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 #14
Monday 22 September 2014
Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. 14
EDITORIAL:
As already announced last week, due to the fact that our editorial staff are off gallivanting around Franconia celebrating the life and work of Renaissance mathematicus Simon Marius at diverse conferences the whole weekend, this is perforce a curtailed edition of your all time favourite #histSTM weekly links list, which only covers the first four and one half days of the last seven. If you were foolhardy enough to post that world shattering history of science, technology or medicine post at the weekend then it will have missed its chance to be included in Whewell’s Gazette, a cause for the gnashing of teeth, the ripping out of hair by the roots and the rending of garments. Not that that will change anything. Almost normal service will be resumed with the next scintillating, titillating, and invigorating edition next Monday.
A wonderful piece of news this week for the #histSTM community is that independent scholar Pamela O Long author of Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (2001) and Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400-1600 (2012), amongst others, has been awarded a MacArthur Fellows Award.
ON THE WEB BLOGS AND WEBSITES:
Birthdays of the Week:
Murry Gell-Mann 15 September 1929
James Tauber (14) meeting Murray Gell-Mann
Thought Streams: Murray Gell-Mann
AIP History: Oral History Transcript – Dr Murray Gell-Mann
John Goodricke 17 September 2014
John Goodricke: James Scouler
Royal Astronomical Society
Yovisto: John Goodricke and the Varible Star of Beta Persei
Teleskopos: Sights and sounds: darkness and silence
Edwin Mattison McMillan 18 September 1907
-Edwin McMillan (1907-1991) Credit Nobel Foundation
Science Notes: Today In Science History – September 18 – Edwin Mattison McMillan
AIP History: Oral History Transcript – Dr Edwin McMillan
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Podcast: Rose Bethe’s Interview
Atomic Heritage Foundation: Joseph Rotblat
Science Note: Today In Science History – September 16 – Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
AIP History: Oral History Transcript – Dr Edwin McMillan
Retronaut: c.1975: Control Room of the Synchrophasotron
Red Orbit: Multiverse
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
Wired: Uncovering Hidden Texts on a 500-Year-Old Map That Guided Columbus
The Royal Society: The Repository: Longitude
Halley’ Log: Halley’s Atlantic Chart, part 1: fish or fowl revisited
Extract from Halley’s Atlantic Chart – notice the feet. (© Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), Image S0015919)
MEDICINE:
Miriam Posner: Frequently asked questions about lobotomy
Yovisto: The psychologist must study mankind from the historical or comparative standpoint – Moritz Lazarus
British Library: Untold Lives Blog: King Silence – the lives of Victorian deaf children
From the Hands of Quacks: Experiences of a Deaf Man
Dittrick Museum Blog: Blood Rises – Tension and Truth in The Knick
The Quack Doctor: A devil of a cure
Photo: Jonathon Brown
Royal College of Physicians of Ireland Heritage Centre Blog: Theories of the cases of fever in Dublin in the early 19th century
Slate: 19th-Century Infographic Shows American Morality as a Cluster of Cute Little Charts
Science Notes: Today In Science History – September 17 – Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne du Boulogne
The Chirugeon’s Apprentice: Ten Terrifying Knives from Medical History
Notches: Sexual Curiosities? Aphrodisiacs in early modern England
Remedia: Migraine Fears
Royal College of Physicians: The cure of old age and preservation of youth
CHEMISTRY:
Science Notes: Today In Science History – September 15 – Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Butlerov
The Paris Review: Extreme, extreme! The literature of laughing gas
“This is not the Laughing, but the Hippocrene or Poetic Gas, Sir.” Colored etching by R. Seymour, 1829, via the Wellcome Library.
Conciatore: Neri’s Cabinet #6: Saltpeter
The AAT project: The 150th Anniversary of the Periodic Table
British Library: Untold Lives Blog: Arsenic, Cyanide and Strychnine – the Golden Age of Victorian Poisoners
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Daily Echo: Fossil hunters: uncover history and follow in the footsteps of Mary Anning at Lyme Regis
Embryology Project: Wilhelm Roux nineteenth-century experimental embryologist
Natural History Apostils: Three Facts about Darwin, Blyth, Loudon, and Matthew
New York Times: ‘Animated Life: Seeing the Invisible’
New York Times: Art Entangled in Nature
Naturally Fun Days: Charles Darwin’s life in Shrewsbury
Yovisto: How Ötzi became World Famous
TECHNOLOGY:
Conciatore: The Discovery of Glass Reprise
Guardian: Why the story of materials is really the story of civilisation
The Atlantic: Before Computers, People Programmed Looms
This portrait was woven using a Jacquard loom. ( Michel-Marie Carquillat/Wikimedia )
Guardian: Revolutionary diving suit to be used at site of ‘world’s oldest computer’ find
Yovisto: Squire Whipple – The Father of the Iron Bridge
Conciatore: The Art of Metals
Thick Objects: What is a complete object?
