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 #29
Monday 05 January 2015
EDITORIAL:
Well our editorial staff has survived New Years Eve and they are back on the treadmill generating electricity so that we can bring you the first edition of your weekly #histSTM links list for the year 2015, which a couple of the mathematics buffs on Twitter have pointed out in a palindrome in binary code the universal language of computers, 11111011111. Its also rather nice in base eight 3737 and base four 133133.
Quotes of the Week:
They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and this is a good argument against atheism. I think it’s a better argument against foxholes. – Kurt Vonnegut
‘The authorities of the British Museum have had another abuse to contend against & that is the practice of families sending a harmless lunatic member to spend the day in the Reading Room, thus providing them with an asylum…at the cost of nothing’ 1890s – @britishlibrary
“When it comes to science most of the jingoists and religious fanatics-particularly Hindus and Muslims, just love to revel in the past. There have been biases in writing of history and history of science but this can’t be set right by dubious claims. Stick to facts not fantasies”. – @irfhabib
Birthdays of the Week:
Andreas Vesalius born 31 December 1514
Special Collections & Archives at Mizzou: Happy Birthday Andreas Vesalius
News Works: Skepticism in medicine turns 500
RCS: Vesalius: 500 years on Lecture by Professor Vivian Nutton
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:
Space Age Archaeology: Shadows of the Moon: an ephemeral archaeology
Dawn Journal: December 29
Giuseppe Piazzi points the way to his discovery, the planet Ceres. (Dawn’s route there is more complex than Piazzi might have guessed.) Credit: Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo – S
Space Watchtower: New Year did not always begin on January 1
The Eclipse Expeditions of the Lick Observatory and the Dawn of Astrophysics (PDF)
Science 2.0: A Brief History of Exo-Earths and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Preach truth – serve up myths
British Library: Medieval manuscripts blog: Cicero’s Map to the Stars
jamesungureanu: Vision of Science: Mary Somerville
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
MEDICINE:
The Embryo Project: Harry Hamilton Laughlin (1880–1943)
Chemical Heritage Magazine: Mummies and the Usefulness of Death
Center for Israel Education: First nursing graduates in the Land of Israel
December 7, 1921
Twenty-two women graduate from the Nurses’ Training Institute at Rothschild Hospital in Jerusalem
Of Microbes and Men: The Curious Case of Tiny Tim Cratchit
The Recipes Project: How to Translate a Recipe (2)
The Conversation: Ancient hangover cures to get you through the new year
Early Modern Medicine: Infertility, Miscarriage and Men
Instagram: meta4rn: The first Australian mental health nurse
Atlas Obscura: Numbers Instead of Names on the Forgotten Graves of Asylum Patients
CHEMISTRY:
About Education: History of Fireworks
The Recipes Project: Dyeing to Impress: Hair Products and Beauty Culture in Nineteenth-Century America
“Bogles Hair Dye” in Walton’s Vermont Register and Farmers’ Almanac for 1862 (Montpelier: S. M. Walton, 1862). Image courtesy of Archive.org:
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
NewsWorks: Volcanoes may have contributed to dinosaurs’ demise, Princeton scientists find
History of Geology: A tribute to the Year of Crystallography – Haüy’s Models
National Geographic: The Plate: What’s Best for Baby’s Tummy? The History of Baby Food
Road to Paris: A very short history of climate change research
Dumbarton Oaks: The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century
Woods Hole Museum: Cornelia Clapp and the Earliest Years of the MBL
Fossil History: Happy Birthday Marcellin Boule
jamesungureanu: Visions of Science: Charles Lyell
These Bones of Mine: Interview with Liz Eastlake: Dental Delights and Estonian Escapades
TECHNOLOGY:
The Royal Society: Microscope and oxy-hydrogen lamp projector
Image number: RS.10747
Credit: © The Royal Society
Conciatore: Faux Pearls Reprise
Conciatore: Neri the Scholar
Atlas Obscura: The 19th-Century Iron Balls Still Cleaning The Paris Sewers
The Institute: Five Famously Wrong Predictions About Technology
Flickr: Sani-Phone Hygienic Telephone Discs
The Conversation: A history of fireworks: how about some flaming artichokes to blast in the new year?
Fireworks on the River Thames, Monday May 15 1749.
Live Science: Ancient Middle East Shipwrecks Shed Light on Shipbuilding History
Georgian Gentleman: What is your hobby?
