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
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Year 2, Volume #22
Monday 14 December 2015
EDITORIAL:
Running awfully late here is the latest edition of the weekly #histSTM links list Whewell’s Gazette bringing you all the fascinating posts, articles and other offerings in the histories of science, technology and medicine that our legions of Internet elves could find in the second week of advent.
In any given week the balance of the number of posts in the various rubrics in our humble Gazette varies, with sometimes Physics, Astronomy and Space Science dominating, as this week, or on other occasions the Earth Sciences or Technology having the most entries. However over time I have noticed that there are always relatively few posts on the history of chemistry. I don’t know whether this is due to a paucity of history of chemistry material on the web or whether I am just not catching enough of what is out there.
If you post on the history of chemistry or know somebody who does and the posts are failing to appear here on Whewell’s Gazette then please draw attention to this deficit in some way. Join Twitter and tip me off so that I follow you or send me an email with a list of your posts and links. I would like to see more history of chemistry here at the Gazette so make it your #histSTM charitable act for Christmas to draw my attention to all those post that I sure I’m missing.
MHS Oxford Advent Calendar
Day 7: Paper Astrolabe, by Johann Krabbe, German, 1583
Day 8: Diptych Dial, by Thomas Tucher, Nuremberg, c. 1620
Day 9: Mural Quadrant, by John Bird, London, 1773
Day 10: Parts of Difference Engine, by Charles Babbage, c. 1822-30
Day 11: Crescent Moon Amulet, Southern Italian
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Day 12: Astrolabe Quadrant, by Giovanni Antonio Magini, Italy, Late 16th Century
Day 13: Radio Valve R5V, by Marconi Osram Valve Co., London, c. 1923
Culham Research Group: Advent Calendar
Day 7: Saffron: A light in the darkness
Day 8: Wassailing
Day 9: Reindeer Moss
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Looking festive and tasty! Cladonia rangiferina has been collected and vouchered in California only twice, in 1999 by Ronald and Judith Robertson, and in 1975 in Del Norte Co., in the Smith River canyon. The Robertsons collected Cladonia rangiferina once in Humboldt County in the remnant forest of Lanphere Dunes, a US Fish & Wildlife Refuge.
Day 10: Rice Pudding
Day 11: Sweet Chestnuts
Day 12: Anyone can grow paperwhites but their taxonomy is a different story
Day 13: Putting Christmas on the Map
Quotes of the week:
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“Digital information lasts forever or five years. Whichever comes first”. – RAND researcher Jeff Rothenberg h/t @johannaberg
“Anthropologists stand in the position of molecules of paint on a picture’s surface, striving to catch the artist’s design”—Pitt-Rivers h/t @ProfDanHicks
“For people writing about the topic—”interment” means burial. “Internment” means detaining a group of people”. – Laura (@ophiliacat)
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“Parts of London are so radicalised that most of the atoms and molecules there have unpaired valency electrons”. – Peter Coles (@telescoper)
“The “Asian Values” trope as Orientalism appropriated by the Orientals”. – @struthious
“If I’m descended from my parents, why do I still have cousins?” Owain Griffiths (@OwainGriffiths)
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“The essence of genius is to know what to overlook”. – William James
Study shows a result you like: “see, I base my views on science!”
Study shows a result you dislike: “I’ve got issues with their methodology” – Existential Comics (@existentialcomics)
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Birthdays of the Week:
Grace Hopper born 10 December 1908
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Grace Murray Hopper at the UNIVAC keyboard, c. 1960.
Credit: Unknown (Smithsonian Institution)
Yovisto: Grace Hopper and the Programming Languages
Annie Jump Cannon born 11 December 1863
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Yovisto: Annie Jump Cannon and the Catalogue of Stars
sdsc.edu: Annie Jump Cannon Theorist of Star Spectra
Smithsonian Institute Archives: Annie Jump Cannon (1863–1941)
Linda Hall Library: Annie Jump Cannon
Gemma Frisius was born 9 December 1508
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Gemma Frisius, Holzschnitt (17. Jh.) von Esme de Boulonois
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Yovisto: The Most Accurate Instruments of Gemma Frisius
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Mapping the history of triangulation
PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY & SPACE SCIENCE:
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Renowned quantum physicist Niels Bohr with acclaimed jazz trumpeter, composer and singer Louis Armstrong h/t Paul Halpern
Source: Unknown
Yovisto: Arnold Sommerfeld and the Quantum Theory
Yovisto: Omar Khayyam – Mathematics and Poetry
Popular Science: A Brief History of Space Stations Before the ISS
arXiv.org: Early Telescopes and Ancient Scientific Instruments in the Paintings of Jan Brueghel the Elder (pdf)
Ptak Science Books: Found Poetry in the Sciences (1610 and 1698)
Sue Kientz: Spacecraft Galileo at Jupiter
Ipi.usra.edu: Probe Mission Successful
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Walter Goodman’s Interview
arXiv.org: A brief history of the multiverse (pdf)
BBC: Future: Eight objects that define the Soviet space race
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Titov’s movie camera
Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: The story behind the IAEA’s atomic logo
March to the Moon: Gemini VII
Berliner Zeitung: Albert Einstein war in Berlin nur relative glücklich
World Socialist Web Site: 100 years of General Relativity – Part One
World Socialist Web Site: 100 years of General Relativity – Part Two
World Socialist Web Site: 100 years of General Relativity – Part Three
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Philip Abelson’s Interview (2002)
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Aristotle Killer of Science!
