie Maunder (centre) preparing to observe the 1900 eclipse in Algiers with the British Astronomical Association (from E. Walter Maunder (ed.), The Total Solar Eclipse of May 1900).

Annie
Maunder (centre) preparing to observe the 1900 eclipse in Algiers with the
British Astronomical Association (from E. Walter Maunder (ed.), The Total
Solar Eclipse of May 1900).

AHF: In Memoriam: Evelyne and Larry Litz

academia.edu: “Perhaps irrelevant”: the iconography of Tycho Brahe’s small brass quadrant

Nautilus: The 315-Year-Old Science Experiment

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Emmy the student and Emmy the communist!

Medievalist.net: The Concept of Time in the Medieval World View

Scripta Manent: “Lent approaches with a slow and weary step”

Verso: Einstein and the Astronomers

Classical Astronomy: A Brief History of Lunar Eclipses

Science 2.0: This Year Easter Falls On The Correct Date According To Newton

The Telegraph, Calcutta India: Astronomer without a telescope

Statue of Aryabhata on the grounds of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune

Statue of Aryabhata on the grounds of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune

Science 2.0: How Is The Date of Easter Calculated? The Science Answer

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

Science Direct: The longitude question

Wonders & Marvels: How I write History…with Chet van Duzer

Slate Vault: A Chart of New Guinea in 1901, When the Island Was Halfway Between Unmapped and Mapped

"New Guinea," from George Franklin Cram's 1901 atlas, Cram's Standard American Railway System Atlas of the World. David Rumsey Map Collection

“New Guinea,” from George Franklin Cram’s 1901 atlas, Cram’s Standard American Railway System Atlas of the World.
David Rumsey Map Collection

Medievalist.net: Sayonara Diorama: Acting Out the World as a Stage in Medieval Cartography and Cyberspace

Longitude Project Blog: Happy Birthday Mr Harrison

MEDICINE & HEALTH:

The Guardian: Australian women in uniform: then and now – in pictures [includes nurses]

Active History.ca: Theme Week: Infectious Disease, Contagion and the History of Vaccines

Active History.ca: “Be Wise – Immunize!” Vaccine Promotion in Canada During the 20th Century

Active History.ca A Brief History of Vaccines in Colonial Africa

MHL: Browse over 3000 digitized volumes of historical medical journals

The Order of the Good Death: Curating a UK Medical Museum: Two Heads Are Better Than One

History of Medicine in Ireland Blog: The historical development of Irish Hospitals and the importance of their records

CHoM News: Staff Finds: L. Vernon Briggs, the Scrapbooker

Contagions: Plasmodium knowesi: A New Ancient Malaria Parasite

Library Queens University: Unrecorded Vesalius first edition discovered at Queen’s University

O Say Can You See?: Midwives on horseback: Saddlebags and science

The nurse-midwife carried two leather saddlebags—one on each side of the horse connected by a strap. She had one pair of saddlebags for general health care, and one for home deliveries. Nearly all babies were delivered at home. These saddlebags are from the 1930s.

The nurse-midwife carried two leather saddlebags—one on each side of the horse connected by a strap. She had one pair of saddlebags for general health care, and one for home deliveries. Nearly all babies were delivered at home. These saddlebags are from the 1930s.

History Today: Breastfeeding, corsets and ageing: the mysterious dangers of womanhood

 

Schuliosh School of Medicine & Dentistry: Top 10 Reasons Why Studying Medical History Will Make you a Better Doctor

The Quack Doctor: Dr Wheeler and the Bacillus of Death

ABC Science: Did arsenic poisoning make gods limp?

History Today: William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood

Early Modern Medicine: Fumigating for Health

A woman with some flowers; representing the sense of smell. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

A woman with some flowers; representing the sense of smell.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

The Conversation: Floating wombs and fumigation – why Gwyneth Paltrow has ‘steam douching’ all wrong

Identities.Mic: What 6 Ridiculous Old-Timey Diseases All Have in Common

Royal College of Physicians: The eyes have it

The Recipes Project: “Look’d Like Milk”: Breastmilk Substitutes in New England’s Borderlands

BuzzFeed: Johns Hopkins Sued For $1 Billion Over Unethical STD Study

Providentia: The Heroin Miracle (Part one of Three)

TECHNOLOGY:

Medievalist.net: A Comprehensive History of Beer Brewing

Yovisto: The Visions of Emanuel Swedenborg

Conciatore: Isaac Hollandus

AEON: Preternatural Machines

City Lab: This 19th Century ‘Stench Map’ Shows How Smells Reshaped New York City

 

 

IEEE Spectrum: The Multiple Lives of Moore’s Law

Nemfrog: Telephones for every 100 people on January 1, 1947

PRI: Finding the forgotten women who programmed the world’s first electronic computer

 

 

The Belated Nerd: Revell Sells Secrets to the Soviets…For $2.98

revell-uss-george-washington

Conciatore: Carries the Palm

War Is Boring: The ‘Tsar Bomba’ Was a 50-Megaton Monster Nuke: But it was far too big to ever be a practical weapon

How We Get To Next: Happy 150th Birthday Crossness Pumping Station!

Bard Graduate Center: The Interface Experience: Forty Years of Personal Computing

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

History of Geology: The Four Layers of the Earth

TrowelBlazers: Bertha “Birdie” Parker

Bertha c. 1930 at Gypsum Cave, Nevada, with throwing sticks. Source: Acc. 90-105 Science Service Records, Smithsonian Institution Archives via Flickr.

Bertha c. 1930 at Gypsum Cave, Nevada, with throwing sticks. Source: Acc. 90-105 Science Service Records, Smithsonian Institution Archives via Flickr.

Embryo Project: Telomerase in Human Development

Wonders & Marvels: The Secret History of Cheese

Smithsonian: Department of Invertebrate Zoology News –No Bones: The Inspiring Mary Jane Rathbun – Women’s History Month Highlight

Mary Jane Rathbun, 1927, by John Howard Pearce (Acc. 90-105 - Science Service, Records, 1920s-1970s, Smithsonian Institution Archives)

Mary Jane Rathbun, 1927, by John Howard Pearce (Acc. 90-105 – Science Service, Records, 1920s-1970s, Smithsonian Institution Archives)

TrowelBlazers: Gudrun Corvinus

Embryo Project: James William Kitching (1922-2003)

Fossil History: A BIG Month for Paleoanthropology: March Roundup

sealevelrise: The Seal Rock

Slide11

Notches: Franca Viola says ‘No’: Gender violence, consent, and the law in 1960s Italy

Letters from Gondwana: The Megafauna Extinction in South America

Science News: Ancient hominids moved into Greece about 206, 000 years ago

Open Spaces: Recognizing Women’s Vital Contribution to Wildlife Conservation

The Public Domain Review: Tractatus de Herbis (ca. 1440)

Miniature of plants and a demon: the herb Ypericon, supposed to repel demons.

Miniature of plants and a demon: the herb Ypericon, supposed to repel demons.

Science News: Bright bird plumage resulted from natural, sexual selection

 

This View of Life: The Spandrels Of San Marco Revisited: An Interview with Richard C. Lewontin

The Return of Native Nordic Fauna: Beaver for Lent

Embryo Project: St. George Jackson Mivart (1827–900)

Embryo Project: Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak’s Telomere and Telomerase Experiments (1982-1989)

Science 2.0: Darwin’s ‘*Strangest Animals Ever Discovered’ Solved

Palaeoblog: Born This Day: Ralph A. Bagnold

Vox CEPR’s Policy Portal: The myth of Europe’s Little Ice Age

CHEMISTRY:

The Guardian: Robert Bunsen did a whole lot more than invent the Bunsen burner

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Dr Jennifer Evans: RSA15 Berlin

Literacy of the Present: The Ignorant Library

OUP Blog: Cinderella Science

Charles Henry Bennett, ‘Wonderful Plants’, from John Cargill Brough, The Fairy-Tales of Science (1859). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. - See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2015/03/cinderella-science/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=oupacademic&utm_campaign=oupblog#sthash.7b01S79M.dpuf

Charles Henry Bennett, ‘Wonderful Plants’, from John Cargill Brough, The Fairy-Tales of Science (1859). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. – See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2015/03/cinderella-science/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=oupacademic&utm_campaign=oupblog#sthash.7b01S79M.dpuf

Jack Hoy.com: Summary of ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ (1950) by Alan Turing

The many-headed monster: Food for thought: An Introduction to Theory via the History of Food and Drink

Situating Science: Letter from the Director: Situating Science and Beyond

University of Leicester: Former history student awarded scientific instrument prize posthumously

PLOS Blogs: How Articles Get Noticed and Advance the Scientific Conversation

University of Toronto Press: Canadian Journal of History 49.3 – History of Medicine

Wellcome Trust: New Capital Award for the Museum of Science & Industry

Wired: We Need To Stop Ignoring Women Scientists

UCL Department of Economics: The First 100 Years

American Science: Celebrating 50 Years of JAS-BIO

The H-Word: Destroyed Snowden laptop: the curatorial view

The remains of the PC desktop and the Mac laptop that GCHQ came to the Guardian’s offices in King’s Place and destroyed. Only the laptop is displayed in the exhibition. Photograph: Sarah Lee

The remains of the PC desktop and the Mac laptop that GCHQ came to the Guardian’s offices in King’s Place and destroyed. Only the laptop is displayed in the exhibition. Photograph: Sarah Lee

Homunculus: Who are you calling a journalist?

The #EnvHist Weekly

Conciatore: Don Antonio de’ Medici

Advances in the History of Psychology: Call for Participation: Interviews with Archival Researchers

AIP: Telling the Stories of Women and African Americans in the Physical Sciences

ISIS gets a makeover

Wo’s Weblog: Please, don’t put your papers on academia.edu

The Guardian: Why scientific truth may hurt

bonæ litteræ: What’s the purpose of a conference? Reflections on RSA 2015 Part I & Part II

ESOTERIC:

Inside MHS Oxford: Alchemy and the Laboratory

The Recipes Project: Animal Charms in the Later Middle Ages

Detail of a marginal drawing of a horse. British Library, Harley 1585 f. 68v

Detail of a marginal drawing of a horse. British Library, Harley 1585 f. 68v

 

BOOK REVIEWS:

From the Hands of Quacks: Sounds of Modern History: Auditory Culture in 19th and 20th Century Europe

Popular Science: A Scientist in Wonderland

Science Book a Day: Interviews David Wright author of Downs: The history of a disability

academia.edu: The Newton Papers: The Strange and True Odyssey of Isaac Newton’s Manuscripts

Ashgate Publishing Blog: The history of intelligence and ‘intellectual disability’

Forbes: ‘sapiens’: An All Too Brief History of Humanity

Science Book a Day: What is Life? How Chemistry Became Biology

Popular Science: Einstein Relatively Simple

Unknown

New Scientist: Eye of the Beholder: Life through a camera obscura

Literary Review: Three of a Kind: Naturalists in Paradise: Wallace, Bates and Spruce in the Amazon

The Steven Weinberg Controversy:

Physicist Steven Weinberg has written a book about the history of science that is not only very strongly Whiggish in its historical approach but also castigates historians of science for not being Whiggish. He repeated this point of view in an article this week for the Guardian in which he also recommends thirteen best science books for the general reader. We have collected together some relevant blog posts on the resulting controversy provoked by Weinberg’s attitude.

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The Guardian: To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science by Steven Weinberg

The Guardian: Science and nature: Point of view: Steven Weinberg: the 13 best science books for the general reader

The Wall Street Journal: Why Scientists Shouldn’t Write History

(If you run into a pay wall google the title, Why Scientists Shouldn’t Write History, and click on the first link!)

Double Refraction: Why historians shouldn’t write off scientists: On Steven Shapin’s review of Steven Weinberg’s Explain the World

Physics Today: To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science; In the Light of Science: Our Ancient Quest for Knowledge and the Measure of Modern Physics

Galileo’s Pendulum: Science by authority is a poor model for communication

Homunculus: This explains everything

The H-Word: An alternative 13 best books about science?

Forbes: Recommended science books for non-scientists

NEW BOOKS:

Historiens de la santé: Beastly encounters of the Raj: Livelihoods, livestock and veterinary health in India, 1790-1920

University of Chicago Press: Wicked Intelligence: Visual Art and the Science of Experiment in Restoration London

9780226017297

Wiley: The Clever Object

Historiens de la santé: The Fate of Anatomical Collections

Historiens de la santé: The Development of Brain Banks in the UK c.1970–c.2010

Ashgate: Geography, Technology and Instruments of Exploration

 

Historiens de la santé: Anatomy and Anatomist in Early Modern Spain

Wellcome Trust: Bookshelf: Latest Releases

THEATRE:

FILM:

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHARE:

Scientific American: Saturn: A History [Slide Show]

VIDEOS:

iai tv: This is Our Church: Science as religion

Youtube: Gimlet: The history of the Gimlet, and its connections to early medicine, colonialism, and the rise of the multinational corporation.

Ri Channel: The Nature of Things – Crystals and Gems

Youtube: Scientists of the National Trust: Isaac Newton

CSH: Oral History: Ernst Mayr on Historian Michael Ruse

 

Vimeo: Laura J. Snyder Eye of the Beholder Reviewed by John w. Wilbanks

It’s OK to be Smart: Richard Feynman The Experimenters

Youtube: Revelations: Experiments in Photography trailer

RADIO:

BBC Radio 4: Far Side of the Moore

PODCASTS:

The Take Away: State Secretes Revealed? Hydrogen Bomb Architect Moves Forward with Memoir

CHF: Fads and Faith: Belief vs. Fact in the Struggle for Health

Here & Now: ‘Becoming Steve Jobs’ Attempts to Dispel Myths Chart an Evolution

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Wikimedia UK: Wikipedia Science Conference, Wellcome Collection Conference Centre, London, 2-3 September 2015

CHF: The Museum at CHF – Starting 4 April extended weekend hours

University of Chicago: CHSS: Lecture: “The Unfit Darwinist: Disability, Slander and the Evolution Trial Before Scopes.” Adam Shapiro, 10 April 2015

University of Chicago: CIS: Colloquium: Repurposing Magic 10 April 2015

The Philosophy of Science Association: Announcements

Folger Shakespeare Library: Exhibition: Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude 19 March–23 August 2015

Sussex Humanities Lab: Showcasing the Digital 8 April 2015

 

Royal College of Physicians: Exhibition: Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee January–July 2016

dee_john_pr739_200

Pembokeshire Coast National Park: Exhibition: Wallace: The Forgotten Evolutionist? will be on display at Oriel y Parc until 25 November 2015.

