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 #15
Monday 29 September 2014
EDITORIAL:
Today we publish our fifteenth edition of Whewell’s Gazette the weekly #histSTM links list. The last week has seen the autumn equinox. The spring equinox signalled in earlier times the beginning of the year and played a central role in determining the date of Easter. The Fifteenth day of the Jewish month of Nissan is the start of the Jewish festival of Pesach, English Passover, the anniversary of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. This date has played a role in the history of European science because of the Church’s attempt to determine it, a date on the lunar calendar, on a solar calendar in order to celebrate Easter. These efforts culminated in the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, resulting in the calendar used throughout the world today. It should be pointed out used in parallel to other calendars in many cultures.
A couple of nice historical quotes about the history of science:
“To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth”
Evelyn Fox Keller, 1985 (h/t @CRostvik)
“The history of the science is a great fugue, in which the voices of the nations come one by one into notice.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (h/t @SciHistoryToday)
ON THE WEB BLOGS AND WEBSITES:
Birthdays of the Week:
William Playfair born 22 September 1759
Yovisto: William Playfair and the Beginnings of Infographics
Playfair’s trade-balance time-series chart, from The Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary, 1786
Michael Faraday born 22 September 1791
Michael Faraday
Thomas Phillips oil 1842
Chemical Heritage Foundation: Michael Faraday
#CosmosChat: “The Electric Boy”
The Victorian Web: Percival Leigh and Charles Dickens: The Chemistry of the Candle
Perimeter Institute: From Faraday to Present Day
Uncertain Principles: The Electric Life of Michael Faraday by Alan Hirshfeld
Abraham Gottlob Werner born 25 September 1749
Abraham Gottlob Werner
Christian Leberecht Vogel
Yovisto: Abraham Werner and the School of Neptunism
History of Geology: Granite Wars – Episode I: Fire & Water
History of Geology: When Rock Classification is not hard anymore, thank Mohs’ Scale of Hardness
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:
Physics World: CERN Celebrates 60 years of science (see also videos!)
Science Notes: Today In Science History – September 20 – Luna 16
Science Notes: Today In Science History – September 21 – Donald Arthur Glaser
True Anomalies: MAVEN and the mystery of the Martian atmosphere
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Lawrence S Myers Jr.
Science Notes: Today In Science History – September 23 – Neptune
Before Newton: Tycho in China
Photo: Peter Barker
WOUB Public Media: Dr. Arthur Fine Tells The Real Story Behind Albert Einstein
The Public Domain Review: Flowers of the Sky
Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch, Folio 28, c. 1552
Science Notes: Today In Science History – September 26 – Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn
Ptak Science Books: On Einstein Not Being in the Popular Press Before the Great Eclipse of 1919
Restricted Data The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: The lost IAEA logo
Popperfont: The illustrations for “Professor Astro Cat’s Frontiers of Space” are gorgeous
Art by Ben Newman. From Professor Astro Cat’s Frontiers of Space
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
Yovisto: The Topographia of Matthäus Marian
Halley’s Log: Halley’s Atlantic Chart, part 2: his results
Halley’s Chart
Travellers’ Tails: A Tale of Two Cooks
MEDICINE:
NYAM: A Medical Symphony: Celebrating African Americans in New York Medicine
Guardian: Nerophilosophy: Mo Costandi: A brief history of psychedelic psychiatry
New York Times: Selling Prozac as the Life-Enhancing Cure for Mental Woes
REMEDIA: Ebola: Epidemics, Pandemics and the Mapping of Their Containment
Harvard Medical School: Back Story: The beauty and bane of attempts to market food and drugs
Jeffrey M Levine: Arion Triumphant
About Education: Typhoid Mary
The New York Times: Time Machine: Marvellous Cures of Cancer Attributed to Radium 28 Sept 1913
Early Modern Medicine: Feeling ‘Louzy’
Early Modern Practitioners: The Agony and the Ecstacy: Hunting for 17th-century medics…with few sources
io9: The “Glass Delusion” Was The Most Popular Madness of the Middle Ages
The Embryo Project: Gordon Watkins Douglas (1921-2000)
http://embryo.asu.edu/handle/10776/8198
Boston Globe: 19th century advances paved way for today’s Ebola treatment
DORRS OPEN DAY: photoblog post: Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Glasgow
The Public Domain Review: The Anatomy of Drunkenness (1834)
Dittrick Museum Blog: Listening to the Body: Stethoscopes in 1900
From the Sharp & Sharp Catalog of Instruments, 1905, displaying the variety of Cammann Stethoscopes available.
History of Geology: Physician Paracelsus and early Medical Geology
BBC: Victorian keep-fit exercises and gym regimes revealed
Ernst’s manual has more than 20 different exercises for the whole family
CHEMISTRY:
Conciatore: Deadly Fumes Reprise
Chemical Heritage Foundation: Stories of the Great Chemists
A Vida Ilustres comic about Lavoisier depicts the scientist identifying constituents of air through experiments on combustion. At right, Lavoisier shares his discovery with an audience. (Othmer Library of Chemical History, CHF)
Yovisto: Joseph Proust and the Law of Constant Composition
Science Notes: Today In Science History – September 28 – Henri Moissan
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Atlas Obscura: A Garden That Can Kill
(photograph by Jo Jakeman/Flickr)
Embryo Project: Boris Ephrussi (1901-1979)
Ptak Science Books: Kingdoms of Dust and Street Dirt, and What People Breathed in 1878
Leaping Robot: DNA…From Blueprint to Brick
Science Notes: Today In Science History – September 25 – Thomas Hunt Morgan
Hyperallergic: The Romance of Science in Victorian Natural History Bookbindings
A. C. Chambers, “Beauty in Common Things” (1874) (via Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library)
The Embryo Project: Thomas Hunt Morgan’s Definition of Regeneration: Morphallaxis and Epimorphosis
Fossil History: Falconer’s Enthusiasm
The Huffington Post: Kew Gardens ‘Intoxication Season’ Invites You to Explore Mind-Altering Drugs
Chetham’s Library: The Theatre of Insects, or the tangled web of Elizabethan entomology
TECHNOLOGY:
The Plate: Tin-Can Titans and Bootle-Top Kings
Restricted Data The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: Tokyo vs. Hiroshima
Board of Longitude Project Blog: Longitude solutions
IEEE Global History Network: Fax Machines
The National Museum of Computing: Colossus veterans revisit virtual and real worlds
The Telegraph: Tampons: liberating women from impractical pads
Unmaking Things: A Gift for Life – Astronomy and Magic in a Sixteenth-Century Locket
Guardian: Victorian inventions that didn’t change the world – in pictures
Useful New Design for ‘A Portable Bath’, 1861
Popular Science: A Drive Through History
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science: Renaissance Planetary Horology
Computer History Museum: Celebrating 35 Years!