Atlas Obscura: Vintage Images of Canine Cosmonauts from the USSR
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A matchbox label from 1959, showing a space dog flying to the Moon. (Photo: © FUEL Publishing/Marianne Van den Lemmer)
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Leona Marshall Libby’s Interview
AHF: Leo James Rainwater
The Conversation: The life-changing love of one of the 20th century’s greatest physicists
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Theodore Rockwell’s Interview
Yovisto: The Last Men on the Moon…so far
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Gabriel Bohnee’s Interview
Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: The curious death of Oppenheimer’s mistress
Astronomy Now: Astronomers recall discovery of Phaethon – source of the Geminid meteors
AHF: Rotblat Account
CHF: Laws of Attraction
Open Mind: Kepler, the Father of Science Fiction
Tech Times: Black History Month: & Ways Albert Einstein Supported the Civil Rights Movement
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
British Library: Maps and views blog: Digitisation of the Klencke Atlas
Swann Auction Galleries: Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Color Plate Books, Featuring the Mapping of America
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The American Military Pocket Atlas
Peter S. Clarke: A Christmas Santa Map
Slate Vault: An Early-20th-Century British Map of the Global Drug Trade
Ptak Science Books: Bombing Britain, 1940 – a View of the Battle of Britain from Germany
The Bodleian’s Map Room Blog: Ships
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Giornalè Nuovo: A Map of Schlaraffenland
Stanford University Library: Adventures in oversized imaging: digitizing the Ōmi Kuni-ezu 近江國絵圖 Japanese Tax Map from 1837
MEDICINE & HEALTH:
Thomas Morris: The man with the rubber jaw
The Conversation: Remind me again, what is thalidomide and how did it cause so much harm?
O Can You See?: Combating infectious disease and slaying the rubella dragon, 1969–1972
Atlas Obscura: Maps of 19th-Century New York’s Worst Nuisances
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A “Sanitary and Social Chart” of New York’s 4th Ward. (Photo: Courtesy the New York Academy of Medicine)
BBC News: Cookbook features recipes to cure the plague
Royal Museums Greenwich: ‘In a most handsome and thriving condition’: Samuel Pepys’s Health
Thomas Morris: A bad use for good wine
John Rylands Library Special Collections Blog: A Doctor’s View of Industrial Manchester
Nursing Clio: Baby Parts for Sale – Old Tropes Revisited
Circulating Now: A Portrait of the Medical World of 1911
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Silas Weir Mitchell
Thomas Morris: All hail the strawberry
Yovisto: Robert Koch and Tuberculosis
Thomas Morris: Somewhat silly in his manner
TECHNOLOGY:
Brown: Steward Delaney’s New Clock
Verso: Look>>A Historiscope
Forbes: This Week in Tech History: The Mother of All Demos
BBC News: Volunteers aid pioneering Edsac computer rebuild
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Each of the 140 chassis that form Edsac takes upwards of 20 hours to build and test
The National Museum of Computing: Edshack: a workshop time capsule
Atlas Obscura: Soviet Scenesters Used X-Rays to Record Their Rock and Roll
Yovisto: Maria Telkes and the Power of the Sun
Yovisto: Guglielmo Marconi and his Magic Machine
Yovisto: My Hovercraft is full of Eels
MAA100: Mathematical Treasures: Early Calculating Machines
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Leibnitzrechenmaschine
Ptak Science Books: A World Map of Heavy (1922)
A Wireless World: The origins of radio
Ptak Science Books: Balloons I Know But Do Not Love – Death From Above, Ads and Bombs
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
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Sometimes I’m asked what is the difference between a raven and a crow, well here it is. h/t @ravenstonetales
Letters from Gondwana: The Bernissart Dinosaurs
Notches: Coming Oot! A Fabulous Gay History of Scotland
Hyperallergic: How Audubon Pranked a Fellow Naturalist with a Bulletproof Fish
The Dispersal of Darwin: Article: The London Baedeker for the Darwin enthusiast
The Dispersal of Darwin: Article: An Ottoman response to Darwinism: Ísmail Fennî on Islam and evolution
Atlas Obscura: The Ghost Forest of Christmas Past: How a Fungus Stole Roasted Chestnuts
Naturalis Historia: The Earth on Show: Encountering Lost Worlds Through Fossil Displays
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A “Young Mammouth” unearthed by Charles Willson Peale on display at the Philadelphia museum in 1821.