NIH: U.S. National Library of Medicine: History of Medicine Lectures for 2015

University of Oxford: Lecture: Naturalists in paradise 24 April 2015

National Maritime Museum: Harrison Decoded: Towards a perfect pendulum clock 18 April 2015

The Royal Society: Archival afterlives 2 June 2015

NYAM: Presentations for History of Medicine Night: 19th and 20th Century Stories 6 May 2015

NIH: U.S. National Library of Medicine: NLM to Host “Images and Texts in Medical History: An Introduction to Methods, Tools, and Data from the Digital Humanities” 11-13 April 2015

University of Reading: The Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology: Exhibition: The Antikythera Mechanism February–April 2015

HWO: History Workshop Online: Call for Contributor

Institute of English Studies: School of Advanced Studies London: Biennial London Chaucer Conference: Science, Magic and Technology 10-11 July 2015: Registration & Programme

LOOKING FOR WORK:

Royal Astronomical Society: Library Assistant (part time)

University of Exeter: Exeter REACT Collaborative Studentship: Playing with heritage: a historical and practical investigation of gamification in the heritage museum

Kosciuszko Foundation Visiting Professorship at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #43

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Whewell's Masthead

Volume #43

Monday 13 April 2015

EDITORIAL:

Welcome to the forty third edition of you weekly #histSTM links list Whewell’s Gazette bringing you all that we could find about the histories of science, technology and medicine presented in the Internet during the last seven days.

As I type outside my window the reviving spring sun is shining in a blue sky tempting the green shoots and blossoms out of the trees and bushes bring an end to the long grey winter. Two hundred years ago nature demonstrated to the human race what can happen when spring doesn’t come and the cycle of growth is interrupted by an unexpected occurrence. On 10 April 1815 the volcano Tambora erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa ejecting vast quantities of dust and ash into the atmosphere causing massive interruptions in the weather patterns of the whole world. The year 1816 became known at the year without summer and led to the worst famine in the nineteenth century causing the deaths of tens of thousands throughout the world.

Since the beginning of the modern period humanity has lived with the dream, or should that be the illusion, that science will give us total dominion over world and all that it contains. So-called natural disasters such as the Tambora demonstrate to us just how fragile our grip on our lump of rock hurtling through space really is.

Aerial view of the caldera of Mount Tambora, formed during the colossal 1815 eruption. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Aerial view of the caldera of Mount Tambora, formed during the colossal 1815 eruption.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Royal Society: The Repository: ‘the world had turned to ash’

Letters From Gondwana: A Christmas Carol: Dickens and the Little Ice Age

Georgian Gentleman: 10th April 1815 – one of the most explosive days in recorded history

Quotes of the week:

“The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is…42!” – Deep Thought

“We thought the future would be flying cars but it’s actually arguing with a motion sensor about whether or not your hands are in the sink”. – @MildlyAmused

The minority opinion that “they” isn’t a singular as well as a plural gender-neutral pronoun doesn’t change the fact that it is both. – @SnoozeinBrief

“At least 1 British uni. has restricted the number of bookshelves professors may have in their offices to discourage ‘personal libraries.’” – @joncgoodwin

Afraid I bridle at generalising “did THE GREEKS think?” M Finley always said “which Greeks? when?” Not unitary culture – @wmarybeard

“Wer die Vergangenheit nicht kennt, wird die Zukunft nicht in den Griff bekommen.” – Golo Mann (1909-1994)

“I think astronomy is a bad study for you. It makes you feel human insignificance too plainly” – Thomas Hardy

“Nature is like an oracle that points to one of various alternatives we suggest rather than answering us directly in a language of its own”. – @cratylus

“I would rather be a meteor every atom in me in magnificent glow than a sleepy permanent planet” – Jack London

“To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say”. – Descartes

“When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn’t the slightest intention of putting it into practice.” – Bismarck h/t @jondresner

“To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking”. – J. W. v. Goethe

“It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.” – William of Ockham

“Sometimes, the most brilliant and intelligent students do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds” – Dianne Ravitch

CCDUmdtWYAA695H.jpg-large

“Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come… Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate…” – Seneca

“On philosophical grounds too I cannot see any good reason for preferring the Big Bang idea. Indeed it seems to me in the philosophical sense to be a distinctly unsatisfactory notion, since it puts the basic assumption out of sight where it can never be challenged by a direct appeal to observation” – Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) Proponent of the “steady-state” universe. Coined the term “Big Bang” while at the same time rejecting it on BBC radio (1949). h/t @hist_astro

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

New York Times: 70 Years On, Crowd Gets Close to the Birthplace of the Atomic Bomb

Medium.com: Battle of the Nobel Laureates

National Geographic: Time Line: A History of Telescopes

The New York Times: Our Cosmic Selves

Symmetry: Our flat universe

Qatar Digital Library: AL-BĪRŪNĪ: A high point in the development of Islamic Astronomy

Diagram of phases of the moon in al-Bīrūnī’s Kitāb al-tafhīm. Or. 8349, f. 31v

Diagram of phases of the moon in al-Bīrūnī’s Kitāb al-tafhīm. Or. 8349, f. 31v

Yovisto Blog: Kamerlingh Onnes and Superconductivity

Dataisnature: The Hindu Temple as a Model of Fractal Cosmology – Forecasting Architecture with Recursive Instruction

Yellamma Temple [Karnataka] – Paul Prudence

Yellamma Temple [Karnataka] – Paul Prudence

arXiv.org: The contribution of Giordano Bruno to the special principle of relativity

The Royal Society: Publishing Blog: Mary Somerville: A lesson in creativity and determination

Fine Books & Collections: Out of this World

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Meta Newson’s Interview

Christie’s The Art People: Jacques Bassantin, Astronomique Discours

The Irish Times: Annie Russell: A trailblazing Irish astronomer whose work eclipsed her husband’s

The Washington Post: Behind the scenes of the final mission to service the Hubble telescope

Christie’s The Art People: Decoding the stars: An expert introduction to Astrolabes, the beautiful objects that were the ‘medieval iPhones’

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Betsy Stuart’s Interview

2015 International Year of Light: Einstein Centenary

2015 International Year of Light: Discoverers of Light

Real Clear Science: The Real History of the Planet Vulcan: How a Planet’s Death Birth Relativity

The Guardian: Starwatch: Happy 25th birthday, Hubble

Science News: Celebrating 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

Atlas Obscura: Inside the most amazing map library you’ve never heard of

Medievalist.net: The Atlas Miller

rsz_moleiro_article1_3-650x463

History Today: Fantasy Worlds: A Gallery of Mythical Maps

National Library of Scotland: Map Images: Coasts of Scotland on marine charts, 1580–1850

MEDICINE & HEALTH:

Medievalist.net: Medieval Viagra

ChoM News: Tour an “ultramodern” hospital in the year 1900

NYAM: Treating Mad Men: Harry Levinson’s Men Management, and Mental Health

CHF: The Strange, Gruesome Search for Substance X

Our understanding of endorphins can be traced back to the head of a pig. (Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection)

Our understanding of endorphins can be traced back to the head of a pig. (Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection)

Perceptions of Pregnancy: Infertility and Infidelity in Early Modern England

The Recipes Project: The Politics of Chocolate: Cosimo III’s Secret Jasmine Chocolate Recipe

Medievalist.net: Medieval Medicine and Modern Science: An Interview with Freya Harrison

Brought to Light: 1920’s Nursing Uniforms from the “Aristocrat of Uniforms”

mss20134_1_bobevansuniform1-589x1024

Embryo Project: Fetal Surgery

The Conversation: Why I wasn’t excited about the medieval remedy that works against MRSA

Social History of Medicine: Inhaling Democracy: Cigarette Advertising and Health Education in Post-war West Germany 150s–1975

Jennifer Sherman Roberts: Laughing at History

Greg Jenner: A Brief History of Menstruation

TECHNOLOGY:

Ptak Science Books: Human Computer Art, 1949 

Yovisto: Harold Eugene Edgerton and the High Speed Photography

IEEE Spectrum: What Kind of Thing Is Moore’s Law?

IEEE Spectrum: Is This Really the Anniversary of Moore’s Law

Ptak Science Books: Air-Punk: Underwater Cyborg Diving Suit (1797)

6a00d83542d51e69e2017742ffbae9970d-500wi

Dhaka Tribune: Bengal Lights

Ptak Science Books: Cross-Section Series: Battleship “Deutschland”, 1931

Conciatore: Laughing in the Fern

Mad Art Lab: Grace Hopper and the Democratization of Computer Progamming (Women in Science 35)

Capitalism’s Cradle: Female Inventors of the Industrial Revolution Part 4: Henrietta Vansittart

Conciatore: Borgo Pinti

Medievalist.net: Shining Light on Medieval Illuminations: Pigments through the Ages

Ptak Science Books: The Old Bridge’s Future Bridge

Ptak Science Books: A Nickel-Plated Low-priced Arithmetical Godsend (1922)

The Telegraph: How Alan Turing’s secret notebook could disappear forever

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

The Irish Examiner: Who was John Tyndall?

Embryo Project: Amphioxus, and the Mosaic Theory of Development (1893), by Edmund Beecher Wilson

Embryo Project: The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics (1924), by Paul Kammerer

Natural History Apostilles: The Cider Crisis and the Golden Pippin

Science News: Brontosaurus deserves its name, after all

Inside the Science Museum: The Micrographia Microscope

Microscope 1927-437. A full-size reconstruction of Robert Hooke’s compound microscope. © Science Museum/SSPL

Microscope 1927-437. A full-size reconstruction of Robert Hooke’s compound microscope. © Science Museum/SSPL

Your Thurrock: Thurrock Local History Society receives lottery boost: Raising Awareness of Alfred Russel Wallace in Thurrock

In Circulation: Man’s Interest in His Own Surroundings: Conserving a Collection of Early Modern Topology Books

Cell: Obituary: Ronald J. Konopka (1947–2015)

Advances in the History of Psychology: Special Issue: “Ordering the Social History of the Human Sciences in Modern China”

Notches: Sex and the American Quest for a Relatable Past

Palaeoblog: Died This Day: Edward Drinker Cope

The Return of Native Nordic Fauna: Learning from wild boar

Wild boar on exhibit at the Latvian Museum of Natural History, Riga.

Wild boar on exhibit at the Latvian Museum of Natural History, Riga.

Ptak Science Books: On the Origins of Ripples (1883)

CHEMISTRY:

Skulls in the Stars: Kathleen Lonsdale: Master of Crystallography

Kathleen Yardley with her fellow students at the Royal Institution, via her Biographical Memoir

Kathleen Yardley with her fellow students at the Royal Institution, via her Biographical Memoir

Skulls in the Stars: One more anecdote about Kathleen Lonsdale

The Public Domain Review: The Nitrous Oxide Experiments of Humphry Davy

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Conciatore: Sonnet to a Barber

CHoM News: Warren Museum reaches new audiences

Chicago Journals: ISIS: Vol. 106 No. 1 March 2015

Wlfi.com: Purdue exhibit showcases the history of computer science

The exhibit shows how the field of computer science has changed since the 1950s. (WLFI Photo/Purdue University)

The exhibit shows how the field of computer science has changed since the 1950s. (WLFI Photo/Purdue University)

JOOMAG: The Medievalverse No. 10

Just Publics @ 365: A Guide to Blogging for Academics

The New York Society Library: Erudition and Encyclopedism: Adam Winthrop Reads Conrad Gesner’s “Mithridates”

Lego Ideas: Scientists In History Collection

Only Living Girl NY: Morbid Anatomy Museum: Dioramas

The Nature of Reality: The Myth of the “Next Einstein”

JHI Blog: Inverting the Pyramid: Notes on the Renaissance Society of America Meeting (26-28 March, Berlin)

THE: Why journals should not forget their past

Irish Philosophy: Who sharpened Occam’s Razor?

Notches: The Sex Institute on Euston Road

The Recipes Project: Transcription-as-collaboration

The Linnaean Society: The Linnaean Collection

The University of Chicago Press: Journals: Reflecting on a Century of Scholarship: The Five Most Influential Isis Articles Ever Published

The #EnvHist Weekly

Science News: Top 10 science anniversaries of 2015

Medium.com: The Extraordinary Growing Impact of the History of Science

BBC News: The scientists who escaped the Nazis

Gustav Born is one of the last living links with the refugee scientists Source: BBC News

Gustav Born is one of the last living links with the refugee scientists
Source: BBC News

ESOTERIC:

Heterodoxology: New ESSWE website – and conference program available

New website, new look and feel. Breathing new fire into the field.

New website, new look and feel. Breathing new fire into the field.

BOOK REVIEWS:

Science Book a Day: Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry

The Curious Waveform: Top 10 popular chemistry books for the general reader

The New Yorker: Sight Unseen: The hows and whys of invisibility

The Wall Street Journal: The Miracle of the Heavens

Science Book a Day: Interviews Wade Allison

Science Book a Day: Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World

Somatosphere: Nicolas Langlitz’s Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research Since the Decade of the Brain

neuropsychedlia-240x360

Brain Pickings: Radioactive: The Incredible Story of Marie Curie Told in Cyanotope

The Spectator: Moving heaven and earth: Galileo’s subversive spyglass

Science Book a Day: Interviews Bill Hayes

The Wall Street Journal: Science Books That Made Modernity

Nature: Women at the edge of science

NEW BOOKS:

Amazon: Scientists at War: The Ethics of Cold War Weapons Research

Historiens de la santé: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist

index

Amazon: Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science and the World

Historiens de la santé: Paying with Their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled

THEATRE:

FILM:

The Guardian: Batman v Superman writer to tackle Isaac Newton thriller

Open Culture: Frank Capra’s Science Film The Unchained Goddess Warns of Climate Change in 1958

TELEVISION:

BBC: Drills, Dentures and Dentistry: An Oral History

SLIDE SHOW:

Discover: A History of General Relativity

o-GRAVITYPROBEB-facebook

VIDEOS:

Youtube: Information Age: The microchip that changed the world

The Guardian: Shelf Life: How to time travel to a star

Youtube: Daphne Oram British composer and electronic musician

Science Dump: Sit back, relax, and let Richard Feynman talk to you about beauty

Wellcome Library: English folding almanac in Latin

RADIO:

BBC Radio 4extra: Dr Jacob Bronowski

PODCASTS:

Siren FM: History of Science – Power Plants

WCAI: How Naomi Oreskes Discovered the Roots of Climate Change Denial

Royal Society: Science on myself: Explore the history of self-experimentation in medicine

04-self-experimentation_310

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

University of Bucharest: IRH: Masterclass: Space, Time,, and Motion in the Early Modern Period 18-22 May 2015

University of Bucharest: Workshop: Natural History, Mathematics, and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century 26-27 May 2015

University of Newcastle: Workshop: The Diseases, Health Risks and Phobias of Modern and Fashionable Living Victorian Perspectives 18 June 2015

University of Newcastle: Workshop: Tuberculosis as a Romantic Disease: Artistic, Historical & Literary Perspectives

IEEE: The Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize: The prize is awarded annually to the best paper in the history of electrotechnology—power, electronics, telecommunications, and computer science—published during the preceding year: Deadline 15 April 2015

SIGCIS: The Mahoney Prize recognizes an outstanding article in the history of computing and information technology, broadly conceived. Deadline 15 April 2015

University of Notre Dame: Biennial History of Astronomy Workshops 24-28 June 2015

University of Oklahoma: Exhibition, Galileo’s World Starting August 2015 through 2016

CHF: Moore’s Law @ 50 Computer History Museum Mountain View 17 April 2015

Guardian Masterclasses: Everything you need to know about science communication 25 April 2015

University of Cardiff: CfP: Postgraduate Conference: Magic and the Supernatural in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

Society for the History of Technology: The Levinson Prize

The Waring Library Society and the Waring Historical Library at the Medical University of South Carolina invite entries for the W. Curtis Worthington, Jr., Undergraduate and Graduate Research Papers Competition.

