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
Year 2, Volume #08
Monday 07 September 2015
EDITORIAL:
We’re back again, one day late, but as the old cliché goes, better late than never. So here you have the latest edition of Whewell’s Gazette you weekly links list for all things #histSTM, bringing all we could scrape together from the outer reaches of cyberspace of the histories of science, technology and medicine.
Our rubric Birthday of the Week, of course, features big name scholars when there is some sort of major anniversary, which generates much Internet activity. However there are always several scholars who have birthdays in any given week and not all of them get featured in this rubric but we try to pick out ones who might not be household names but who we think deserve more public awareness.
This week’s birthday boy, John Dalton, is a perfect example of this. If one were to ask the proverbial average person on the street who Dalton was they would probably come up with something like, “didn’t he used to play for Manchester United?” Dalton was one of the founders of the modern atomic theory of matter but he also made significant contributions to a wide range of other scientific disciplines, including founding the scientific investigation of colour blindness from which he suffered himself.
Dalton remains largely unknown to the public at large but we are of the opinion that he deserves to be up there with Newton and Darwin in public awareness, as a great British scientist.
Quotes of the week:
Don’t poo on science
Caption courtesy of Jack Stilgoe (@Jackstilgoe)
“BoreVore: A predatory creature that paralyzes its prey by going on and on about its specialized diet. Mostly found in Industrialized West”. – @wetbinkt
“Why didn’t you eat your greens? Tell me. Why? Why?”
“Calm down. I wasn’t expecting the spinach inquisition” – Peter Broks (@peterbroks)
“You can’t go against the grain of the universe and not expect to get splinters.” – C. S. Lewis
Archive quote of the day: “…may the Lord deliver me from the Teutonic cult of pedestrian technocracy.” @librarycongress – Patrick McCray (@LeapingRobot)
“The imperfection of all our records of the past is too well known to geologists.” – A R Wallace (1879) h/t @Jamie_Woodward
Birthday of the Week:
Dalton by Charles Turner
after James Lonsdale
(1834, mezzotint)
Source: Wikimedia Commons
John Dalton born 6 September 1766
Yovisto: John Dalton and the Atomic Theory
CHF: John Dalton
From Alchemy to Chemistry: Five Hundred Years of Rare and Interesting Books: Dalton, John (1766–1844) A New System of Chemical Philosophy
In the Dark: The Day of Daltonism
PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY & SPACE SCIENCE:
io9: Every Place We Used to Think Was a Planet (until We Knew Better)
Yovisto: Sir Bernard Lovell and the Radioastronomy
Yovisto: Hermann von Helmholtz and his Theory of Vision
Mental Floss: Meet the Woman Who Discovered the Composition of the Stars
Cecelia Payne
Image Credit: Smithsonian Institution, Wikimedia Commons
Physics Today: Information: From Maxwell’s demon to Landauer’s eraser
Science Notes: Today in Science History – September 2 – Franz Xaver von Zach
History Physics: Carrington Event 1859
The Telegraph: The man who proved Stephen Hawking wrong
Leaping Robot: Astronomy’s History Trap
The Mountain Mystery: Newton and the Speed of Sound
Newton’s speed of sound experiment re-enacted at Trinity College, Cambridge
Science Notes: Today in Science History – September 3 – Carl David Anderson
Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: Did Lawrence doubt the bomb?
AHF: Richard Tolman
AIP: Edoardo Amaldi
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
Georgian Gentleman: Let’s hear it for Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville, who died on 31 August 1811
Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville
io9: Archaeologists Tracked Lewis and Clark by Following Their Trail of Laxatives
British Library: Maps and views blog: A Rare View of the Siege of Boston (1775–1776)
The Hakluyt Society Blog: Essay Prize Series Part 2: The Manuscript Circulation of Sir Henry Mainwaring’s ‘A Brief Extract’
Vox: All those, confusing geography terms, explained in a gorgeous antique map
Jstor: Livingstone’s Zambezi Expedition
Halley’s Log: Instructions for Halley’s third voyage
MEDICINE & HEALTH:
Science Notes: Today in Science History – August 31 – Hermann von Helmholtz
William Savage: Pen and Pension: Eighteenth-Century Paten Medicines: Kill or Cure?