National Geographic: Meet Grandfather Flash, the Pioneer of Wildlife Photography
Gizmodo: These Dogs are Honorary Geologists for their Early Exploration of Alaska
CHEMISTRY:
Yovisto: Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and his Work on Gases
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Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
CHF: True Blue: DuPont and the Color Revolution
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
Birkbeck: Early Modern History Website
Public Disability History: New blog
NYAM Library: Discover the Past Inform the Future
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Early Modern Experimental Philosophy: The ESD in early modern Spain: taking stock
CIA: The Directorate of Science and Technology Historical Series: The Office of Scientific Intelligence, 1949–68
Conciatore: Francesco’s Studiolo
Conciatore: Neri’s Travels
Conciatore: Fall from Grace
The Recipes Project: First Monday Library Chat: The Library of the Royal College of Surgeons
PSA Women: Female-Authors-Only Philosophy of Science
OUP: The Monist: The History of Women’s Ideas Contents
University of Oxford: Research: Ursula Martin
Irish Philosophy: Frozen in Time: the Edward Worth Library
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The Edward Worth Library
(c) Irish Philosophy (CC BY)
AEON: What if?
PhilSci Archive: An Archive for Preprints in Philosophy of Science
The New York Times: Amir Aczel, Author of Scientific Cliffhanger, Dies at 65
The Economist: In search of serendipity
Yovisto: Melvil Dewey and the Dewey Decimal System
Scistarter: Purposeful Gaming: Help improve access to historic biodiversity texts!
Age of Revolutions: A HistorioBLOG
Lisa Tenzin-Dolma: Interview with Paul Halpern
Corpus Newtonicum: Isaac Newton moves to Oxford
AEON: Why physics needs art to help picture the universe
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CUP: Medical History Vol. 60 Issue 01: Contents
Motherboard: Ada Lovelace and the Impossible Expectations We Have of Women in STEM
Chicago Journals: Osiris Vol. 30, No. 1 Scientific Masculinities Contents
ESOTERIC:
distillatio: How widespread were alchemical books in Britain in Medieval times and who owned them?
The Recipes Project: Temporality in John Dauntesey’s Recipe Book (1652–1683)
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The Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Manuscript MSS 2/0070-01 (Signature Page), Photo included with permission.
Spacewatchtower: 50th Anniversary: Kecksburg, Pa. “UFO” Incident
The Public Domain Review: Worlds Without End
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Detail from a depiction of thought-transference, the man behind dictating the movement of the other, from Magnetismus und Hypnotismus (1895) by Gustav Wilhelm Gessmann
BOOK REVIEWS:
Brain Pickings: Alexander von Humboldt and the Invention of Nature: How One of the Last True Polymaths Pioneered the Cosmos of Connections
MedHum Monday Book Review: Riotous Flesh
Popular Science: Kepler and the Universe
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Brain Pickings: The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time
Sun News Miami: Celestial Cartography
New Statesman: A true scientific revolution: the triumph of mathematicians over philosophers
Reviews in History: To Explain the World: the discovery of Modern Science
Nature: Books in Brief: Tunnel Vision: The Rise and Fall of the Superconducting Super Collider, The Hunt for Vulcan…
NEW BOOKS:
Plagrave: Technology, Self-Fashioning and Politeness in Eighteenth-Century Britain
The Dispersal of Darwin: The Paradox of Evolution: The Strange Relationship Between Natural Selection and Reproduction
Amazon: More Passion for Science: Journeys into the Unknown
Wiley: A Companion to Intellectual History
The Dispersal of Darwin: Darwin’s Sciences
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The University of Chicago Press: Foucault and Beyond
The Dispersal of Darwin: The Story of Life in 25 Fossils
ART & EXHIBITIONS
Royal Geographical Society: Enduring Eye: The Antarctic Legacy of Sir Ernest Shackleton and Frank Hurley 21 November 2015–28 February 2016
ICE: ICE Christmas Exhibition Past, Present and Future 4–18 December 2015
The Huntarian: The Kangaroo and the Moose Runs until 21 February 2016
Science Museum: Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age
Museum of the History of Science: Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost to War Runs until 31 January 2016
Guiding Lights: 500 years of Trinity House and safety at sea Runs till 4 January 2016
Museum of Science and Industry: Meet Baby Meet Baby Every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, & Saturday
Southbank Centre: Faraday’s synaptic gap Runs till 10 January 2016