A control stand from an Victor “Snook Special” x-ray machine. It was purchased in 1926 for the University of Toronto physics laboratory run by John Cunningham McLennan (1867-1935). On the left is part of the schematic that was sent with the original unit. On the right is the unit as it appeared when it was finally decommissioned by the Department of Physics in the early 2000s. The colourful modifications to the original faux marble panel could represent damage to a classic instrument, or evidence of a remarkably rich provenance.
META:- HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
BBC: A Point of View: The long shadow of war
Newsworks: The art of explaining science… and why it’s so hard to do
From Past to Present: The Tolman/Bacher House
Ether Wave Propaganda: Schaffer on Machine Philosophy, Pt. 5a: Automata and the Proto-Industrial Ideology of the Enlightenment — History
Time Mapper: Medieval Philosophers – Timeliner
The Environmental History Weekly
The Royal Society: The Repository: Circus of science
Crane Court, from an engraving by C.J. Smith
ESOTERIC:
Forbidden Histories: One Year of ‘Forbidden Histories’
Scientific American: Tetrapod Zoology: Loxton and Prothero’s Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids; the Tet Zoo review
NEXOS: Women Alchemists
Goddess Alchemy carries a flask containing the quintessence of the Earth
© NYPL/Science Source: Getty Images
BOOK REVIEWS:
Heavenfield: Holmes on Animals in Saxon & Scandinavian England
NEW BOOKS:
Cambridge University Press: Philosophy of Microbiology
THEATRE:
FILM:
BBC: Imitation Game wins Toronto top prize
TELEVISION:
Science Based Medicine: Medicine past, present, and future: Star Trek vesus Dr Kildare and The Knick
Dr Kildare
VIDEOS:
The Dispersal of Darwin: The Voyages of Darwin: The Complete Series on DVD (Region 2)
Youtube: The past, present and future of the bubonic plague – Sharon N. DeWitte
Youtube: Herbarium digitisation: 4M in 1.5 years for Naturalis Biodiversity Center
Live Stream: Cosmopolitanism and the Local in Science & Nature: Rewriting the History of Science and Philosophy in Late Colonial India by Dhruv Raina 2 October 2014
Youtube: Into the Vault: Darwin’s Orchid Book
RADIO:
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Dissertation Reviews: Now accepting dissertations in Science Studies (broadly defined) for review in our 2014-15 season
The Society for the History of Natural History: History of Teaching Natural History Oct 10-11
Historiens de la santé: University of Pennsylvania: Conference: Professionalizing Nursing and Medicine September 27
Medical Library Association: Murray Gottlieb Prize: The Murray Gottlieb Prize is awarded annually for the best unpublished scholarly paper about a topic in the history of the health sciences.
University College London: Here is the programme for the UCL Science and Technology Studies seminars for Autumn 2014
University of Liverpool: Making Waves: Oliver Lodge and the Cultures of Science, 1875-1940: Workshop 3: Science, Pure and Applied: Oliver Lodge, Physics and Engineering 31 October 2014
ESSWE: CfP: Magic and Intellectual History University of York 15 March 2015
Historiens de la santé: CfP: The Canadian Society for the History of Medicine and the Canadian Association for the History of Nursing annual meeting, 30 may – 1 June 2015
University of Glasgow: Conference: Gartnavel Royal Hospital and the History of Scottish Psychiatry 15 November 2014
LOOKING FOR WORK?
Science Museum Group: Associate Curator, Mathematics Gallery Project
Historiens de la santé: Call for applications: UCLA Position in History and Social Studies Medicine
University College Berkeley: Position: Assistant Professor in the History and Rhetoric of Science and Technology
University of Strathclyde: Lecturer in History of Health and Medicine
Caltech: Postdoctoral Instructor in History & Philosophy of Physics
Whewell's Ghost 