Discover: A Weapon in the Soil
Cardhouse.com: Vintage condom package design
io9: Strychnine: A Brief History of the World’s Least Subtle Poison
Thomas Morris: Worms on the pillow
The Daily Telegraph: Bubonic plague Sydney: How a city survived the black death in 1900
Rat catchers with a pile of dead vermin in Sydney in 1900. Rats were fetching up to six pence a head during the outbreak.
Picture: State Library of NSW
Surgeons’ Hall Museums: Key Object Page
Royal College of Physicians: ‘My case’: Sir Augusts Frederick D’Esté
The New York Times: Endre A. Balazs, Doctor Who Found a Lubricant for Arthritic Knees, Dies at 95
John Rylands Library Special Collections Blog: Manchester Medical Manuscripts Collection
Science Notes: Today in Science History – September 6 – John James Richard Macleod
TECHNOLOGY:
Conciatore: Glass Salt
Teyler’s Museum: Electric lighter with lamp
The Atlantic: The $1 Pocket Microscope
The Conversation: LOL in the age of the telegraph
An 1809 drawing of the electric telegraph.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Ptak Science Books: A Lot of Computer Data on One Sheet of Paper (1956)
Capitalism’s Cradle: The Great British (Industrial) Bake-Off
Yovisto: Ferdinand Porsche – Innovation as a Principle
Capitalism’s Cradle: How Norway Conquered Leviathan
Abraham Staghold, a blacksmith, won a £20 premium from the Society of Arts in 1772 for a whale harpoon to be fired from a swivel gun
The Recipes Project: Cooking (Over an Open Fire) In Class
Yovisto: John McCarthy and the Raise of Artificial Intelligence
itv News: Oldest chain bridge in the world’ to re-open in Llangollen
Capitalism’s Cradle: What have Asylum Seekers invented for Us?
Technology’s Stories: Speed!
Early Visual Media: The Stereoscope, Stereo-photography & 3D-Film
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Letters from Gondwana: “Kunstformen der Natur” (Art Forms of Nature)
Yovisto: Sergei Winogradsky and the Science of Bacteriology
Notches: Her Virginal Members: Chastity and Sexual Desire in the Middle Ages
Aelred of Rievaulx
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Atlas Obscura: Object of Intrigue: Martha, the Last Passenger Pigeon
Historian of Biology William Provine has passed away
NCSE: William B. Provine dies
Natural History Apostilles: The first source for the spinach-iron myth
UCL Museums & Collections Blog: Behind the Mask – Research in the Noel Collection
Public Domain Review: Tribal Life in Old Lyme: Canada’s Colorblind Chronicler and his Connecticut Exile
Science League of America: Huxley’s Paley, Part 1
Yovisto: Max Delbrück and the Genes
Notches: Race, Class, and Sex Education in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa
Royal Historical Society: Joanne Baily ‘Manly bodies in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England’
Forbes: What Archaeologists Really Think About Ancient Aliens, Lost Colonies, and Fingerprints of God
Native American pictograph (painted rock art) from a panel of images found in Horseshoe/Barrier Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, Utah. (Image via wikimedia commons user Scott Catron, used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.)
NCSE: Eric Davidson dies
Bodleian: Marks of Genius: Micrographia
Latintos: Connecting with Alfred Russel Wallace
Mammoth Tales: Mammoths in the News
Making Science Public: Climate wars
Medievalist.net: Pets in the Middle Ages: Evidence from Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
Skulls in the Stars: Spiders and the electric light (1887)
Embryo Project: “The Origin and Behavior of Mutable Loci in Maize” (1950), By Barbara McClintock
CHEMISTRY:
Science Notes: Today in Science History – September 1 – Carl Auer von Welsbach
The University of Glasgow Story: Frederick Soddy
Yovisto: Wilhelm Ostwald and Modern Physical Chemistry
The Guardian: Toxic Shock: Agatha Christie’s poisons
Christie’s toxic tally tops 30 killer compounds, which she uses in a staggering array of creative methods for murder. Photograph: Alamy
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
JHI Blog: Is There a Philosophy of History Today?
The Recipes Project: Teaching Recipes: A September Series (Vol. II)
Londonis.com: The Geek Goddess of London
Dr Sue Black (photo shared via creative commons).