Science Museum: Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Genius 10 February 2016–4 September 2016
The Mary Rose: ‘Ringing the Changes’: Mary Rose Museum to re-open in 2016 with unrestricted views of the ship
Royal Museums Greenwich: Samuel Pepys Season 20 November 2015–28 March 2016
Royal College of Surgeons: Designing Bodies 24 November 2015–20 February 2016
Muslim Heritage: Allah’s Automata – A Review of the Exhibition
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Natural History Museum, London: Bauer Brothers art exhibition Runs till 26 February 2017
Science Museum: Ada Lovelace Runs till 31 March 2016
British Library: 20th Century Maps 4 November 2016–1 March 2017
Royal Pavilion, Brighton: Exotic Creatures 14 November 2015–28 February 2016
National Maritime Museum: Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution
Bethlem Museum of the Mind: The art of Bedlam: Richard Dadd
Oxford University Museum of Natural History: Handwritten in Stone: How William Smith and his maps changed geology
THEATRE, OPERA AND FILMS:
Gielgud Theatre: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Booking to 18 June 2016
Upcoming: The Old Operating Theatre: Surgeon to the Dead 10-12 & 15-17 December 2015
SpArC Theatre: Opéra National De Paris: La Damnation De Faust 17 December 2015
EVENTS:
Chelsea Physic Garden: Round Table Discussion: Dark brilliance: Agatha Christie, poisonous plants and murder mysteries 2 February 2016
Royal Astronomical Society: RAS Public Lecture: 100th Anniversary of the election of Women to the RAS Fellowship 12 January 2016
Science Museum: Symposium: Revealing the Cosmonaut 5 February 2016
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British Library: Medieval manuscripts blog: Postgraduate Open Day on our Pre-1600 Collections 1 February 2016
Royal Institution: Christmas Lecture 2015
A Forgotten Hero – Now Remembered: Dr John Rae (LRCSEd): Arctic Explorer
PAINTING OF THE WEEK:
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Dr William Gilberd 1540-1603 showing his Experiment on Electricity to Queen Elizabeth I and her Court by Arthur Ackland Hunt
TELEVISION:
SLIDE SHOW:
VIDEOS:
Atlas Obscura: 100 Wonders: The Desertron
Centre for Global Health Histories: Youtube Channel
The New York Times: Animated Life: Mary Leakey
RADIO:
BBC World Service: Discovery: Humboldt – the Inventor of Nature
The Guardian: Occam’s Corner: Will Self’s forceful search for the genius behind a scientific giant
BBC Radio 4: Self Drives: Maxwell’s Equations
PODCASTS:
Mosaic: The ingenuity of Gordon Vaughan
Soundcloud: John Aubrey, My Own Life by Ruth Scurr – audio extracts
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John Aubrey.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
British Museum: CfP: Objectively Speaking 4 April 2016
Graz, Austria; CfP: STS Conference: The Role of Webvideos in Science and Research Communication 9–19 May 2016
UCL: CfP: Science/Technology/Security: Challenges to global governance? 20–21 June 2016
University of Edinburgh: Science, Technology and Innovation Studies Seminar Series, Semester Two 2015-16
Sam Houston State University: CfP: The 8th Annual Medicine and the Humanities and Social Sciences Conference 17–18 March 2016
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin: Workshop: From Knowledge to Profit? Scientific Institutions and the Commercialization of Science 10–12 October 2016
Dresden Summer – International Academy for the Arts: Collecting: 27 August – 03rd September 2016
University of Durham: Workshop: The Graphic Evidence of Childhood, 1760–1914 15 April 2016
LOOKING FOR WORK:
British Library: Curator of Medieval Historical Manuscripts 1100–1500
University of Freiburg: Chair for Science and Technology Studies: Wissenschaftliche(r) Mitarbeiterin/Mitarbeiter (Assistant Professor Equivalent)
University of Kent: Centre for the History of Science: Postgrad funding
University of Swansea: Fees Only PhD Studentship: Mapping the Historic Landscape Character of the South Wales Region
Mississippi State University: History of Modern Europe and Science/Technology/and/or Medicine
University of Oxford: Faculty of Theology and Religion: Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship 2016
University of Notre Dame: History and Philosophy of Science Program Two Postdoctoral Positions
MIT: Calling all Science Journalists: Applications for 1016-17 KSJ Fellowships Open January 11
Durham University: Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies: Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships
Trinity College Dublin: Ussher Assistant Professor in Environmental History
Drexel University College of Medicine: Summer Research Fellowship: History of Women in Medicine
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