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 #27
Monday 22 December 2014
EDITORIAL:
Yesterday, 21 December, at 23:03 UT (that’s GMT for those not au fait with modern astronomical terminology) it was winter solstice. That is, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the moment when the sun is at its most southerly point on its annual journey round the ecliptic, overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn. The word tropic comes to us from the Greek via Latin and was originally tropikos “of or pertaining to a turn or change”, representing the point where the sun changes direction and starts slowly but steadily moving northward towards the summer solstice. For those of us in the northern hemisphere the winter solstice is the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The winter solstice is the origin of many winter festivals and customs including much of the Christmas celebrations or for example the Swedish Lucia fest on 13 December. We here at Whewell’s Gazette, your weekly #histSTM links list, think the winter solstice would make for a much better New Years Eve being a true turning point in the solar year. With this thought in mind we wish all of our readers all the best for the festive season and may your coming year be filled with much sunshine.
Solstice
Quote of the Week:
“Dawkins’ next book is on the infallible certainty of mathematics, and it will be called The Gödelusion”. – @fadesingh
Uncertain Principles: Advent Calendar of Science Stories
19. Eucatastrophe
20. Dot physics 1976
21. Hot and Cold
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:
The Renaissance Mathematicus: A very similar luminous lustre appears when one observes a burning candle from a great distance through a translucent piece of horn.
Atomic Heritage Foundation: Emilio Segrè
Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: The button that isn’t
Biblio: Where’s Waldo Goes to Outer Space
Motherboard: The Demystification of Venus
Astrolabes and Stuff: String Theory – Medieval-style
Equatorium of Jupiter, from Peter Apian’s
Astronomicum Caesareum (1540)
Irish Philosophy: Small and Far Away: Thomas Kingsmill Abbott
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Someone is Wrong on the Internet
APS Physics: This Month in Physics History: December 18, 1926: Gilbert Lewis coins “photon” in letter to Nature
AIP: Oral history Transcript – Dr David Bohm
A Clerk of Oxford: The Anglo-Saxon O Antiphons: O Oriens, O Earendel
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
Richard Who?: Saluting Captain Matthew Flinders
Conciatore: Neri’s Travels
Yovisto: Vitus Bering and his Arctic Expeditions
Vitus Bering’s expedition is wrecked on the Aleutian Islands in 1741
Board of Longitude Project: Longitude Legends: Captain Bligh
MEDICINE:
Mosaic: Female condoms: meet the ancestors
© Galton Institute/Wellcome Library
Medical Heritage Library: What Can We Learn from Hospital Reports?
Circulating Now: NLM’s Unique De Fabrica
Pieria: A 17th Century Spreadsheet of Deaths in London
The Chirugeon’s Apprentice: Disturbing Disorders: FOP (Stone Man Syndrome)
Dittrick Museum Blog: Tis the Season for Sneezin! Historical “Cures” for the Common Cold
The Washington Post: Stop freaking out about having babies in your 30s. Your great-grandmother did it, too.
The Sloane Letters Blog: The Twelve Days of Christmas
Yovisto: Ambroise Paré – Renaissance Pioneer in Surgical Techniques
Contagions: Expanding the Historical Plague Paradigm
CHEMISTRY:
Mosaic: Colour to dye for
L’Oréal Dia Richesse 1 (black) with 6% peroxide, painted onto photographic film and left for 120 mins. Lead image (top): Schwarzkopf LIVE Color XXL Pure Purple 86, painted onto photographic film and left for for 20 mins.
© Luke Evans
About Education: Ancient Tattoo Ink Recipe
The Recipes Project: What Was Perfume in the Eighteenth Century?
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Chemical Heritage Magazine: Ancient DNA
Geological Society of London Blog: Four more geologists you didn’t know were geologists
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943)
Photo: King
Wired: Fantastically Wrong: What Darwin Really Screwed Up About Evolution
TECHNOLOGY:
Conciatore: The Rise and Fall Reprise
Ptak Science Books: Memory-Inducing-Advertisements–Wartime “nature”, 1942
Ptak Science Books: The Deceive-O-Scope –– the Motion Picture in 1848
Science Friday: Picture of the Week: Mechanical Calculator
BBC: The buildings that would have been impossible
Conciatore: The Bead Trade
Yovisto: Christopher Polhem anticipating the Industrial Revolution
The Long Now: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine
Archaeology: The Secret Strength of Roman Concrete
Ptak Science Books: History of Lines series: the Geometry of Canon-Fire (1812)
Source: Ptak Science Books
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
The many-headed monster: The editing game…
Vice Versa: BIOSOCIAL SCIENCE FROM ITALIAN CRIMINOLOGY TO AMERICAN POST-WAR STUDIES OF PREJUDICE
ScottBot: Digital History, Saturn’s Rings and the Battle of Trafalgar
Environment & Society Portal: Virtual Exhibitions: Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands
Environment & Society Portal: Virtual Exhibitions: Representing environmental risk in the landscapes of US militarization
Canadian Journal of Communication: Vol 39, No. 4 (2014) Bridging Communication and Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Islam & Science: Islam and Science: concordance or Conflict?