Scientific American: Cross-Check: Copernicus, Darwin and Freud: A Tale of Science and Narcissism
John Rylands Library Special Collections Blog: Manchester Medical Manuscripts Collection
the many-headed monster: The job market for historians: some data, 1995–2014
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Aristocrats and paupers, farmers and tradesmen –
Where do the scientists come from?
The Atlantic: Introducing the Archive Corps
Countway Library of Medicine: The Archives for Women in Science
University of Leiden: Free Academic Images
MPIHOS: Records of Reception: Framing Knowledge on Asian Art in Early Modern Inventories
MPIHOS: Cabinetizing Art and Knowledge in Early Modern Northern Europe
Medieval Books: Medieval Posters
The H-Word: Britain’s most important historic laboratory is under threat
An early photograph of James Clerk Maxwell’s original Cavendish Laboratory (built 1874). A large archway is due to be knocked through the ground floor of the right-hand wing. From: A History of the Cavendish Laboratory (1910). Photograph: A History of the Cavendish Laboratory (1910)
The Renaissance Mathematicus: The Internet and the history of science community
NYAM: Do You Recognize These Men? Help Us Identify 19th-century Carte de Visite Photographs
Doc Searls Weblog: Everything we know is provisional
ESOTERIC:
Conciatore: The Dregs
Conciatore: Alchemy in the Kitchen
Tesoro del Mondo, “Ars Preparatio Animalium”
Antonio Neri 1598-1600, f. 10r (MS Ferguson 67).
BOOK REVIEWS:
Forbes: God as Ultimate Artist: Frank Wilczek’s Beautiful Question
Bryn Mawr Classical Review: Emily Albu, The Medieval Peutinger Map: Imperial Roman Revival in a German Empire
Tabula Peutingeriana (section)—top to bottom: Dalmatian coast, Adriatic Sea, southern Italy, Sicily, African Mediterranean coast
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Financial Times: ‘The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution’, by David Wootton
Phys Org: What has science ever done for us?
Biographile: Interconnected Worldview Traced to Source in The Invention of Nature
New Scientist: The Invention of Nature find’s science’s lost hero
Humboldt’s trip to South America inspired Darwin to join the Beagle (Image: BPK/SPSG, Berlin-Brandenburg/Hermann Buresch)
Kirkus: The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World
homunculus: Nature: the biography
NEW BOOKS:
University of Chicago Press: The Territories of Science and Religion
Harvard University Press: The Global Transformation of Time
M Libraries: Digital Conservancy: ‘Many paths to partial truth:’ archives, anthropology, and the power of representation
Armand Colin: Paul Bert… L’inventeur de l’école laïque
Springer: Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care
ART & EXHIBITIONS
Royal College of Physicians: Exhibition: Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee January–July 2016
The British Museum: A Walk on the Wild Side Tunbridge Wells Museum 12 June–20 September 2015 Last Chance!
Dundee Science Centre: Nature’s Equations: D’Arcy Thompson and the Beauty of Mathematics
Museum of the Mind: The Maudsley at War: The Story of the Hospital During the Great War Closes 24 September!
THEATRE AND OPERA:
Wallifaction: Alchemy and Avarice: Scientific and Religious Fraud in Ben Jonson’s “The Alchemist” (1610)
Stephen Ouimette at Subtle, the pseudo-alchemist, in the 2015 production at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.
Stratford Festival: The Alchemist 1 August–3 October
The Guardian: Nicole Kidman: ‘You’re still fighting for your voice in a world that can be male-dominated’
Noël Coward Theatre: Photo 51 Bookings to 21 November 2015
National Theatre: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 7 September 2015–13 February 2016
FILMS AND EVENTS:
Public Domain Review: Jacob Sarnoff and the Strange World of Anatomical Filmmaking
A still from the film showing the day old infant’s veins mounted on a board.
Discover Medical London: Walking Tours: London’s Plagues
The Royal Society: Event: Dating species divergence using rocks and clocks 9–10 November 2015
The Royal Society: Where were the women boffins? 20 September 2015
APS Museum: Event: The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World 17 September 2015
British Photographic History: Symposium: Beyond Vision: Art, Photography and Science 12 September 2015
British Science Festival: How chemistry saved the Caribbean after WWII 10 September 2015
University of Bradford: Love and War: The Mathematical Way 10 September 2015
PAINTING OF THE WEEK:
L0007159 Dispensing of medical electricity. Oil painting by Edmund Br
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.uk
http://wellcomeimages.org
Dispensing of medical electricity. Oil painting by Edmund Bristow, 1824.