Maynooth University: CfP: HSTM Network Ireland Inaugural Conference 13-14 November 2015

University of Oxford: Centre for the History and Philosophy of Physics: “Physics and the Great War” One-Day Conference 13 June 2015

National Maritime Museum Greenwich: CfP: Ways of Seeing 17 July 2015

University of Berkeley California: Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society: “Faking It”: Counterfeits, Copies, and Uncertain Truths in Science, Technology, and Medicine 10-11 April 2015

Twin Café Sheffield: Coffee, Culture and Conversation in the Eighteenth Century 21 April 2015

Museum of Natural History Oxford: Lecture: Leviathan and the Air Pump 1 May 2015

University of Wales Trinity Saint David: Thirteenth Annual Conference of the Sophia Centre; Astrology As Art: Representation and Practice

LOOKING FOR WORK:

University of Manchester: CHSTM: Research preparation bursary

University of Leiden: Centre for the Arts in Society: 2 PhD’s in Ichthyology

University of Cambridge: Research Assistant: HSS-Bio project (Part Time, Fixed Term)

Science Museum: Associate Curator, Infrastructure and Built Environment

AIP: Research Assistant



Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #44

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Super-Sonic Owl

Volume #44

Monday 20 April 2015

EDITORIAL:

Back once again with Whewell’s Gazette #44 your weekly #histSTM links list bringing you as always as much of the histories od science, technology and medicine that our editorial staff could round up in the last seven days in the Internet and brought to you this week by our super-sonic currier owl.

A message for all those blogging or tweeting about #histSTM are you already included in Michael Barton’s (@darwinsbulldog) HistSci list? If not give the doggie a shout out!

Our birthdays of the week this week feature three people that one might not consider to be scientists Thomas Jefferson, Leonardo da Vinci and Hans Sloane. Jefferson and Sloane get, in our opinion too little attention in the history of science and Leonardo too much.

Jefferson represents a class of people in the history of science who get too little mainstream attention, the educators. Although an amateur scientist in his own right his major contribution to the history of science was as a politician ensuring that science got taught in schools and universities. A healthy scientific culture needs teachers of science and in the early days of the USA Jefferson did much to encourage and support the teaching of science, a service that should be acknowledge more often and more loudly.

Leonardo the epitome of the Renaissance man is every science writers darling and anybody writing about the history of science seems to try to find a way to drop his name into whatever they are writing with little thought given to the relevance. However as one of the posts from The Renaissance Mathematicus linked to here points out Leonardo’s actual influence on the evolution of science was almost nil. Maybe it’s time for historians of science to give more attention to the Jeffersons and Sloanes of this world and somewhat less to Leonardo.

Hans Sloane deserves to be mentioned in the history of science for several reasons but it is above all as a collector that he made his greatest contribution to that histories. The collectors of the Early Modern period made a massive contribution to several branches of the science, above all to the life sciences and the greatest of them all was almost certainly Hans Sloane. Just how great he was can be seen that not only was the British Museum founded on his collection but when part of that collection was split off, the Natural History Museum as well.

It pays to some time to stop and consider that the evolution of science is not just driven by ‘geniuses’ making great discoveries but also by people more in the background, such as Jefferson and Sloane doing more mundane things like furthering the teaching of science or building collections of scientific specimens.

Quotes of the week:

“How wonderful. John Evelyn described butterflies as ‘flying flowers’” – Andrea Wulf

A pitfall for the ‘woman scholar': she tries “to insist upon, & to apologize for, her

erudition in the same breath.” Payne-Gaposchkin, 1956

So cute to watch all the sheltered first-world 20-somethings in academia speak about “wisdom”.” @replicakill

Ein Narr der schweigt, geht für einen Weisen durch. – Christiaan Huygens

“In nature nothing exists alone.” – Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

I wish there was a pie chart showing the ratio of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Einstein scholars to all historians of science. – Harun Küçük

“A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker”. David Hume

“But science & everyday life cannot & should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life.”- R. Franklin

“If any good came out of a) WWI, and b) astrology, it would have to be Holst’s The Planets suite.” – @smiffy

History is a race between education and catastrophe – HG Wells ”

Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare. – Descartes

“A fool, Mr, Edgeworth, is one who has never made an experiment.” – Erasmus Darwin

Final (paper draft)≠(final paper) draft. Language is not associative. – Evelyn J Lamb

Birthdays of the Week:

Thomas Jefferson born 13 April

Miniature Portrait of Jefferson by Robert Field (1800) Source: Wikimedia Commons

Miniature Portrait of Jefferson by Robert Field (1800)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

“Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson. Enlightenment slaveowner; captures the American contradiction in one life”. – Tom Levenson

“Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight.” – Thomas Jefferson

Constitution Day: 10 facts about Thomas Jefferson for his 272nd birthday

History of Geology: In Megalonyx We Trust: Jefferson’s patriotic monsters

Leonardo da Vinci born 15 April 1452

Portrait of Leonardo by Francesco Melzi Source: Wikimedia Commons

Portrait of Leonardo by Francesco Melzi
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Letters from Gondwana: Da Vinci and the Birth of Ichnology

The Guardian: Leonardo da Vinci’s earth-shattering insights about geology

Brain Pickings: Leonardo da Vinci’s Life and Legacy, in a Vintage Pop-Up Book

Lapham’s Quarterly: Leonardo da Vinci

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Pissing on a Holy Cow

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Is Leonardo da Vinci a great artist or a great scientist? Neither actually.

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Leonardo artist-engineer redux

Hans Sloane born 16 April 1660

Hans Sloane Source: British Museum

Hans Sloane
Source: British Museum

The British Museum: Sir Hans Sloane

Figaries: The case of five children: who were inoculated in Dublin, on the 26th of August, 1725

A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life: Sir Hans Sloane, Cocoa Magnate

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Silicon Republic: Ireland’s Greatest Woman Inventor Finalist – Annie Maunder, pioneering astronomer

American Scientist: Huygens’s Clocks Revisited

The Recipes Project: “Take Good Syrup of Violets”: Robert Boyle and Historical Recipes

Wallifaction: The Discovery of Titan: Huygens’s Cipher and Wallis’s Trick

John Wallis

John Wallis

Royal Observatory Greenwich Blog: Astro Art: cosmic bodies and our solar system

Margaret Maskelyne’s Orrery, by William Jones, ZBA4664. Source: Royal Museums Greenwich

Margaret Maskelyne’s Orrery, by William Jones, ZBA4664.
Source: Royal Museums Greenwich

Nature: Biography of a space telescope: Voices of Hubble

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Wakefield Wright’s Interview

Rejected Princess: Annie Jump Cannon

The Calculator Site: How To Convert Between Fahrenheit and Celsius

Irish Philosophy: Further Elucidations on Newton’s Thoughts

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Asterisms and Constellations and how not to confuse them with Tropical Signs

The constellation Virgo Source: Wikimedia Commons

The constellation Virgo
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Yovisto Blog: Giovanni Riccioli – a man of Encyclopedic Knowledge

Backreaction: A wonderful 100th anniversary gift for Einstein

Medium.com: Einstein, Schrödinger, and the story you never heard

Smithsonian.com: Why Albert Einstein, the Genius Behind the Theory of Relativity, Loved His Pipe

Slate: Einstein’s Brain Heist

BBC News: The strange afterlife of Einstein’s brain

The Mütter Museum: Exhibitions: Albert Einstein’s Brain

Philly.com: Science icon who struggled with fame

Scientias.nl: Archeologen ontdekken oudste horloge van Noord-Europa in Zutphen

quadrans

 

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

British Library: Lines in the Ice: top five highlights

Robert Thorne, Orbis Universalis Descriptio [London : T. Dawson for T. Woodcocke, 1582]. British Library C.24.b.35  Untitled

Robert Thorne, Orbis Universalis Descriptio [London : T. Dawson for T. Woodcocke, 1582]. British Library C.24.b.35 Untitled

MEDICINE & HEALTH:

Remedia: Peanut Panic

The Public Domain Review: An account of the late improvements in galvanism (1803)

Hiden City Philadelphia: The Curious Case of Body Snatching at Lebanon Cemetery

Niche: Animal Matter: The Making of ‘Pure’ Bovine Vaccine at the Connaught Laboratories and Farm at the Turn of the Century

The New York Times: Sheila Kitzinger, Childbirth Revolutionary, Dies at 86

Sheila Kitzinger complained that “our culture of birth is heavily medicalized,” with women submitting passively. Credit Rex Features, via Associated Press

Sheila Kitzinger complained that “our culture of birth is heavily medicalized,” with women submitting passively. Credit Rex Features, via Associated Press

Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry: Vol. 39 Issue 1 March 2015 – Medicalizing Heroin

Wellcome History: Dysfunctional diasporas?

Telegraph & Argus: How project uses history and technology to help tackle disease

George Campbell Gosling: Teaching Medical History

Dr Alun Withey: Edging the Competition: Surgical Instruments in the 18th-Century

It’s About Time: Early Herbals & Pharmacies

Neuron Culture: A rowdy, harrowing, vital book: My Times review of ‘Galileo’s Middle Finger,’ by Alice Dreger

It’s About Time: Making a Herbal with Leonhart Fuchs (1502–1566)

Leonhart Fuchs, De Historia Stirpium, Basel 1542, Sp Coll Hunterian L.1.13, Glasgow University Library Detail of illustrators at work from page 897

Leonhart Fuchs, De Historia Stirpium, Basel 1542, Sp Coll Hunterian L.1.13, Glasgow University Library Detail of illustrators at work from page 897

Nursing Clio: Sunday Morning Medicine

Ore. Exeter: The Birth of Psychedelic Literature: Drug Writing and the rise of LSD Therapy 1954–1964

TECHNOLOGY:

Distillations Blog: Moore’s Law: A Silicon Story

Distillations Blog: Moore and the Microprocessor

Distillations Blog: Three Reasons Why Moore’s Law Might Be Doomed

Gordon Moore Source: Wikimedia Commons

Gordon Moore
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Medium.com: Back Channel: How Gordon Moore Made “Moore’s Law”

CNET: Moore’s Law is the reason your iPhone is so thin and cheap

Wired: 50 Years On, Moore’s Law Still Pushes Tech to Double Down

 

The New York Times: The Enola Gay: A Minor Mystery, Solved!

BBC: Future: Why the fax machine isn’t quite dead yet

The Renaissance Mathematicus: The worst history of technology headline of the year?

Ptak Science Books: Tools of a Scientist, ca. 1700

Ptak Science Books: A Cutaway Infographic of the RAF Wellington, 1941

Atlas Obscura: Steampunk… or just Punk’d?

Conciatore: Glass or Rock?

Board of Longitude Project Blog: Decoding Harrison

The Guardian: Clockmaker John Harrison vindicated 250 years after ‘absurd’ claims

 

The Burgess B clock trial revealed the truth of the claim by John Harrison that he could build a land timepiece to keep time to within a second over 100 days.  Photograph: National Maritime Museum /.

The Burgess B clock trial revealed the truth of the claim by John Harrison that he could build a land timepiece to keep time to within a second over 100 days.  Photograph: National Maritime Museum /.

The Independent: John Harrison’s ‘longitude’ clock sets new record – 300 years on

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Palaeoblog: Died This Day: Amanz Gressly

Notches: Doing It With Food: Cooking and the History of Sexuality

History of Geology: Clash of the Titans: The Science behind the Iceberg that sank the Titanic

Irish Examiner: Who was John Tyndall?

Linda Hall Library: Scientist of the Day – Patrick Russell

Yovisto: Augustus Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers – the Father of British Archaeology

Augustus Pitt Rivers

Augustus Pitt Rivers

Embryo Project: Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844)

Embryo Project: Essay: The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate

Yovisto: Nikolaas Tinbergen and the Study of the Instinct

academia.edu: How the Great Chain of Being Fell Apart: Diversity in natural history 1758– 1859

Embryo Project: Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch (1867–1941)

Thinking Like a Mountain: The History of the Plant: Cultivating Innovation at the John Innes Centre

Independent: Secret file reveals scandal of the eel expert, the archbishop and the Loch Ness Monster ‘sighting’ that sent Whitehall into a spin

Nessie Source: Getty

Nessie
Source: Getty

OUP Blog: Darwin’s “gastric flatus”

Palaeoblog: Died This Day: William Arkell

Dan Merkur: Freud’s Mushroom Hunting

Brain Pickings: Thinking with Animals: From Aesop to Darwin to YouTube

The Friends of Charles Darwin: 19th April, 1882: The Death of a hero

Embryo Project: “Evolution and Tinkering” (1977) by Francois Jacob

 

CHEMISTRY:

Yovisto: Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and the White Gold

Conciatore: Zaffer

Chemical Heritage Museum: That Beautiful Theory

Joseph Black.  CHF Collections.

Joseph Black.
CHF Collections.

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

China.org.cn: Preserving Tibetan medicine, astronomy & astrology systems

New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science: Why is this philosophy?

