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
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
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.
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
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
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.
Yovisto: Henry Biggs and the Popularization of Logarithms
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.
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!
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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 World
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
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)
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