Lady Science is a monthly dose of cultural criticism, usually in the form of two easy-to-swallow essays. We focus on stories about women in science, technology and medicine, both in modern, popular media and in history.
American Science: The Epistemology of a Podcast
The Guardian: Against Excellence
Medieval Books: The Medieval Origins of the Modern Footnote
Makers: Exclusive: The White House’s New Initiative Writes STEM Women Back into History
Making Science Public: A compilation of blog posts – 2014
ESOTERIC:
BOOK REVIEWS:
Fiction Reboot: MedHum Mondays Presents: A Review of SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES
H-Net: Kate Hill ed. Museums and Biographies: Stories, Objects, Identities
NEW BOOKS:
Wired: 17 Ridiculous Victorian Inventions That Didn’t Change the World
The Boot Lever A new book called Inventions That Didn’t Change the World is a compilation of 19th century design ideas that were submitted to the U.K.’s Design Registry, but then never saw the light of day. This lever was designed for pulling on and off boots. THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, LONDON, ENGLAND 2014. © 2014 CROWN COPYRIGHT.
Historiens de la santé: The Syon Abbey Herbal: The Last Monastic Herbal in Britain c. AD 1517
The H-Word: Twenty years on from Longitude rewriting the “villainous” Nevil Maskelyne
Historiens de la santé: Henri-François Le Dran (1685-1770) et la chirurgie des lumières Bernard Hoerni
The Oxford Times: Doing right by the also-rans
THEATRE:
FILM:
The New York Review of Books: A poor Imitation of Alan Turing
TELEVISION:
Notches: Masters of Sex: Race, Racism and Responses to Masters and Johnson
Libby Masters (Caitlin Fitzgerald) and Robert Franklin (Jocko Sims) address their mutual attraction in season 2, episode 12 of Masters of Sex
SLIDE SHARE:
VIDEOS:
Youtube: Disneyland – 3-14 – Our Friend the Atom
RADIO:
BBC: Start the Week: Reinventing Inventions
PODCASTS:
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
LIVING IN A TOXIC WORLD (1800-2000): EXPERTS, ACTIVISM, INDUSTRY AND REGULATION Registration opened for the 8th EUROPEAN SPRING SCHOOL ON HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND POPULARIZATION Maó (Menorca) 14-16 May 2015
Leeds Trinity University: CfP: The British Association for Victorian Studies Conference “Victorian Age(s)” 27-29 August 2015
HQ-4 Conference: CfP: Fourth Conference on History of Quantum Physics San Sebastián, Spain 16-18 July 2015
A Philosopher’s Take: CfP: University of Calgary’s 4th Annual Philosophy Graduate Student Conference: Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburg: Centre for Philosophy of Science: CfP: Diagrams as Vehicles of Scientific Reasoning 10-12 April 2015
Historien de la santé: CfP: ‘Human Gene Mapping’ and ‘oral History of Human Genetics’ Glasgow 5-6 June 2015
Special Issues of Discipline filosofiche: CfP: Philosophical Analysis and Experimental Philosophy
Academia.edu: Empty Spaces: A one-day conference at the Institute of Historical Research (London), 10 April 2015
The Royal Society: Publish or Perish? The past, present and future of the scientific journal 19-21 March 2015
Elsevier: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Science Article Prize
Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice (SPSP) Fifth Biennial Conference 24-26 June 2015
University of Warwick: (Re)Imagining the Insect: Natures and Cultures of Invertebrates, 1700-1900 7 March 2015
![[IMAGES VIA: BIBLIOTHÈQUE DES CHAMPS LIBRES, CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES GEOLOGY AND ENTOMOLOGY COLLECTIONS, EWEN ROBERTS, AND INTERNET ARCHIVE BOOK IMAGES.]](https://whewellsghost.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/insectcfp.jpg)
[IMAGES VIA: BIBLIOTHÈQUE DES CHAMPS LIBRES, CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES GEOLOGY AND ENTOMOLOGY COLLECTIONS, EWEN ROBERTS, AND INTERNET ARCHIVE BOOK IMAGES.]
LOOKING FOR WORK:
University of Cambridge: Research and Teaching Associate in Philosophy of Science and Bioethics
University of Reading: Professor of Public Engagement With History
Bristol Science Centre: Communications Officer
British Science Association: PR Officer
Queen’s University Belfast: 3-year fully funded PhD project on ‘Evolution and the Hygienic City: Darwinian medicine in fin-de-siècle Belfast’
University of King’s College/Dalhousie University, Halifax: Postdoctoral Fellowship: Science and Technology Studies (STS)/History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, Medicine (HPSTM)
University of Bristol: Postdoctoral Research Assistant, History of Medicine (Life of Breath) based in the Department of Philosophy
University of Virginia: Tenure-Track STS Job: Assistant or Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society
The Morgan Library & Museum: Assistant Curator, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts
CHoM News: 2015-2016 Women in Medicine Fellowship: Application Period Open
Faculté de médecine de l’Université d’Ottawa: Appel à candidatures: Bourses professorales Hannah en histoire de la médecine
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