The Renaissance Mathematicus: There is no such thing as Greek science

The Recipes Project: First Monday Library Chat: University of Glasgow Library

Inscape unimaginable: The Challenges of Beginning a Scholarly Debate in the 21st Century

Ellie Miles: Curator of the Future Conference

CHF: E-newsletter April 2015

JHI Blog: The Early History of Arabic Printing in Europe

Ether Wave Propaganda: Scientists and the History of Science: The Shapin View

Cambridge MA 7//08 Harvard University Professor Steven Shapin (cq) photographed for Ideas Section. Wiggs/Globe Staff Section:Metro; Reporter; slug:06shapin        Library Tag  07062008   Ideas

Cambridge MA 7//08 Harvard University Professor Steven Shapin (cq) photographed for Ideas Section. Wiggs/Globe Staff Section:Metro; Reporter; slug:06shapin Library Tag 07062008 Ideas

The New York Times: Starving for Wisdom

The Recipes Project: Of recipes, collectors, compilers and contributors

 

The #EncHist Weekly

HSS: Newsletter Vol. 44 No. 2 April 2015

Royal Museums Greenwich Collections Blog: Royal Museums Greenwich Photographic Studio

Wonders & Marvels: Cabinet of Curiosities: xviii

SciLogs: A Dissertation on Science Blogging

Madison.com: Siegfried, Robert

ESOTERIC:

Occult Minds: How does new age literature cherry-pick its science? A cognitive approach

Conciatore: Primordial Matter

Mining practices,  from Agricola, De Re Metallica

Mining practices,
from Agricola, De Re Metallica

 

Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Sonnet XIV

Prospect: Science gives power to the supernatural

Ptak Science Books: When a Non-Prediction Was and Wasn’t a Prediction (1651–1666)

distillatio: Making the oil of vitriol and why I’ve been using the wrong distillations equipment

BOOK REVIEWS:

Nature: Women at the edge of science

Thinking Like a Mountain: Scientists’ Expertise as Performance: Between State and Society, 1860-1960

Brain Pickings: Creative Courage for Young Hearts: 15 Emboldening Picture Books Celebrating the Lives of Great Artists, Writers, and Scientists

The Guardian: Stories that shape: What are the best novels about the politics of technology

Science Book a Day: 10 Great Books on Scientific Illustration

Society for Social Studies of Science: Rachel Carson Prize: Refining Expertise

Popular Science: The Vital Question – Nick Lane

Read Cube: Books in Brief: Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cats (and more)

Reviews in History: The History of Emotions: An Introduction

plamper

The New York Times: ‘Galileo’s Middle Finger,’ by Alice Dreger

The New York Review of Books: Einstein as a Jew and a Philosopher

NEW BOOKS:

Google Books: Rational Action: The sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940-1960 Preview

Historiens de la santé: Les Antipsychiatries: Une Histoire

Amazon.com: Philosophy of Chemistry: Growth of a New Discipline

Amazon.com: Moore’s Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley’s Quiet Revolutionary

Harvard University Press: Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science

THEATRE:

FILM:

Scientific American: Darwin: the Movie

TELEVISION:

The New York Times: General Electric Planning Television Series Covering Science and Tech

SLIDE SHOW:

VIDEOS:

Youtube: Finding the Speed of Light with Peeps

 

Irtiqa Blog: Three excellent lectures by John Hedley Brooke on Galileo, Darwin and Einstein

Youtube: Kepler’s First Law of Motion – Elliptical Orbits (Astronomy)

Moreana: Thomas Moore and the Art of Publishing

Vimeo: Moore’s Law at 50

Vimeo: Charles Darwin: A Genius in the Heart of London, Part 2 A Final Journey to the Abbey

RADIO:

PODCASTS:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Birkbeck: University of London: Thomas Harriot Seminar 2015 6-7 July

The Warburg Institute: Pseudo-Galenic Texts and the Formation of the Galenic Corpus 14-15 May 2015

University of Manchester (CHSTM): The Dog in 20th Century Science – Science in the 20th Century Dog 26 June 2015

University of Swansea: Technologies of Daily Life in Ancient Greece 2-3 July 2015

University of Manchester (CHSTM): Medicines, Translations and Histories 11-12 Jun 2015

University of Manchester (CHSTM): Stories about science: exploring science communication and entertainment media 4-5 June 2015

National University of Ireland – Maynooth: CfP: History of Science, technology and Medicine Network Ireland Annual Conference 13-14 November 2015

University of Pennsylvania: JAS 2015: CfP: Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine 16-17 October 2015

University of Cambridge: Department of History and Philosophy of Science: Easter Term 2015: Twentieth Century Think Tank

 

University of Cambridge: Department of History and Philosophy of Science: Easter Term 2015: Department Seminars

LOOKING FOR WORK:

National Museums Scotland: Keeper, Science and Technology

University of Konstanz: PhD: Simulation and Counterfactual Reasoning in Neuroscience

University of Bristol: Centre for Medical Humanities: Lecturer in Medical Humanities

 

Universitat Pompeu Fabra – Barcelona: 2 Marie Curie Grants – History of Nuclear Energy in Europe

Royal College of Surgeons: Curator Museums & Archives

University of Vienna: Studentship in HPS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #45

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Cornelis Bloemaert

Volume #45

Monday 27 April 2015

EDITORIAL:

Bringing you all the best of the histories of science, technology and medicine found in the Internet over the last seven days it’s your weekly #histSTM links list Whewell’s Weekly #45. This week our editorial takes a look at a piece of very recent history celebrating the twenty-fifth birthday of the Hubble Space Telescope.

 

The Hubble Space Telescope Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Hubble Space Telescope
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The telescope first emerged in Holland in the last third of the year 1608. Within a year Thomas Harriot in England, Simon Marius in Germany and Galileo Galilei had all started to use it as a scientific instrument to observe the heavens and ushered in a completely new era in the history of astronomy. Throughout the seventeenth century telescopes got bigger and better and changed humanity’s knowledge and perception of the solar system. At the end of the century Isaac Newton succeeded in producing the first functioning reflecting telescope and changed the game once again.

Late in the eighteenth century William Herschel discovered Uranus, the first new planet to be observed in the solar system in the history of humanity, using his own handmade Newtonian reflecting telescope.

In the nineteenth century William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse introduced the era of the giant reflectors. His Leviathan of Parsonstown , a 72 inch reflector, built in 1845 was the largest aperture telescope in the world until the twentieth century. The twentieth century saw telescopes getting larger and larger and humanity finally learnt that our solar system was only part of one of many galaxies and not the whole of the cosmos as had been thought since antiquity.

The twentieth century also saw the advent of the radio telescope in the nineteen thirties giving us a new way of ‘seeing’ out into space. Throughout the four centuries since the invention of the telescope, optics improved, lenses and mirrors were perfected and telescopes got bigger and bigger as well as technically more and more sophisticated. However observational astronomy was always limited by the problems caused by the earth’s atmosphere and so as the space age dawned astronomers dreamed of putting up a telescope, as a satellite, outside of that bothersome atmosphere.

Finally twenty-five years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into space on 24 April 1990 and became the biggest flop in space and telescope history. The telescope mirror was defective and the picture it produced so out of focus as to be almost useless. In 1993 in a spectacular operation astronauts ‘repaired’ the faults and Hubble finally began to deliver and deliver it did. The era Hubble has totally and radically changed the popular perception of space, turning an initial disaster into an indescribable scientific and technological triumph.

Whewell’s Gazette wishes Hubble a very happy twenty-fifth birthday

 

Grinding of Hubble's primary mirror at Perkin-Elmer, March 1979 Source: Wikimedia Commons

Grinding of Hubble’s primary mirror at Perkin-Elmer, March 1979
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Gulf News Thinkers: Hubble telescope’s double achievement

Air & Space: 10 Hubble Images That Changed Astronomy

Uranus Rings (NASA/ESA/SETI Institute)

Uranus Rings
(NASA/ESA/SETI Institute)

Motherboard: The Hubble Space Telescope’s 25 Most Mind-Boggling Photos

Image: NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

Image: NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

Pacific Standard: How the Hubble Space Telescope’s Iconic Photos Changed the Way Everybody Saw Space

Image of Jupiter showing impact sites from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, taken July 18, 1994. (Photo: H. Hammel, MIT and NASA)

Image of Jupiter showing impact sites from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, taken July 18, 1994. (Photo: H. Hammel, MIT and NASA)

Leaping Robot: Observing the Astronomical Sublime

Screen-Shot-2015-04-24-at-12.24.33-PM

Slate: Happy 25th, Hubble!

Space Watchtower: Hubble Space Telescope at 25

This photograph, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, was recently released by NASA, for the 25th anniversary of the telescope's years in orbit of the Earth. The bright lights in the center of the photo is actually a cluster of about 3,000 stars that was discovered by Bengt Westerlund, a Swedish astronomer, in the 1960s. That cluster is now known as Wusterlund 2 and is located about 20,000 light years away from Earth and measures between six and 13 light years from end to end. The 2-million year old cluster is part of the constellation Carina and located in a section of space called Gum 29. Aside from the stars, which are relatively young in terms of space, the blue/green hues are oxygen and the red is hydrogen. (Image Sources: NASA, ecnmag.com )

This photograph, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, was recently released by NASA, for the 25th anniversary of the telescope’s years in orbit of the Earth. The bright lights in the center of the photo is actually a cluster of about 3,000 stars that was discovered by Bengt Westerlund, a Swedish astronomer, in the 1960s. That cluster is now known as Wusterlund 2 and is located about 20,000 light years away from Earth and measures between six and 13 light years from end to end. The 2-million year old cluster is part of the constellation Carina and located in a section of space called Gum 29. Aside from the stars, which are relatively young in terms of space, the blue/green hues are oxygen and the red is hydrogen. (Image Sources: NASA, ecnmag.com )

The New York Times: 25 Years Later, Hubble Sees Beyond Troubled Start

Quotes of the week:

“Picking the lint out of Darwin’s navel” – Steve Jones regarding the re-re-re-re-discovery of Patrick Matthew (this is not news). h/t @matthewcobb

“Very interesting, but how many new “darks” before we accept we’re pretty clueless here?” – Philip Ball

“Can’t we just call being clueless “dark knowledge” and be done with it?” – Peter Broks

“This really feels like a time to call them “occult forces” again” – Becky Higgitt

“It’s when you prove something you thought of yourself that you become a mathematician.” – George Hart”

“I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. – Charles Darwin h/t @friendsofdarwin

One man excels in eloquence, another in arms. – Virgil

“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovation enough” – Elon Musk

“The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning.” ― Anthony Trollope

“At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded”. – Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Der Philosoph behandelt eine Frage; wie eine Krankheit.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself”. – Plato

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

History Physics: Lights in the Sky, in history

The Evening Sun: Another View: Einstein waged battle for right to a private life

CHF: Blast from the Past: Atomic Age Jewelry and the Feminine Ideal

A Vogue model poses before the Atomium, the symbol of the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. By that time the atom had become part of popular culture.

A Vogue model poses before the Atomium, the symbol of the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. By that time the atom had become part of popular culture.

Haaretz: This Day in Jewish History: The medieval rabbi who put Aristotle before God passes on

Journal-Democrat: Astronomy 101 leaves attendees to ponder Lewis and Clark, universe

MinnPost: Checking out Carleton’s Goodsell Observatory – and its fascinating history

Salon: “Albert is an old fool”: Einstein vs Schrödinger in battle of the Nobel Laureates

Quodlibeta: The earliest reference to a telescope: England 1551?

Ptak Science Books: On Question Marks in 19th C Meteor Spectra

AHF: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

 

Leaping Robot: Conversion Experiences

MHS Oxford: ‘Dear Harry…’ – Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost To War

Physics Today: A good name rather than great riches

Yovisto: Wolfgang Pauli and the Pauli Principle

Falling Rocks: Meteorite: L’Aigle

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

The Washington Post: 30 fake maps that explain the world

Slate: The Invisible Tribute to the Paris Meridian

teleskopos: On longitude in BBC History Magazine

Mogan High History Academy: Calculating Longitude

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Abraham Ortelius and the 16th century information age

Abraham Ortelius by Peter Paul Rubens Source: Wikimedia Commons

Abraham Ortelius by Peter Paul Rubens
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Friends of Darwin: Three old maps

British Library: Maps and views blog: Maps lie in a new online course

University of Glasgow Library: Mapping in the Fifteenth Century

Public Domain Review: Forgotten Failures of African Exploration

 

Harvard University Library Open Collections Program: Expeditions and Discovery

The H-Word: Happy birthday Robinson Crusoe: the fictional author of a “History of Fact”

Ptak Science Books: Maps of Things Not There: Eden

MEDICINE & HEALTH:

Scientific American: Mad Science: The Treatment of Mental Illness Fails to Progress [Excerpt]

 

Early Modern Practitioners: ‘John Houghton and Medical Practice in William Rose’s London’

Yovisto: Gustav Fechner and Psychophysics

Perceptions of Pregnancy: Using the “poisons of sterility”: Women and contraception during the Middle Ages

Slate Vault: Lists of Types of Mania and Melancholy, Compiled for Early-19th-Centuy Doctors

Early Modern Medicine: Prayers for Cures at the Baths

John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester Credit: Wikipedia

John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester Credit: Wikipedia

British Library: Medieval manuscript blog: Ointments and Potions

The Chirugeon’s Apprentice: Laennec’s Baton: A Short History of the Telescope

A Prairie Populist: The History of the “Black Dog” as Metaphor

The Recipes Project: Gout and the Golden Fleece: Experimentation on Recipes through Chymical Correspondence

History Today: The Importance of a Good Nights Sleep

Mental Floss: Women in Medicine: Five Firsts in Their Nations

ELIZABETH GARRETT ANDERSON

ELIZABETH GARRETT ANDERSON

The History of Vaccines: Timelines

National Humanities Center: Vaccinate for Smallpox?

Yovisto: Sigmund Freud’s Structural Model of the Human Psyche

Wellcome Collection: Nymphomania

Telegraph: Ancient Egyptian cure for a hangover…a garland of laurel leaves

Blink: Horrors of the East

Conciatore: Archiater

 

TECHNOLOGY:

Ptak Science Books: The Family Tree of Computer Development, Part II

 

Culture 24: Guinness World Record for pendulum clock vindicates John Harrison 250 years on

Yovisto: Marc Seguin and the Wire-Cable Suspension Bridge

 

IEEE Spectrum: New Theory Leads to Gigahertz Antenna on a Chip

Mlive: History of space travel the subject of a new show at Muskegon Community College’s planetarium

The Recipes Project: The Colour ConText Database

Invisible Themepark: Camper Built Inside a Car, 1952

Campers built inside 1949 Nash 1952 The illustrator for this drawing is unknown.

Campers built inside 1949 Nash 1952
The illustrator for this drawing is unknown.

 

Now Appearing: Mechanical computation

The New York Times: Auctioning the Relics of Technology Pioneers

Atlas Obscura: Ghosts of the Past: 5 Places to view your iPhone’s Ancestors

Gizmodo: Why Is It Called “Rebooting”?

Library of Congress: The Typewriter – “that almost sentient mechanism”

IFL Science: Mystery of How The Egyptians Moved Pyramid Stones Solved

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Race Card: How does a university deal with its legacy of eugenics?

Palaeoblog: Born This Day: Sir William Logan

Friends of Darwin: Metaphorical sight-seeing

Embryo Project: Paul Kammerer’s Experiments on Sea-squirts in the Early Twentieth Century

Live Science: Did Neanderthals Die Off Because They Couldn’t Harness Fire?