Oil
1824 By: Edmund BristowPublished: –
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
TELEVISION:
BBC Four: Calculating Ada: The Countess of Computing
SLIDE SHOW:
VIDEOS:
Museo Galileo: Galileo’s trial
Vimeo: Genius of George Boole – Graphics Reel
Youtube: Durham University: The Importance of our own Past: Research at Durham University
Youtube: Royal Society: Objectivity #34 – Pearl of Wisdom
Center for the History of Medicine: Voices from the Archives
Synthtopia: An Introduction to the Mellotron (1965)
RADIO:
Radio New Zealand: National: Cracking the Genetic Code
PODCASTS:
History of Alchemy: First 3 minutes of History of Alchemy E01
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
History of Emotions: CfP: Emotions: Movement, Cultural Contact and Exchange, 11001800 Freie Universität Berlin 30 June–2 July 2016
Medical History Workshop: Images and Texts in Medical History National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda Maryland 11–13 April 2016
University of Glasgow Dissecting the Page: Medical Paratexts Schedule 11 September 2015
History of Medicine in Ireland: CHOMI Seminar Series Semester One 2015–2016
St Anne’s College Oxford: CfP: Scientiae Oxford 2016 Disciplines of knowing in the early modern world (roughly 1400-1800) 5–7 July 2016
British Library: Lecture: A 17th Century Revolution 2 November 2015
University of London, Birkbeck: CfP: Religion and Medicine: Healing the Body and Soul from the Middle Ages to the Modern Day 15–16 July 2016
American Association for the History of Medicine: CfP: AAHM Annual Meeting Minneapolis, Minnesota 28 April–1 May 2016
University of London: Institute of Historical Research: Trade, Discovery and Influences in the History of Herbal Medicine 14 October 2015
The British Society for Literature and Science: CfP: BLSL Winter Symposium: Science in the Archives Museum of English Rural Life and University of Reading’s Special Collections, 14 November 2015
University of Plymouth: CfP: 3-day Conference: Gender, Power, and Materiality in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 7–9 April 2016
Notches: CfP: Histories of Asian/Asian American Sexualities
Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, Milan: Scientific Heritage at World Exhibitions and Beyond. The Long XXth Century 20-22 September 2015
Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis: CfP: The History of Science and Contemporary Scientific Realism 19-21 February 2016
British Library: Lecture: The Mapping of Cyprus 1485–1885 25 September 2015
SocPhilSciPract: CfP Metasciences: New Trends in Metaphysics of Science Paris 16–18 December 2015
SHARP 2016 Panel: CfP: The Languages of the Medical Book Paris 18-21 July
University of Cambridge: CRASSH: The Matter of Mimesis 17–18 December 2015
Notches: CfP: Histories of Sexuality and Religion
Leopoldina: Die Ordnungen der Dinge 5–7 October 2015
Canadian Journal of History Special Issue: CfP: The Early Modern Military-Medical Complex
Historiens de la santé: CfP: Medicine and Manuscripts 900–1150 Kalamazoo 2016
LOOKING FOR WORK:
Aarhus University: Postdoc position (2 years): Histories of thought experiments
HSS: NSF-Funded Travel Grants for 2015 HSS Meeting Deadline 30 September!
University of Edinburgh: European Research Council PhD Studentship: Philosophy of Science
Natual Reserve System: University of California: ISEECI Postdoctoral Fellowship in California Ecological and/or Environmental History
Danish Council for Independent Research: Intuitions in Science and Philosophy 2 Postdocs and I PhD Student
Yale University: Senior Tenured Appointment History of Science
Washington University: Assistant Professor History of Medicine
Purdue University: R. Mark Lubbers Chair in the History of Science
Society for Renaissance Studies: Conference Grants
SocPhilSciPract: University of Geneva: PhD Position in Philosophy of Physics or Philosophy of Science
AHF: Fall 2015 Intern
University of Pittsburgh: Associate/Full Professor of History and Philosophy of Science