Chemical Heritage Magazine: In the Pink
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
Museum of the History of Science: January Newsletter
Voices: Gone in 2014: Remembering 10 Notable Women in Science
British biologist Lorna Casselton
Credit: Bruce Sampson/Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY)
TCP: EEBO-TCP Phase I Public Release: What to expect on January 1
Ether Wave Propaganda: The “MIT and the Transformation of American Economics” Conference and Maturation in the Historiography of Economic Thought
Michael Crichton: Why Politicized Science is Dangerous
IEEE: Bell Labs’ milestones dedications ceremony held Dec. 18 in Murray Hill
Mental Floss: Winston Churchill’s 1932 Predictions for 50 Years Hence
Nature: Time for the social sciences
Cultures of Knowledge: Merry Christmas and Glad Tidings
Robert Boyle (1627-91): Welcome to the Boyle Papers Online!
Journal of Universal Rejection
Wellcome Trust: Image of the Week: Happy New Year 2015!
Ancient Chinese wooden geomantic compass and perpetual calendar
LaCrosse Tribune.com: Museum to spotlight Wisconsin science
Blink: Can India have a scientific revolution?
The Guardian: Ivor Gattan-Guinness obituary
Pacific Standard: The Science of Society: What Is the Point of Academic Books?
JHI Blog: What Does Early Modern Bibliography Have to Do With a Blog?
Homunculus: There goes the neighbourhood
Reading the History of Western Science: A List of Good Places to Start
Motherboard: Should Unprovable Physics be Considered Philosophy?
C Net: Ancient Indian aircraft on agenda of major science conference
Plans for an ancient Indian flying machine
Wikimedia Commons
Audra Wolfe: Doing Scholarship from Outside Academe
ESOTERIC:
The History of Phrenology on the Web: Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832)
Special Collections & Archives at Mizzou: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them in Special Collections
BOOK REVIEWS:
Empathy Library: A History of Bombing
Forbes: John Farrell: Book of the Year: Alice Roberts On Evolution and the Making of Us
Science Book a Day: Steam-Powered Knowledge: William Chambers and the Business of Publishing, 1820-1860
NEW BOOKS:
Historiens de la santé: Schreiben am Rand: Die »Bernische kantonale Irrenanstalt Waldau« und ihre Narrative (1895-1936)
Historiens de la santé: The Antibody Molecule: From Antitoxins to therapeutic antibodies
Ashgate: Australia Circumnavigated: The Voyage of Matthew Flinders in HMS Investigator, 1801-1803
Pickering & Chatto: The Correspondence of John Tyndall
Historiens de la santé: Medicine and Public Health in Latin America: A History
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:
Indiegogo.com: A Film and Interactive Media Project about Navy Rear Admiral and Computer Pioneer, Grace Hopper.
Grace Murray Hopper at the UNIVAC keyboard, c. 1960
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Scientific American: Guest Blog: Stephen Hawking, Hawking Incorporated, and the Myth of the Lone Genius
The Theory of Everything, film review: Eddie Redmayne plays Stephen Hawking brilliantly
TELEVISION:
SLIDE SHARE:
VIDEOS:
RADIO:
BBC: Wittgenstein’s Jet
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Photographed by Ben Richards, Swansea, Wales, 1947
Source: Wikimedia Commons
PODCASTS:
NPR: Mae Keane, The Last ‘Radium Girl,’ Dies at 107
Employees of the U.S. Radium Corp. paint numbers on the faces of wristwatches using dangerous radioactive paint. Dozens of women, known as “radium girls,” later died of radium poisoning. The last radium girl died this year at 107.
Argonne National Laboratory
History of the Earth: December 31. The 6th Extinction
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Sixth International Workshop on the History of Human Genetics Glasgow, UK (Scotland), June 5-6, 2015 CfP: ‘Human Gene Mapping’ and ‘Oral History of Human Genetics’
ECREA: CfP: Communications History Bridges and Boundaries Conference 16-18 September 2015
The Royal Society: Conference: Publish or Perish? The past, present and future of the scientific journal 19-21 March 2015
Historiens de la santé: CfP: Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine – 14th Annual Conference Sydney 30 June-4 July 2015
LOOKING FOR WORK:
UCAR: Senior Science Writer and Public Information Officer
The Bibliographical Society: Katharine F Pantzer Jr Research Awards
RCP: Project Coordinator – – UK Medical Heritage Library (UK-MHL) project
Uppsala University: Postdoctoral associate
M-Phi: Jobs at LMU Munich: Three assistant Professorships in Logic and Philosophy of Language
M-Phi: Jobs at LMU Munich: Two Postdoctoral Positions in Philosophy of Mathematics
The Morgan Library & Museum: Assistant Curator, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts
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