Notches: “The Gay Bulge” or Can We Study Medieval Sexuality Through Puns?

One Irishman kills another, from Gerald of Wales’ The History and Topography of Ireland (Image: BL Royal 13 B VIII)

One Irishman kills another, from Gerald of Wales’ The History and Topography of Ireland (Image: BL Royal 13 B VIII)

AEON: Rethinking Extinction

The Return of Native Nordic Fauna: Thinking extinction with sci-fi

 

Palaeoblog: Darwin, Wallace & Patrick Matthew: Who’s Ideas on Evolution Came First?

 

BBC News: New mass extinction even identified by geologists

Yovisto: John Muir and the U. S. National Park System

 

Jonathan Saha: Colonial Canicide, Cruel to be Kind?

 

Ri Science: Happy Earth Day

HNN: Whatever Happened to the Environmental Movement?

NYAM: The Dragons of Aldrovandi

Aldrovandi 7 Headed Hydra

Aldrovandi 7 Headed Hydra

Natural History Apostilles: Lamarck’s analogy/homology of nature with culture

Natural History Apostilles: Naudin’s analogy/homology of natural and artificial selection

Yovisto: Alphonse Bertillon’s Anthropometric Identification System

 

Atlas Obscura: Shipwrecks, Scurvy and Sea Otters: The Story of Naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History: Animals in Medieval Art

The Dispersal Of Darwin: Special Issue of Endeavour journal on Charles Darwin and Scientific Revolutions

Cal Tech Archives: Charles Richter

CHEMISTRY:

Distillations Blog: The Romance of Chemistry

The Royal Institution: New Discoveries in Pneumaticks

Cartoon James Gilray

Cartoon James Gilray

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Isabella Karle’s Interview

Gastropod: Savour Flavour

The Guardian: The first world war scientists who gave their lives to defeat poison gas

CHF: Chemical Warfare: From the European Battlefield to the American Laboratory

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Science Museum: The Kraszna-Krausz and First Book Awards 2015

Conciatore: Cross Pollination

Scroll.in: Christopher Alan Bayly, pre-eminent Western historian of India, dies

The Guardian: Sir Christopher Bayly obituary

Christopher Bayly arrived at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, in 1970 and became profressor of imperial and naval history in 1992 Source: The Guardian

Christopher Bayly arrived at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, in 1970 and became profressor of imperial and naval history in 1992
Source: The Guardian

Science League of America: “But It’s Just a Theory”

Chronologia Universalis: An Annotated Postcard

The 2015 Pulitzer Prize Winners: General Nonfiction: “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert

AHA: Perspectives on History: “Let’s Put History Everywhere”: A Career Diversity for Historians Interview

 

History of Medicine.com: An Interactive Annotated Bibliography of the History of Medicine, Biology and Dentistry from Circa 2000 BCE to Circa 1980

Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine: Announcing 2015–2016 Fellowship

Mittelalter: Identifying manuscripts in social media

AHA Today: Draft Guidelines on the Evaluation of Digital Scholarship

Quod.Lib.umich: The Hermeneutics of Data and Historical Writing

Thinking Like a Mountain: Experimental and Speculative Hypotheses in the Seventeenth Century: Integrated History and Philosophy of Science Workshop University of Durham (Part 1 of 2)

 

The Village Voice Blog: Ask Andrew W. K.: ‘How Do I Show Religious Freaks That Science Wins?’

The Nature of Reality: Why Physics Needs Philosophy

Now Appearing: Writers and social media

JHI Blog: What We’re Reading: Week of April 20

AHA: Career Diversity for Historians

Remedia: High Dilution, Homeopathy, and the Purpose of the Scientific Journal

Open Book Publishing: Mikuláš Teich – The Scientific Revolution Revisited

 

It’s About Time: 1565 The Seven Liberal Arts by Cornelis Cort

Cornelis Cort 1565 Astrologie

Cornelis Cort 1565 Astrologie

 

LOVEIMPERIALWARMUSEUMLIBRARY: Imperial War Museum London Is Not “Museum of the Year”

 

Ether Wave Propaganda: Scientists and the History of Science: An Alternative View

ESOTERIC:

Heavy: Loch Ness Monster Google Doodle: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

History of Alchemy: Johann Rudolf Glauber

Conciatore: Salamander

 

Nemfrog: Spiritograph in use

Plate I. Spiritograph in use. Experimental investigation of the spirit manifestations : demonstrating the existence of spirits and their communion with mortals. 1855.

Plate I. Spiritograph in use. Experimental investigation of the spirit manifestations : demonstrating the existence of spirits and their communion with mortals. 1855.

BOOK REVIEWS:

Science Book a Day: Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing

 

The Daily Beast: How Two Dutch Geniuses Taught Us to See

Mail Online: A quick autopsy my love, then off to the ball: The eccentric behaviour of Dutch natural scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and painter Johannes Vermeer

Science Book a Day: After Physics

after-physics

New Scientist: The Vital Question: Finding answers about the origins of life

The Guardian: The Vital Question: Why Is Life the Way It Is? Review – back to biological basics

Alec Ryrie: Aphrodisiacs, fertility and medicine

The New York Times: ‘Finding Zero’: A Long Journey for Naught

The New York Times: Lives of the Scientists: We Could Not Fail and More

NEW BOOKS:

University of Notre Dame Press: Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo

Graney002

 

Historiens de la santé: Medical Negligence in Victorian Britain: The Crisis of Care under the English Poor Law, c.1834–1900

HSS: ISIS Books Received: January–March, 2015:

Brill: The Technique of Islamic Bookbinding

Harvard University Press: Daughters of Alchemy

 

THEATRE:

FILM:

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHOW:

VIDEOS:

Youtube: Lawrence Principe – Glass of Antimony Reconstruction

YouTube: How to make a Scientific Revolution

YouTube: Battle of the Nobel Laureates: Einstein and Schrödinger’s Clashing Theories

YouTube: Tour of an Alchemy Laboratory

RADIO:

PODCASTS:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

University of Aveiro, Portugal: CfP: 10th International Conference on the History of Chemistry 9-12 September 2015

University of Leeds: HPS Seminar, 2014-15 Semester 2

University of Roehampton: CfP. One-Day Colloquium: The Darwins Reconsidered: Evolution. Writing & Inheritance in the Works of Erasmus and Charles Darwin

University of Leeds: The 2015 ‘Mangoletsi Lectures': Freedom of the Will and the Perils of Scientism Professor Helen Beebee, Samuell Hall Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manchester, 5, 6, 12 & 13 May 2015

 

Gender and Work in Early Modern Europe: New proposals wanted for Ashgate series Women and Gender in Early Modern World

 

Royal Museums Greenwich: ‘unseen’ Symposium 30 May 2015

Niche: CfP: The Environmental Histories of Ports and Ocean Trade Liverpool 18-19 September 2015

University of Oulu, Finland: CfP: Testing Philosophical Theories Against the History of Science 21 September 2015

University of Durham: The History of Thermodynamics and Scientific Realism 12 May 2015

Berlin: CfP: International Workshop: The Establishment of Genetic Counseling in the Second Half of the 20th Century 2–3 February 2016

NYAM: History of Medicine Night: 19th and 20th Century Stories 6 May 2015

University of Aarhus: CfP: Workshop: 1970s: Turn of an era in the history of science? 14-15 September 2015

 

Warburg Institute: Maps and Society Lectures: ‘Reforming Cartography: John Britton and The Topographical Survey of the Borough of St Marylebone (1834) 30 April 2015

2015 Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry: 27 May–17 June 2015 Maison Francaise d’Oxford

 

Federal Center of Technological Education of Rio de Janeiro: 13th Biennial International IHPST Conference 22-25 July 2015

The British Institute for the Study of Iraq: The Annual Bonham-Carter Lecture Professor Emilie Savage-Smith on ‘Surgeons and Physicians in Medieval Iraq’ 11 June 2015

LOOKING FOR WORK:

UCL: STS vacancies

University of Liverpool: Lecturer grade 8 in the history of Medicine

New Statesman: Join the New Statesman web team as a science and tech writer

University of York: Assembling Alternative Futures for Heritage: Curating Profusion PhD Studentship

University of Vienna: The Doctoral Program “The Science in Historical Philosophical and Cultural Contexts”

National Railway Museum: PhD Studentship

 

UCL:STS: Research Associate: Economics in the Public Sphere – 2 Posts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #46

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0
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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Cornelis Bloemaert

Volume #46

Monday 04 May 2015

EDITORIAL:

You are feasting your eyes on the forty-sixth edition of Whewell’s Gazette your weekly #histSTM links list bringing you all the best in the histories of science technology and medicine out of the Internet over the last seven days.

We all have a vague idea that technology is somehow socio-politically neutral. Machine, tools etc. have no feelings and so are free from all forms of prejudice but is the really true? Think how many tools and appliances are designed to be used by right-handed people causing left-handed people all sorts of problems and stress. The most visual example being Jimi Hendrix, possibly the greatest rock guitarist ever, playing a right-handed guitar upside down. These days any reasonably sized town has a left-handed shop supplying all sorts of everyday tools and gadgets for the left-handed minority.

But racism, is it possible for technology to be racist. There is a famous episode known to jazz fans concerning the electronic instrument the Theremin. For reasons that I forget the Theremin doesn’t work for some people and unfortunately one of those people was the black jazz keyboarder, and eccentric, Sun Ra, who was a big fan of the early electronic instruments. After seeing and hearing it demonstrated and then being frustrated by his own failure to produce a sound out of the Theremin, Sun Ra declared the instrument to be racist!

It’s almost impossible to suppress a wry smile at the image of the great Sun Ra condemning a machine as racist but it turns out to be no laughing matter that colour photography is really racist. Colour film and colour cameras are optimised from white skin tones with the result that it is very difficult with colour film systems to depict black people properly. To learn more read the following articles. For me this opens up the question, are there other forms of prejudiced technology?

Priceonomics: How Photography Was Optimized for White Skin Colour

Youtube: Ha ha ha HP Computer’s face tracking camera doesn’t recognize black people

NPR: Light and Dark: The Racial Biases That Remains in Photography

Colossal: Dreamlike Autochrome Portraits of an Engineer’s Daughter From 1913 Are Among the Earliest Color Photos

 Christina O'Gorman 1913 Photo: Mervyn O’Gorman (1871-1958)

Christina O’Gorman 1913
Photo: Mervyn O’Gorman (1871-1958)

Quotes of the week:

“Be the person your dog thinks you are.” – Bill Murray

“The second most important job in the world, second only to being a good parent, is being a good teacher.” – S.G. Ellis

“To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.” – Aristotle

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London

‘…a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance’ – Terry Pratchet

“We live in a culture where we don’t embrace failure.” How will you know your strengths w/o exploration – Deborah Berebichez

“Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing. ”― Gertrude Stein

“If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.” – Thomas Hardy

“The problem with straining at gnats is that it increases the chances of swallowing camels”. – John D. Cook

“I hate travelling & explorers…adventure has no place in the anthropologists profession.” – Claude Lévi-Strauss

“Only a man who sees giants can ever stand upon their shoulders.” – @fadesingh

“People will mock religion as a fantasy for those who won’t face reality, but think building warp drive is just a matter of can-do spirit”. – Sean M Carroll

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Corpus Newtonicum: Why? You endeavoured to embroil me with women

 

Brain Pickings: Einstein on the Common Language of Science in a Rare 1941 Recording

NPR: Hubble’s Other Telescope and the Day it Rocked Our World

The Hooker 100-inch reflecting telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, just outside Los Angeles. Edwin Hubble's chair, on an elevating platform, is visible at left. A view from this scope first told Hubble our galaxy isn't the only one. Courtesy of The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science Collection at the Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.

The Hooker 100-inch reflecting telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, just outside Los Angeles. Edwin Hubble’s chair, on an elevating platform, is visible at left. A view from this scope first told Hubble our galaxy isn’t the only one.
Courtesy of The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science Collection at the Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.

This Day in History: 4977 Universe is created, according to Kepler

Forbes: Einstein: A Radical, But Not A Rebel

PDF Books for Free: Great Astronomers: Galileo Galilei by Sir Robert S. Ball (1907)

Ri-Science: Erwin Schrödinger coined the term ‘wave mechanics’ (or Wellenmechanik) on this day in 1926 in a letter to Albert Einstein.

MIT News: 3 Questions: Marcia Bartusiak on black holes and the history of science

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Unsung? I hardly think so.

Lise Meitner und Otto Hahn im Labor, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie, 1913 Source: Wikimedia Commons

Lise Meitner und Otto Hahn im Labor, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie, 1913
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

Optics & Photonics: Charles Hard Townes: The Second Half-Century

Voices of the Manhattan Project: Myfanwy Pritchard-Roberts’ Interview

UC San Diego: Digital Collections: Leo Szilard and Aaron Novick Research Files

UC San Diego: Digital Collections: Leo Szilard Papers

The H-Word: Halley’s Eclipse: a coup for Newtonian prediction and the selling of science

 

Astrogeo.oxfordjournals.org: Halley and his maps of the total eclipses of 1915 and 1724

Ptak Science Books: Gorgeous Gearworks – a Model of the Solar System, 1817

"Planetary Machines, the New Planetarium for Equated Motions by Dr. Pearson".  London, for Rees' Cyclopedia, 1817; 8x10".   Source: Ptak Science Books

“Planetary Machines, the New Planetarium for Equated Motions by Dr. Pearson”. London, for Rees’ Cyclopedia, 1817; 8×10″.
Source: Ptak Science Books

Ars Technica: Scanning meteorites in 3D may flesh out solar systems origin story

AIP: Oral History Transcript – Dr. Steven Weinberg

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

Board of Longitude Project Blog: Thomas Earnshaw’s troublesome chronometer

Marine chronometer no. 512, by Thomas Earnshaw, about 1800 (National Maritime Museum ZAA0006)

Marine chronometer no. 512, by Thomas Earnshaw, about 1800 (National Maritime Museum ZAA0006)

Viatimage: Image database of expeditions into the Alps.

The Guardian Maps: The Guardian view on reading maps: so much more than navigation

National Library of Scotland: Map images

Cambridge Digital Library: Longitude Essays: Artificial Horizon

MEDICINE & HEALTH:

Fiction Reboot: Daily Dose: MedHum Mondays Presents: The Application of a Surgeon’s Operating Case

Nautilus: The Man Who Drank Cholera and Launched the Yogurt Craze

Duke Today: Medicine Cabinet of Curiosities: Can you guess how these medical devices were used?

