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 #3
Monday 7 July 2014
EDITORIAL:
The last seven days has raced by like the Tour de France cyclists currently pedalling their way furiously through God’s own Country and like the proverbial bad penny Whewell’s Gazette has turned up for a third time bringing you the best of the histories of science, medicine and technology that our doughty editorial team have scooped up out of the Internet during the last week.
The majority of the British historians of Science have been at the British Society for the History of Science annual conference in St. Andrews this last week making the editorial staff of Whewell’s Gazette very envious with their flood of tweets extolling the wonderful lectures on offer.
POLITICS AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE:
The 10 August this year sees the first round of the first ever direct presidential election in Turkey. One of the candidates is
Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu
who as well as being a diplomatis also a chemist and a historian of science.
Ihsanoğlu is the founder and was first chair (1984–2000) of the first Department of History of Science in Turkey, which he established at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Istanbul. As far as Whewell’s Gazette is aware this is the first time that a historian of science has campaigned to be elected head of state of a country.
We would like to thank Ahmet Yükseltürk for drawing our attention to this fascinating piece history of science history.
ON THE WEB BLOGS AND WEBSITES:
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:
Retronaut: 1836: Life on the Moon
Life on the Moon
Ciclops: Captain’s Log: Reflections on ten years of Cassini
Uncertain Principles: The Mumbling Philosopher (Niels Bohr)
Yovisto: Hans Bethe and the Energy of the Stars
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Planetary Tables and Heliocentricity: A Rough Guide
New York Time: Obituary: Bruno Zumino Dies at 91, Sought to Tie Together Laws of Universe
Zoonomian: Virtual Recreation of Newton’s ‘Experimentum Crucis’ Two Prism Experiment
OUP blog: True or False? Ten myths about Isaac Newton
MEDICINE:
Board of Longitude Project: Making Progress: Hogarth and the Foundling Hospital
BBC: What Leonardo taught us about the heart
Medical Museion: Scale in Medicine as an Exhibition Principle
Yovisto: Ignaz Semmelweis and the Importance of Washing Your Hands as a Doctor
Remedia: A Botched Job: Surgery and the Politics of Pain
Neatorama: Anatomical Venus: Medical Models from 18th Century Europe
Anatomical Venus
Dittrick Museum Blog: Arguing Insanity: The Trial of President Garfield’s Assassin
JOE.MY.GOD: 33 Years Ago Today: The first report on AIDS
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2014/07/33-years-ago-today.html
Hyperallergic: Fatal Victorian Fashion and the Allure of the Poison Garment
Scientific American Guest Blog: When Scientists Experiment on Themselves: H. pylori and Ulcers
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Futility Closet: Advice to Darwin
Geology and Generals: How Geology influenced the Gettysburg Campaign (Part I.) Part II:
Kestrels and Cerevisae: “Experimental Evolution Amongst Plants” (1895)
The Embryo Project: Barbara McClintock (1902–1992) and Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (1845–1916)
Leaping Robot Blog: Big Science, Bigger Data: International Geophysics Year 1957
Wired: Fantastically Wrong: The Legendary Scientist Who Swore Our Planet Is Hollow
Twilight Beasts: The bear necessities
Società Geologica Italiana: Galileo as Gemmologist: The First Attempt in Europe at Scientifically Testing Gemstones – (PDF)
Rosetta Stones: Why Fireworks Depend on Geology
TECHNOLOGY:
The Quack Doctor: ‘A new sensation’ – hair-brushing by machinery
Conciatore: On The Path of Antonio Neri
History Today: Alternative Designs for Tower Bridge
Proposal by W.F.C. Holden to encase the bridge in glass to protect it during the Second World War.
University of Galsgow Library: Professor Archibald Barr and the optical rangefinder
Halley’s Log: Halley’s Maritime Experience Part 2: His Diving Bell
Board of Longitude Project: Decoding Harrison
TIME: As Sony’s Walkman Turns 35, a Look Back at Its Inception
The Spinning Sheep: 16th Century Textile Cleaning and Stain removing Techniques
Popular Mechanics: When Irreplaceable History Lives on Obsolete Tech
The History of Parliament: Finding latitude in longitude: Parliamentary funding of early modern science and technology
META:- HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY and OTHER:
Fiction Reboot Daily Dose: MedHum Mondays: NYAM on Public Outreach
Chronologia Universalis: My life as a scribe
Persistent Enlightenment: Foucault, the “History of Thought” and the Question of Enlightenment
Video: Prof Jon Agar: Science and the First World War (26 June 2014)
Notes & Records of the Royal Society: Philomaths, Herschel, and the myth of the self-taught man by Emily Winterburn (PDF)
Astrolabes and Stuff: Arabic in Amman: Immersion?
Public Domain Review: Palacio’s Plan for Colossal Monument to Columbus (1890)
Yovisto: Adolf Furtwängler and Photographic Archaeology
American Institute of Physics: Busy week in the history programs
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Published on …
COMICS:
Comics Worth Reading: “Imitation Gamer” Biography of Alan Turing Online
ESOTERIC:
British Library Medieval manuscripts blog: Art and Alchemy
Conciatore: Strange Bedfellows: Alchemy and Catholicism
BOOK REVIEWS:
Brain Pickings: The Science of Mental Time Travel: Memory and How Our Ability to Imagine the Future Made Us Human
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Philosopher’s Eye: Open Access to Wittgenstein Nachlass
Elsevier: Postdoc free access program
National Maritime Museum: TALK 10 July 2014 The Design and Development of Sailing Ships
ISPC Annual Conference 2014 7-9 July 2014-07-06
Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies
Chronologia Universalis: Computus is Coming: 5th Conference of the Science of Computus
CfP: Mathematical readers in the early modern world: 18-19 December 2014 All Souls College Oxford
New Book: Manchester University Press The neurologists A history of a medical specialty in modern Britain, c.1789–2000 Stephen T. Casper
University of Bonn: Conference Egyptian and Jewish Magic in Antiquity 6th-9th July, 2015.
Historians of science and medicine: fancy writing a guest post for ‘Forbidden Histories’? See here for scope & topics
NYAM: Celebrate Andreas Vesalius’ 500th Birthday with us on October 18
The Brewery History Society Blog: “Beer writing – past, present and future” Thursday, 23rd October 2014
A Brown Bag Talk at ACP: John Wheeler’s H-bomb blues: Searching for a missing document at the height of the Cold War
Exhibition: National Maritime Museum: Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude
Exhibition Cambridge University Library: The 500th Anniversary of Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564)
CfP Technologies of Daily Life in Ancient Greece 3 July 2015 Swansea University
LOOKING FOR WORK?
Wellcome Trust are looking for an Events Officer
Well that’s all for another week. Like the Tour de France Peleton Whewell’s Gazette rolls on and we’ll be back next Monday with another collection of #histsci, #histmed and #histtech goodies.
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