Lancet Psychiatry: Cutting the body to cure the mind

Doctor performing ovariotomy (London, 1882) The National Library Of Medicine

Doctor performing ovariotomy (London, 1882)
The National Library Of Medicine

Diseases of Modern Life: Introducing the India Office Medical Archives Project

Medievalist.net: Project to compare health of Londoners from medieval and industrial eras

Wellcome Library: Thalidomide: an oral history

CHoSTM: One Hundred Years of Health: Changing Expectations for Ageing Well in 20th Century America

Inside the Science Museum: Richard Liebreich’s Atlas of Ophthalmoscopy

V0010407EL The eye, as seem through a microscope

RCP: Swiney Cups

TECHNOLOGY:

Conciatore: Eyes of the Lynx

Yovisto: Wallace Hume Carothers and the Invention of Nylon

Ptak Science Books: The Understated Announcement of Bell’s Telephone Patent, 1876

Ptak Science Books: Establishing the (Royal) Aeronautical Society, 1866

Spaceflight Insider: Women in Space: In The Beginning

Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space during the Vostok 6 mission, which lifted off in June 1963. Photo Credit: Commons / Ria Novosti

Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space during the Vostok 6 mission, which lifted off in June 1963. Photo Credit: Commons / Ria Novosti

The Royal Society: Interface: Invention as a combinatorial process: evidence from US patents

IEEE Spectrum: Mildred Dresselhaus: The Queen of Carbon

Ptak Science Books: Feeling and Touching Calculated Numbers in the 18th Century: Palpable Mathematical Devices

Conciatore: Washing Molten Glass

Washing, sorting and carrying cullet Denis Diderot 1772

Washing, sorting and carrying cullet
Denis Diderot 1772

IEEE Spectrum: The Murky Origins of “Moore’s Law”

IEEE Spectrum: Moore’s Law Milestones

 

XPMethod: Unidentified Found Object (UFO)

Ptak Science Books: Quite Images of Great Loses and Heroism – British Navy Losses, 1945

Gizmodo: Why is the Paper Clip Shaped Like It Is?

The 1640’s Picture Book: Anima’dversions of Warre

Ptak Science Books: Episodes in the History of Dropping Things – Baby Bombs, Bomb Babies and Dropping Women on Manhattan

6a00d83542d51e69e2015437d89ad4970c-500wi

Ptak Science Books: A One-Line Entry into the Computer Revolution: the Transistor, 1949

Conciatore: Scraping the Barrel

Teylers Museum: Horse Mill

Ptak Science Books: An Extremely Early Computer Program for the BINAC, 1949

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Strange Science: Earth Sciences

 

The Independent: The science of weather forecasting: The pioneer who founded the Met Office

Yovisto: Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki

Wallace Letters: The A. R. Wallace Correspondence Project’s Transcription Protocol

The Unz Review: Vignettes of Famous Evolutionary Biologists, Large and Small

Facebook: On 27 April 1806 Moehanga Discovered Britain

Letters from Gondwana: Alcide D’Orbigny and the Beginnings of Foraminiferal Studies

Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny , 1802.  Source: Wikimedia Commons

Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny , 1802.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

Arcadia: The Great Fear: The Polesine Flood of 1951

 

Embryo Project: The Pasteur Institute (1887– )

Yovistro: The Works of Lord Avebury

Embryo Project: Wilhelm His, Snr. (1831–1904)

Yovisto: Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the Neurons

NCSE: Darwin’s Pallbearers, Part 2

Embryo Project: Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948)

Geschichte der Geologie: Strukturgeologie und Mittelalterlicher Bergbau

Die Schiener bei der Arbeit, Miniatur aus einer Grubenkarte aus dem 18. Jahrhundert. Zu seinen Arbeitsgeräten gehörten Schnüre, Stäbe, Hängekompaß, Setzkompaß, Klinometer, Abstechen (Winkelgerät) und Quadrant.

Die Schiener bei der Arbeit, Miniatur aus einer Grubenkarte aus dem 18. Jahrhundert. Zu seinen Arbeitsgeräten gehörten Schnüre, Stäbe, Hängekompaß, Setzkompaß, Klinometer, Abstechen (Winkelgerät) und Quadrant.

Yovisto: Vito Voterra and Functional Analysis

CHEMISTRY:

Chemical Heritage Magazine: Harold C. Urey: Science, Religion, and Cold War Chemistry

After helping create the atom bomb as part of the Manhattan Project, Harold Urey focused on uncovering the age and origins of Earth and the solar system. In this 1951 photo Urey inspects a 'fossilized thermometer' of belemnite (a prehistoric squid-shaped creature). Urey used information from these fossils to estimate the temperature of oceans from as far back as 100 million years. (USC Digital Library)

After helping create the atom bomb as part of the Manhattan Project, Harold Urey focused on uncovering the age and origins of Earth and the solar system. In this 1951 photo Urey inspects a ‘fossilized thermometer’ of belemnite (a prehistoric squid-shaped creature). Urey used information from these fossils to estimate the temperature of oceans from as far back as 100 million years. (USC Digital Library)

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Hooke’s Books

 

CELL: Hooke Folio Online

The Stute: Was I Wrong about “The End of Science”?

The Atlantic: What Was the Worst Prediction of all Time?

Social History of Medicine: Vol. 28 Issue 2 May 2015: Table of Contents

Edge Effects: Why Our Students Should Debate Climate Change

Huff Post: Debunking the Myths of Leonardo da Vinci

FaceBook: Isis Journal: Imogen Clarke interview

ISIS: Table of Contents: Vol. 106 Issue 1 March 2015

Vox: Why Oliver Sacks was so ambivalent about becoming a bestselling author

Neurologist and best-selling author Dr. Oliver Sacks. His new memoir, On The Move, grapples with the tension between being a media personality and a physician. Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Neurologist and best-selling author Dr. Oliver Sacks. His new memoir, On The Move, grapples with the tension between being a media personality and a physician.
Chris McGrath/Getty Images

The Washington Post: Philosophy’s gender bias: For too long, scholars say, women have been ignored

The Conversation: Reducing science to sensational headlines too often misses the bigger picture

JHI: Dispatches From the Republic of Letters

Oxford MHS: Newsletter May 2015

teleskopos: Real, replica, fake or fiction?

Nature: A view from the bridge: Metaphor and message

The #EnvHist Weekly

Slate: Science Needs a New Ritual

Nautilus: The Big Bang is Hard Science: It is also a Creation Story

The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Object as Subject

Faith and Wisdom in Science: Can Science be more like Music? An Experiment with Light and Song

Leonardo: Codex Madrid

ESOTERIC:

BOOK REVIEWS:

Sun News Miami: Newton and Empiricism

Maclean’s: Einstein’s beef with Schrödinger

Notches: Classroom Wars and Sexual Politics: An Interview with Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

Kestrels and Cerevisiae: Book Thoughts: Pauly’s Controlling Life

The New York Times: ‘Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat’, by Paul Halpern

The Wall Street Journal: The Half-Life of Physicists

British Journal for the History of Science: Outsider Scientists: Routes to Innovation in Biology

New Scientist: The Least Likely Man celebrates a genetic-code-breaking genius

mg22630193.300-2_945

The New York Review of Books: Revelations from Outer Space

New Scientist: Scientific Babel: Why English Rules

NEW BOOKS:

THEATRE:

The Royal Society: A dramatic experiment: science on stage 11 May 2015

Oppenheimer production photos 2014: Photo by Keith Pattison c RSCRsC

Oppenheimer production photos 2014: Photo by Keith Pattison c RSCRsC

FILM:

TELEVISION:

SLIDE SHOW:

VIDEOS:

Youtube: Under the Knife: Episode 8 – Corpse Medicine

The Public Domain Review: The Westinghouse Works (1904)

Youtube: Collider: JJ Thomson’s Cathode-ray tube

‘Fighting for the Vote: Science and Suffrage in World War I’ – Dr Patricia Fara

Vine: Science Museum: Difference Engine No. 2

RADIO:

BBC Radio 4: Archive on 4: The Language of Pain

PODCASTS:

Chemistry World: Acetylene

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

University of Cambridge: HPS Dept: Workshop: Science and Technology in the Context of International Exhibitions 6 May 2015

Royal Museums Greenwich: Maritime Lectures Series: WW1: Three Sisters 7 May – 11 June 2015

Oriel College Oxford: 2015 Thomas Harriot Lecture: Dr Stephen Clucas 28 May

Monash University: CfP: Translating Pain: An International Forum on Language, Text and Suffering 10-12 August 2015

University of the West of England, Bristol: Science in Public: research, practice, impact” 9-10 July 2015

Archives for London: Seminar: Science in the city: the archival life of Robert Hooke 7 May 2015

Freud Museum London: Exhibition: Early Scientific Discoveries: Freud the Physician 30 April–7 June 2015

The Royal Society: Conference: Archival afterlives 2 June 2015

LSE: Summer Workshop of HPPE: Economists from 1780 to 1980: Observing and configuring the economy 12 May 2015

University of Durham: The History of Thermodynamics and Scientific Realism Provisional Programme 12 May 2015

University of Regensburg: Conference: Will our journals go extinct? Further perspectives in scholarly publishing 9 June 2015

BSHS: Useful information about Swansea ahead of #BHSH15

The Recipes Project: Notches CfP: Sex, Food and History Round Table

University of South Carolina: CfP: Art, Anatomy, and Medicine since 1700

Courtauld Institute of Art: Leonardo da Vinci Society Annual Lecture: ‘Leonardo, Luca Pacioli and the Venetian Optic c. 1480-1510’ 8 May 2015

LOOKING FOR WORK:

The Mercurians, a Special Interest Group of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT): Pam Laird Research Grant

The School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science at the University of Leeds: Offers a variety of funding opportunities to support taught postgraduate study.

 

Society for Renaissance Studies: Postdoctoral and Study Fellowships

UCL:STS: PhD Programmes

University of London: Chair in the Understanding of the Humanities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #47

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Cornelis Bloemaert

Volume #47

Monday 11 May 2015

EDITORIAL:

You are feasting your eyes on the forty-seventh edition of your weekly #histSTM links list, Whewell’s Gazette, bringing you all of the best of the histories of science, medicine and technology scooped up by our every hungry editorial crew for you delectation.

 

The Whewell's Gazette Editorial Staff at Feeding Time

The Whewell’s Gazette Editorial Staff at Feeding Time

Following the debacle that was the British general election a group of historians has published a sort of manifesto in History Today under the name ‘Historians For Britain’, claiming that Britain’s exit from the EU would be justified on the basis of the fact that Britain’s history was unique when compared to its European neighbours.

As a British historian I personally object to this manifesto on several grounds. With what right does this group claim to speak for Britain? They speak for themselves with some extremely dodgy and largely incorrect arguments and not for Britain. For any group of historians to claim to speak on behalf of an entire nation is hubris of the highest order.

As a historian of science, who also dabbles in the histories of medicine, technology and mathematics, I must firmly state that also within Britain the histories of these disciplines have a complex intertwined international history that is in no way uniquely British and to try to claim otherwise would be to pervert history.

The Whewell's Gazette Editorial Policy

The Whewell’s Gazette Editorial Policy

Quotes of the week:

“To remain ignorant of history is to remain forever a child” – Cicero

“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see” – Alexandra K. Trenfor

“Ancient history has an air of antiquity—it should be more modern. It’s written as if the spectator should be thinking of the backside of the picture on the wall, as if the author expected that the dead would be his readers” – Thoreau 1849

‘Life for us is not just the absence of death’. – Mary Midgley

“To err is human. To err repeatedly is research”. – @AcademicsSay

“It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise”. Wittgenstein

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies” – Groucho Marx

“But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience”. – Kant

The last man on earth walks into a bar. He looks into his beer and says, “Drink, I’d like another bartender.” – @fadesingh

“If you think you’re enlightened go spend a week with your family”. – Ram Dass

“Some peoples idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back that is an outrage” – Winston Churchill

“Science = search for Truth; Art = search for Beauty; Engineering = search for Good Enough” – @LeapingRobot

Birthday of the Week:

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin born 10 May 1900

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin at work

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin at work

True Anomalies: “So You Want to Do Research”

Yovisto: Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin and the Composition of Stars

 

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

arXiv.org: Editing Cavendish: Maxwell and the Electrical Researches of Henry Cavendish

Drew ex machina: The Mission of Zond 2

Ptak Science Books: Napkins of the Apocalypse

Flamsteed Astronomy Society: William Christie and the Demise of the Royal Greenwich Observatory – History of Astronomy Group Meeting

Sir William Christie (no relation!) Source: Wikimedia Commons

Sir William Christie (no relation!)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Early Modern Experimental Philosophy: Huygens and Newton: 

Ptak Science Books: Dr. Lise Meitner, Fission, and Comic Books (1946)

Source: Ptak Science Books

Source: Ptak Science Books

academia.edu: The Birth of the Mexican National Astronomical Observatory

Ptak Science Books: The Four Seasons in Beautiful Astronomical Detail, 1851

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Ohm Sweet Ohm

The Ohm House in Erlangen Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Ohm House in Erlangen
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Pinterest: Section of the Earth on the Plane of the Equator

NPR: Dissolve My Nobel Prize Fast (A True Story)

Nautilus: The Data That Threatened to Break Physics

Planetarium Friesland

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

The Guardian: Better than GPS: a history of cartography in 12 amazing maps

Bird's Eye View of New York Photograph: Public domain

Bird’s Eye View of New York
Photograph: Public domain

Wired: It Just Got Easier to see a Cool Historical Maps Collection

MEDICINE & HEALTH:

Nautilus: The Man Who Beat HIV at its Own Game for 30 Years

NYAM: The Strange Case of Father Damien (Part 1 of 3)

Thick Objects: Between text and object: psychological tests as scientific artefacts

The Recipes Project: Bottoms up: beer as medicine

Front page of Van Lis’s 1747 Pharmacopea

Front page of Van Lis’s 1747 Pharmacopea

Atlas Obscura: Roosevelt Island Octagon Tower

The Chirugeon’s Apprentice: Robert Hooke and the Dog’s Lung: Animal Experimentation in History

Early Modern Medicine: Dead Useful

NYAM: Sigmund Freud on War and Death

 

The Public Domain Review: Scurvy and the Terra Incognita

Page from the journal of Henry Walsh Mahon showing the effects of scurvy, from his time aboard HM Convict Ship Barrosa (1841-2)  Source: Wikimedia Commons

Page from the journal of Henry Walsh Mahon showing the effects of scurvy, from his time aboard HM Convict Ship Barrosa (1841-2)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Concocting history: Nursing dolly

Remedia: On the Trail of Medicines at Cambridge University Botanic Garden

Providentia: The Addicted Surgeon

 

NYAM: The Good Man of Religion (Part 2 of 3)

Advances in the History of Psychology: The Anatomist, The Alienist, The Artist & changing expressions of madness in Victorian Britain

Concocting History: Ode to Laudanum

TECHNOLOGY:

Conciatore: Glass from Tinsel

Magic Transistor: Louis Poyet, Abbé Rousselot’s Apparat für Aufzeichnung der Sprache, 1890

Louis Poyet, Abbé Rousselot’s Apparat zur Aufzeichnung der Sprache, 1890.

Louis Poyet, Abbé Rousselot’s Apparat zur Aufzeichnung der Sprache, 1890.

Blog.Castac.org: Nothing Special: Standards, Infrastructure, and Maintenance in the Great Age of American Innovation

Yovisto: You Press the Button and We Do the Rest – George Eastman revolutionized Photography

Ptak Science Books: Pig Iron vs. the Eiffel Tower

Brain Pickings: Berenice Abbott’s Minimalist Black-and-White Science Imagery, 1958–1960

Bloomberg: Ancient Greek Technology Tests Musk Batteries on Storage

 

Yovisto: Oskar von Miller and the Deutsches Museum

Oskar von Miller (1855-1934)

Oskar von Miller (1855-1934)

 

Atlas Obscura: Coltsville, USA: Inside America’s Gun-Funded Utopia

The Last Word: Compute! No, Mr Bond, I Expect You to Die!

Sate: The Eye: The Locksmith Who Picked Two “Unbeatable” Locks and Ended the Era of “Perfect Security”

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Slate: Audubon’s Animals of 19th-Century North America, Newly Available for Hi-Res Download

The Atlantic: The Scientist Who Told Congress He Could (Literally) Make It Rain

Embryo Project: Nettie Maria Stevens (1861–1912)

Ptak Science Books: A Beautiful Regression (1877)

Gizmodo: The Second Life of America’s Only Rare Earth Mine

1239084004569609617

Palaeoblog: Born This Day: Elkanah Billings

Forbes: Thoughts on a Pebble and an Introduction

Conciatore: Pebbles from Pavia

Stamen Design: Diving into ecosystem data with Berkeley’s Ecoengine and interfaces from Stamen

 

Orthmeralia: These pepper plants sure look good!

All Things Georgian: Gilbert Pidcock’s travelling menagerie

Courtesy of the British Museum, 1799

Courtesy of the British Museum, 1799

The History of the Earth Sciences: Volume 34 Issue 1 2015 Table of Contents

AEON: Still seeking omega: The Vatican still refuses to endorse evolutionary theory – setting a billion believers at odds with modern science

Slate Vault: An Early-19th-Century Scientist’s Close-Up Portraits of Pollen

Linda Hall Library: John Collins Warren – Scientist of the Day

British Library: Online Gallery: Diagram of seasons, In Isidore, De natura reum

CHEMISTRY:

Reality Sandwich: Francis Crick, DNA &LSD

John William Draper – Chemist and Photo Pioneer

John William Draper (1811-1882)

John William Draper (1811-1882)

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Chronologia Universalis: A Ramist Postscript

Graftoniana: A Visual Chronology

The Getty Iris: Getty Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) Released as Linked Open Data

The New York Times: The Conference Manifesto

The Atlantic: The Questions People Asked Advice Columnists in the 1690s

Google Books

Google Books

The Guardian: Alan Hall: a leading light in cell biology goes out

Geological Journal: Special Issue: Pleistocene on the Hoof: Table of Contents

The New York Times: Alexander Rich Dies at 90; Confirmed DNA’s Double Helix

UiO: Design history provides clues about the future

Bustle: 7 Horribly Sexist Moments in STEM History, Because Old Habits Die Hard

504ffd30-d619-0132-ceaa-0e01949ad350

Science Museum Group Journal: 03 Current Issue Spring 2015 Contents

Edge: Popper Versus Bacon

The #EnvHist Weekly

Caroline’s Miscellany: Stationers’ Hall

Stanford.edu: Athanasius Kircher at Stanford

The Alfred Russel Wallace Website: Wallace Talks: Audio and Video

Athene Donald’s Blog: On the Loss of a Giant

Conciatore: The Neri Godparents

Scientific American: Physicists Are Philosophers, Too

academia.edu: Book Lists and Their Meaning – Malcolm Walsby

Greg Jenner: A Million Years in a Day – Bibliography

ESOTERIC:

distillatio: Alchemy and Astrology – something I read

BOOK REVIEWS:

Notches: The Modern Period: Menstruation and the History of Sexuality

Brain Pickings: The Antarctic Book of Cooking and Cleaning: The Extraordinary Edible Record of Two Women Explorers’ Journey to the End of the World

Notches: A History of Family Planning in Twentieth Century Peru

Oxford Journals: Diplomatic History: Space History: The Final Frontier?

Brain Pickings: Einstein, Gödel, and Our Strange Experience of Time: Rebecca Goldstein on How Relativity Rattled the Flow of Existence

Dissertation Reviews: Japanese Nanban World Map Screens

josephloh-e1379440655593-550x300

Herald Scotland: Laura J Snyder Eye of the Beholder

Brain Pickings: Legendary Lands: Umberto Eco on the Greatest Maps of Imaginary Places and Why they Appeal to Us

Brain Pickings: When Einstein Met Tragore: A Remarkable Meeting of Minds on the Edge of Science and Spirituality

Morbid Anatomy: Morbid Anatomy Library New Arrival: “The Dead” Jack Burman

The Baptist Times: Faith and Wisdom in Science

NEW BOOKS:

Amazon.com: Moore’s Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley’s Quiet Revolutionary

Wellcome Collection: Adventures in Human Being

Adventures in human being

 

Historiens de la santé: Préface des Tabulae anatomicae sex

THEATRE:

FILM:

iO9: Isaac Newton’s War With a 17th Century Counterfeiter Should Be A Movie

Isaac Newton Source: Wikimedia Commons

Isaac Newton
Source: Wikimedia Commons

TELEVISION:

CUNY Television: One to One: Laura J. Snyder: Author, “Eye of the Beholder”

SLIDE SHOW:

VIDEOS:

YouTube: Revelations: New Vision with Ben Burbridge

YouTube: Prague Alchemy (Episode 1&2)

RADIO:

PODCASTS:

History of Philosophy without any gaps: Rediscovery Channel: Translations into Latin

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: Symposium: Space, place and landscape in the history of communications 16 June 2015

University of Durham: Workshop: Climate Science, Values & Politics 28 May 2015

University of Durham: How to do Things with Fur: Medieval Art and the Matter of ‘the Animal’ 19 May 2015

Occult Minds: CfP: Aries Special Issue on Esotericism and the Cognitive Science of Religion

Intoxicants & Early Modernity: CfP: RSA Boston 2016 Intoxicants and Early Modernity

Royal Historical Society: CfP: Teaching History in Higher Education

Natural History Museum at Tring: Temporary Exhibitions at Tring: Myths & Monsters 6 May–6 September 2015

myths-monsters-banner-490_134334_2

University of Oxford: Émilie du Châtelet Study Day 14 May 2015

Émilie du Châtelet Portrait by Maurice Quentin de La Tour Source: Wikimedia Commons

Émilie du Châtelet Portrait by Maurice Quentin de La Tour
Source: Wikimedia Commons

CASSH: Objects in Motion: Material Culture in Transition 18 June–20 June 2015

Royal Society: People-powered science: citizen science in the 19th and 21st centuries 21 May 2015

LOOKING FOR WORK:

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine: MET Science Communication Officer

Science Museum: Two-Year Postdoc in History of Nuclear Industry

University of Strathclyde: PhD Studentship in Naval/Technological History

UCL: STS: PhD Studentship “Charles Blagden and Banksian Science, 1770–1820”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #48

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Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Cornelis Bloemaert

Volume #48

Monday 18 May 2015

EDITORIAL:

Another seven days have sped by and we’re back again with the forty-eighth edition of Whewell’s Gazette your weekly #histSTM links list bringing you all the best of the last week’s histories of science, medicine and technology from around the Internet.

Beginning with our next edition the ‘we’ will no longer be the royal we as we have gained a new recruit to our editorial staff to help keep the owls in order. I am very pleased to welcome Anna Gielas, as our new Editor in Chief for History of Science and Entertainment. Anna is a doctoral student at the University of St. Andrews, who describes herself as a Wissenschaftsgeschichtshungrige! For those of you who don’t speak German that translate as a person who hungers for the history of science. I bet you didn’t know that German has a word for that!

Anna’s fine example of applying for and becoming an important post in our editorial team inspires us to say that if any other Wissenschaftsgeschichtshungrige would like to help in producing Whewell’s Gazette every week they would be more than welcome to join the team. I promise you don’t have to eat the same snacks as the owls.

I’m sorry to say that the next edition of Whewell’s Gazette will be in two weeks and somewhat shorter than usual, as at the beginning of next week I shall be in England burying my elder brother who died last Friday.

Under the circumstances I would like to dedicate this edition of Whewell’s Gazette to my brother John Christie (22 May 1945 – 15 May 2015) one of the first nine people to graduate in Britain with a degree in computer science.

This week saw an op-ed in The New York Times, It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science, written by Leonard Mlodinow on the use of mythical anecdotes in the history of science, his main point being neatly summed up in the paragraph below:

The mythical stories we tell about our heroes are always more romantic and often more palatable than the truth. But in science, at least, they are destructive, in that they promote false conceptions of the evolution of scientific thought.

This piece provoked quite a few comments and exchanges on Twitter, which I have collected without comment. If you wish to add comments on the article or these comments you are welcome to do so.

Cartoon How Scientist THink

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I’m less offended than many by the general phenomenon of inspiring science stories, though, because narrative is powerful. If you want to communicate science to a broad audience, you’d be a fool not to try to tap into our fascination with great stories. The problem isn’t the use of stories and inspirational figures in promoting science; it’s the LAZY use of oversimplified stories. It’s perfectly possible to use stories about famous scientists in a responsible way, inspiring without deceiving– encourage that. – Chad Orzel

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The way to advance science is not to find a series of Einsteins & worship their brilliance. Science is collaborative & takes hard work. Yes, Einstein was smart. He was also in a physics PhD program at ETH Zurich, working with world experts. He didn’t spring from nothing. – Katie Mack

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The damage done by oversimplified narratives in pop histories of science. Argument works for other histories too, IMHO. – Rebecca Onion

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“Telling that this ‪@nytimes piece on oversimplified #histSTM narratives is written by a physicist not a historian”. – Ben Gross

“Why telling? What would a historian provide that a physicist cannot?” – Hank Campbell

Telling because it reinforces assumption that anyone can be a historian w/o formal training in the discipline. – Ben Gross

“A good point.“ – Hank Campbell

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“NYT op-ed on #histSTM simplifies to “history is complicated”” – Patrick McCray

“History is complicated. But science is also complicated. So complicated, in fact, that its history is best left to scientists!” – Ben Gross

“#WeinberStrikesAgain” – Patrick McCray

“Complications are complicated”. – Patrick McCray

“Not quite. Scientists didn’t correct the story about Darwin’s finches. Sulloway did”. – Gabriel Finkelstein

If only more scientists were aware of such examples when they set out to write/speak re: #histSTM. – Ben Gross

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“For some reason the media never asks historian of science to write about the history of science!!!“ – Thony Christie

“With a few exceptions (e.g.@HPS_Vanessa, @rebeccaonion, etc.) you’re right. Hopefully that will change. #histSTM – Ben Gross

“Maybe historians of science worry about (fear?) writing such op-ed pieces”. – Darren Hayton

“Do historians of science offer their expertise to media outlets? Physicists don’t shy away from it. Is their something about the culture in history of science that discourages media outreach?” – Darren Hayton

Quotes of the week:

“History is not written by the winners, it is written by the articulate.” – Ben Espen

“The first rule of anarchy club is that there is no first rule of anarchy club.” – @Swansontea

“If you marry a water nymph, she will acquire a soul. Otherwise she will die like a beast”. – Paracelsus h/t @senseshaper

For every mansplaining there’s an equal and opposite manshaming. – Liam Heneghan

“We are drawn to pyrotechnics, but history is made in the inner recesses of the mundane. We would do well to remember this. And to teach it”. – Michael Egan

“Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the young but never the actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event” – Heinz R. Pagels

“If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything” – Fred Menger

“Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.” – Albert Camus”

Okay to encourage others to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But if you do, just remember, some people have no boots. – Neil deGasse Tyson

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring. – Wittgenstein

“If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that is a big mistake.” – Frank Wilczek

I’m increasingly thinking that I want to write my publications with my ‘blog voice’. I like it better and I think readers do, too. – Joanne Bailey

Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly by twilight. –Francis Bacon

“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.” – Terry Pratchett

“They forced this invention of the devil upon me. Fortunately the thing has a knack of getting out of order” – Andrew Thomas Gage on the telephone 1910

“What a typewriter will do to a novice, the ribbon has gone on strike & has wound itself around the bowels of the machine in a most vicious manner” – E. Ray Lankester 1927

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. – Albert Einstein

Hofstadter’s Law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

Birthdays of the Week:

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach born 11 May 1752

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Source: Wikimedia Commons

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Embryo Project: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840)

Yovisto: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and the Human Race

Blumenbach's five races. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Blumenbach’s five races.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Wonders & Marvels: Why Caucasian is a Dirty Word

Inge Lehmann born 13 May 1888

Inge Lehmann in 1932 Source: Wikimedia Commons

Inge Lehmann in 1932
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Trowelblazers: Inge Lehmann

Time: New Google Doodle Honors Pioneering Seismologist Inge Lehmann

Letters from Gondwana: Inge Lehmann

AMNH: Inge Lehman: Discoverer of the Earth’s Inner Core

True Anomalies: A Journey to the Center of the Earth

Figures from Inge Lehmann’s 1936 paper, P’, showing seismic wave signatures at many Danish stations. Source: True Anomalies

Figures from Inge Lehmann’s 1936 paper, P’, showing seismic wave signatures at many Danish stations.
Source: True Anomalies

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:

Philly.com: Testing Galileo’s artistic chops 400 years later

Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: What did Bohr do at Los Alomos?

Ptak Sciene Books: Albert Einstein: Part Time Civil Servant

The Guardian: Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space

Occam’s Corner: The birth of soft matter physics, the physics of the everyday

Ansamed: Hittits-Egyptians, scientific cooperation 2000 years ago

Forbes: What Einstein Should Have Known

1001 Invention: 1001 Inventions and the World of Ibn Al-Haytham

haythamcom_02a

Teyler’s Museum: Rebound Trajectory

Skywatchers: Rose O’Halloran

AEON: In the beginning

teleskopos: Eighteenth-century eclipse maps by Halley and Whiston

Airspace Blog: Finding Pluto With the Blink Comparator

The National Museum of American History: Painting – Measurement of the Earth (Eratosthenes)

Perimeter Institute: General Relativity From A to Z

Tehran Times: Khayyam statue looking for apt location in United States

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

Tennessee State Library and Archive: Free Exhibit Highlights State Library and Archives’ Vast Collection of Maps

British Library: Endangered archives blog: New online collections – May 2015

Public Domain Review: Maps from Geographicus

Eiland Ormus, of Jerun, engraved by Jacob Van der Schley under the supervision of J. Bellin for the c. 1750 edition of Provost's L`Histoire Generale des Voyages

Eiland Ormus, of Jerun, engraved by Jacob Van der Schley under the supervision of J. Bellin for the c. 1750 edition of Provost’s L`Histoire Generale des Voyages

Ptak Science Books: A Nearly-Blank Outline Map of the World

Ptak Science Books: World Map of the Geography of Homer

University of Southern Maine: Osher Map Library

Public Domain Review: Highlights from the 20,000+ maps made freely available online by New York Public Library

New York Public Library: The Great War and Modern Mapping: WWI in the Map Division

The battle fronts of Europe - Stanford's Geographical Establishment [1917]

The battle fronts of Europe – Stanford’s Geographical Establishment [1917]

 MEDICINE & HEALTH:

Medievalist.net: Abortions in Byzantine times (325–1453 AD)

Social History of Medicine: ‘A virtue beyond all medicine’: The Hanged Man’s Hand, Gallows Tradition and Healing in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century England

Dr Alun Withey: Unhealthy Beards? Denouncing Facial Hair in History

The Recipes Project: How to grow your beard, Roman style

Wellcome Library: Digitisation at the Royal College of Surgeons England

The Cullen Project: The Medical Consultation Letters of Dr William Cullen

The Recipes Project: Wigging Out: Mrs Corlyon’s Method for extracting Earwigs From The Ear

Unidentified species of Earwig, order Dermaptera, possibly Forficulidae, by JonRichfield,Wikimedia Commons

Unidentified species of Earwig, order Dermaptera, possibly Forficulidae, by JonRichfield,Wikimedia Commons

Books Combined: Obsessions and olfaction: scent and the seduction of books

The New York Times: A Grisly Find Under a Supermarket Illuminates France’s Medieval Past

Medievalist.net: Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective

The Quack Doctor: The mysterious Doctor Du Brange

academia.edu: Health, Medicine and the Family in Wales c. 1600 – c. 1750 PhD Thesis Alun Withey

Genotopia: An early use of the term “precision medicine”

Slate Vault: A Depression-Era Medicinal Plant Map of the United States

“Medicinal Plant Map of the United States of America.” Edwin Newcomb and the National Wholesale Druggists’ Association, 1932.
David Rumsey Map Collection

The Guardian: Man who died 1,500 years ago may have brought leprosy strain to UK

Wonders & Marvels: Feeling Swinish: Or the Origins of “Pandemic”

Hektoen International: The arsenic eaters of Styria

History of Vaccines: History of Smallpox

Brought to Light: Country Joe McDonald’s Florence Nightingale collection will be preserved in UCSF Archives

My Wonderland.Mental Health Blog: The Rise of Psychiatry has Augmented the Rise of Madness through Medication

Dorset Echo: Help historians find stories from the asylum

Throb: There Was No Viagra in 1918. But There Was This Penis Splint

1252333264945351599

Forbes: Julius Caesar’s Health Debate Reignited: Stroke or Epilepsy

Deathplaining: The Attritional Mortality Myth

TECHNOLOGY:

The New York Times: Ghostly Voices From Thomas Edison’s Dolls Can Now Be Heard

Conciatore: The Neri Godparents II

Conciatore: The Neri Godparents III

Conciatore: The Neri Chapel

Vir History: Navy Radio Traffic Handling, Circuits, and Messages

Rhode Island Radio: Dedicated to the history of radio in Rhode Island

Smithsonian Libraries: Unbound: Durable Pianos

Ivers & Pond Piano Co., Boston, MA. Ivers & Pond Pianos, circa 1890, pages 32-33, Style 13, Ivers & Pond Small Parlor Grand Piano.

Ivers & Pond Piano Co., Boston, MA. Ivers & Pond Pianos, circa 1890, pages 32-33, Style 13, Ivers & Pond Small Parlor Grand Piano.

io9: The Illustrated History of Jet Packs

The New York Times: Moore’s Law Turns 50

Smithsonian.com: How 75 Years Ago Nylon Stockings Changed the World

CHF: Nylon A revolution in Textiles

Cornell University: Dawn’s Early Light: The First 50 Years of American Photography

O Say Can You See: The oldest microscope in the museum

Ptak Science Books: Bombing Subs with Exploding Birds, 1918

Tylers Museum: Bourdon type barometer

Barometer, Bourdon type or aneroid + case, F.W. Funckler Source: Teylers Museum

Barometer, Bourdon type or aneroid + case, F.W. Funckler
Source: Teylers Museum

Ptak Science Books: Hot Bunks and Cool Air in (All White?) Community Fallout Shelter

Auckland Meccano Guild: The Cambridge Meccano Differential Analyser

150 Great Things About The Underground: 37. The world clock at Piccadilly Circus

Engineering and Technology Wiki: Theordore Maiman and the Laser

Ptak Science Books: Unusual Questions 1: Are the London Bridges Too Far Apart? 1904

Linda Hall Library: Plates from Jacquard machine analysed and explained, by E.A. Posselt, 1892

tumblr_noensiH85K1ry3nado5_500

Inside the Science Museum: The Pegasus Computer

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Patheos: 11 recurring mistakes in the debate over the “historical Adam”

AIP:Expanding NBL&A resources to include meteorology

An Awfully Big Blog Adventure: “Mamma’s Kindness to Me”

The West Wales Chronicle: Special party treat for Garden Members

The Atlas of Living Australia: Over 10 million collections-based records on the Atlas

PBS: Alfred Wegener

The Junto: Natural Histories

BHL: Notes & News: Mars Invaders: The Wonderful World of Microfungi

Fig. 2. Symptoms and spore diversity of rust fungi from Rust, smut, mildew and mould: an introduction to the study of microscopic fungi. By M.C. Cooke and illustrated by J.E. Sowerby. London, 1898.

Fig. 2. Symptoms and spore diversity of rust fungi from Rust, smut, mildew and mould: an introduction to the study of microscopic fungi. By M.C. Cooke and illustrated by J.E. Sowerby. London, 1898.

Oxford Today: Award for 200 unbroken years of Oxford weather records

The Secret Library: Little Chunks of History

Sandwalk: James Hutton and John Playfair and a genealogical connection

University of Glasgow Library: An artistic reinterpretation of William Hunter

The New York Times: The Greatest Generation of Scientists

The Friends of Charles Darwin: John Stevens Henslow

Yovisto: Ilya Mechnikov and the Macrophages

Élie Metchnikoff (1845-1916)

Élie Metchnikoff (1845-1916)

microBEnet: Where does the term microbiome mean? And where did it come from? A bit of a surprise…

CHEMISTRY:

CHF: Justus von Liebig and Friedrich Wöhler

CHF: Where’s the Beef?

About Education: Who was the first chemist?

Chemistry World: All set for chemistry

Some of the earliest sets came in mahogany cases and were very expensive © Science Museum, London, Wellcome Images

Some of the earliest sets came in mahogany cases and were very expensive © Science Museum, London, Wellcome Images

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Szilard Commandments

The New York Times: Peter Gay, Historian Who Explored Social History of Ideas, Dies at 91

Living Anthropologically: Real History versus Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

CHF: Heritage Day Awards

Forbes: The Role of Philosophy in Physics

AHA Today: AHA Announces New Taxonomy of Historical Fields

Shady Characters: Pilcrows in the service of science: a Shady Characters field trip

Science Museum Group Journal: Issue 3 Spring 2015

The Mary Sue: Everyone, We Need to Talk About 17th-Century Badass Writer Margaret Cavendish

Wellcome Collection: The Catalogue for the Public Library of Private Acts

University of Glasgow Library: Glasgow Incunabula Project and exhibition update

The H–Word: Do snails have eyes? Seventeenth century ‘mythbuster’ and science communicator, Sir Thomas Browne, investigates

Sir Thomas Browne, taken from a copy of “Religio Medici” (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images), Photograph: UniversalImagesGroup/Getty Images

Sir Thomas Browne, taken from a copy of “Religio Medici” (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images), Photograph: UniversalImagesGroup/Getty Images

Vox: Science is often flawed. It’s time we embraced it.

Wellcome Collection: Open Platform

Constructing Science Communities: People Powered Science

Open Culture: 6,000 Years of History Visualised in a 23-Foot-Long Timeline of World History, Created in 1871

Nautilus: The Trouble With Scientists

Girl, Interrupting: We’ve all got troubles (including Open Science Network)

The #EnvHist Weekly

University of Cambridge Museums: Innovation: The Emperor’s New Clothes?

The H-Word: Beware Eurosceptic versions of history and science

The Renaissance Mathematicus: History or political propaganda?

Notches: Inaugural Monthly Digest

The Guardian: 150 years of mathematics in the UK – in pictures

NY Book Editors: Inside an Edit: Non-Fiction Structural Changes

ESOTERIC:

distillatio: My alchemical demonstrations at re-enactment events

Ultraculture: 3 Ways to Become a ‘Magician’, by a 16th Century Alchemist

Natural Magick, by Giambattista della Porta

Natural Magick, by Giambattista della Porta

SV Educational Services: Medieval Alchemy – The Art and Science of Transmutation

BOOK REVIEWS:

Brain Pickings: Richard Feynman on Science vs. Religion and Why Uncertainty is Central to Morality

JHI: Practical Past, Runaway Future

Brain Pickings: Richard Feynman on the Universal Responsibility of Scientists

Science Book a Day: The Journals of Lewis and Clark

journal-of-lewis-clark

Financial Times: ‘Scientific Babel: The Language of Science’ by Michael Godin

HNN: Why I wrote a Book About the Wright Brothers

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society: Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge

Nature: The man who bared the brain

History Today: Aphrodisiacs, Fertility and Medicine in Early Modern England

Nature: In search of self and science

The Guardian: The Water Book by Alok Jha review – this remarkable substance

The Economist: A man for all seasons: Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes

Popular Science: How UFOs Conquered the World: The History of a Modern Myth

academia.edu: Review – McLeish’s Faith and Wisdom in Science

Science Book a Day: The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Age

age-of-radiance

Popular Science: Einstein’s Masterwork: 1915 and the General Theory of Relativity

The Washington Post: John Hemming follows three British scientists who made significant discoveries in the Amazon

NEW BOOKS:

Historiens de la santé: Hippocrate et les hippocratismes: médicine, religion, société

University of Pennsylvania Press: Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature and Art

Historiens de la santé: La santé en guerre 1914–1918. Une Politique pionnière en univers incertain

University of Pittsburgh Press: The Crown and the Cosmos: Astrology and the Politics of Maximilian I

CFDPfFIVEAI-BFW.jpg-large

THEATRE:

YouTube: The Royal Society: A dramatic experiment: science on stage

FILM:

The Guardian: Jane Hawking: “There were four of us in our marriage”

Facebook: John Farrell: Sungenis Admits His Movie Was a Flop, Promises More

TELEVISION:

BBC: Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race

SLIDE SHOW:

VIDEOS:

Classical Confidential: Caesar’s Strokes and the Fate of an Empire

Science Dump: 10 of Tesla’s best ideas that prove he was the ultimate science bad ass!

Medievalist.net: Vegetables in the Middle Ages

Bohemcan Youtube Channel: Alchemy (Show One & Two)

YouTube: The Pegasus Computer

YouTube: Leading interdisciplinary research, Professor Tom McLeish

YouTube: Darwin on the evolution trail

RADIO:

PODCASTS:

Dr Alvin: The Most Trusted Name in Wisdom: Einstein’s Dice & Schrödinger’s Cats by Paul Halpern chats with Dr Alvin

Advances in the History of Psychology: New Books in STS Interview: Matthew Heaton’s Black Skin, White Coats

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

University of Cambridge: Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry Meeting 15 June 2015

Museum for the History of Science Oxford: Exhibition: Dear Harry: Henry Moseley – A Scientist Lost to War 14 May–18 October 2015

Royal Society: People-powered science: Symposium: citizen science in the 19th and 21st centuries

University of Manchester: Symposium: Stories About Science: Exploring Science Communication and Entertainment Media 4–5 June 2015

Morbid Anatomy: Daniel Rushkoff and the Narrative Lab! Alchemy Lecture and Workshop Series! History of the Sacred Heart of Jesus! Arcane Media! Upcoming Events

University of Warwick: Gems in Transit: Materials, Techniques and Trade, 1400–1800 18-19 May 2015

Seton Hall University: The 2015 Biennial Conference of the Aphra Behn Society for Women in the Arts, 1660-1830: CfP: Women in the Global Eighteenth Century 5-6 November 2015

University of Northampton: Masculinity and the Body in retain, 1500–1800 18 June 2015

Colloque de la SFHSH – Histoire des sciences humaines et sociales Paris, 5-6 novembre 2015

UCL: STS Research Day 2015 Programme

University of Manchester: CHSTM: Workshop: Medicines, Histories and Translations 11-12 June 2015

World Health Organization Global Health Histories: Online webinar: ‘Chemical and Biological Weapons’ 21 May 2015

University of Notre Dame: Locating Forensic Science and Medicine 24-25 June 2015

Caltech: Lecture: Andrew Hodges: “Alan Turing: An Individual of the Twentieth Century” 21 May 2015

University of Warsaw: The Tree of Knowledge: Theories of Science and Art in Central Europe, 1400–1700 28 May 2015

Maastricht University: CfP. Theorizing the Body in Health and Medicine 26–27 November 2015

H-Histsex: Notches: CfP: Histories of Sexualities In Africa

The Northern Network for Medical Humanities: Workshop: University of Sheffield 10 June 2015

University of Durham: Thomas Harriot Seminar 2015 6–7 July

IET: Newcastle Discovery Museum: Conference: The history of power generation, distribution, utilisation and other engineering specialisms 6–7 June

Institute of English Studies, Senate House, University of London: Biennial London Chaucer Conference: Science, Magic and Technology 10-11 July 2015

University of Wales Trinity Saint David: Astrology as Art: Representation and Practice 27-28 June 2015

LOOKING FOR WORK:

University of Zurich: Two Postdocs in History of Medicine

University of Strathclyde: Lectureship in the History of Medicine

University of Pennsylvania: Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities 2016-2017

MOSI: Fully-funded AHRC PhD studentship: The Rise and Fall of The Manchester Motor Industry, 1896–1939

University of Sussex: Sussex Humanities Lab Doctoral Research Scholarships (2015)

Museum of the History of Science, Oxford: Part-time twelve-week Collections intern

University of Edinburgh: Postdoctoral Teaching and Research Fellowship in the History of Medicine

Smithsonian Institute: Museum Curator (Aeronautics)

University of York: Teaching Fellow in the History of Science and Medicine


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