Two Nerdy History Girls: Friday Video: An Extravagant Cabinet with Many Secrets
Retronaut: 1930s: 30 Ways to Die by Electrocution
History Com: 8 Things you may not know about the Guillotine
Yovisto: Seymour R. Cray – the Father of Supercomputing
META:- HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
APS Physics: Telling the History of Physics Through Historical Places
MacArthur Fellows Program: “History and Philosophy of Science”
Trinity College Cambridge: John Dee’s Library Catalogue
Culture Digitally: How to Give Up the I-Word, Pt. 2
City Desk: How to Live Like a Genius in D.C. (Pamela Long)
Guardian: The H-Word: Who are the martyrs of Science?
Conciatore: A Third Eye Toward History
Herald Net: Burke Museum exhibit showcases scientific illustration
Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni), colored pencil. By Marly Beyer.
Physics Today: Cosmology, physics, and science in general figure centrally in “Big History”
The Renaissance Mathematicus: If you’re going to pontificate about the history of science then at least get your facts right!
PACHS News & Notes: Thomas Wijck’s Painted Alchemists at the Intersection of Art, Science and Practice
ISIS: Focus: The Peculiar Persistence of the Naturalistic Fallacy (open access)
Wallifaction: Jesuit Science since the 16th century
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Jesuit Day
Matteo Ricci dressed in traditional Chinese robes.
Artist unknown
Maggie Koerth: At the Houghton Library
Slate: The Mysterious Geometry of Swordsmanship Gorgeously Illustrated
“Human proportions established through mythological figures.” By Girard Thibault.
Genotopia: Cardboard Darwinism
Corpus Newtonicum: Adventures in Huntingtonland, Pt. 1
ESOTERIC:
Conciatore: A Network of Alchemists
“The Alchemist” 1558, Pieter Brugle the Elder.
History of Alchemy: Podcast: Heinrich Khunrath
BOOK REVIEWS:
BJHS: Books received for review
Rentetzi on Priestley, ‘Mad on Radium: New Zealand in the Atomic Age’
NEW BOOKS:
Reaktion Books: Peter Adey “Air: Nature and Culture”
THEATRE:
FILM:
TELEVISION:
Tech Times: Atomic bombs, female scientists and Los Alamos: An interview with ‘Manhattan creator Sam Shaw
VIDEOS:
Youtube: UNESCO–Cern 60 years
Youtube: Göttingen and the World of Physics: An Evening with Gustav Born
Youtube: Preserving Lonesome George
Youtube: From Past to Present Tolman/Bacher House
Youtube: Under the Knife, Episode 1 – The Clockwork Saw
Youtube: The Renaissance Mathematicus: Astronomy, Astrology & Medicine in the Early Modern Period
RADIO:
BBC: Lisa Jardine A Point of View: Keeping Time
Dosenförmige tragbare Uhr, Peter Henlein zugeschrieben
(Germanisches Nationalmuseum)
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Royal Museums Greenwich: Science, Voyaging, Art, Empire: Study Day – 18 October 2014
Birkbeck History Research History Forum: Conference: CfP: Biological Discourses: The Language of Science and Literature around 1900 10-11 April 2015
Warwick University: Conference: (Re)Imagining the Insect: Natures and Cultures of Invertebrates, 1700-1900. Saturday 7 March 2015
University College London Union: UCL faces RACE: Eugenics at UCL Friday 10 October 2014 6-9pm
Yale University: Program in the History of Science and Medicine: Colloquia Fall Term 2014
Leeds University: HPS Centre Seminar Series
Wellcome Library: History of Pre-Modern Medicine Seminar Series 2014-15
University of Ulster: Conference: Explaining and Explaining Away in Science and Religion 8-9 January 2015
University of Manchester: Art History and Visual Studies: AHVS Events 2014-2015
RIA Novosti: Hungary to Host Conference on History of Computer Science
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science: CfP: Knowledgeable Youngsters: Youth, Media and Early Modern Knowledge Societies Utrecht 26-27 June 2015
Beijing Renmin University: CFP: Manufacturing Landscapes: Nature and Technology in Environmental History
Historiens de la santé: CfP: Health History in Action
Dittrick Medical History Center: Upcoming Events
HSS Graduate & Early Career Caucus: Mentorship Program
Society for the History of Technology: Registration for THATCamp SHOT is now open!
Historiens de la santé: L’expérience et ses mots à la Renaissance
The Royal Institution: Lecture: Science, society and the Royal Institution 12-12:45pm Tuesday 30 Sept 2014
LOOKING FOR WORK?
Cancer Research UK: Science Media Officer
University of Notre Dame: Assistant Professor, History of Science
Keeper of Medicine Science Museum
The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin Department III, Artefacts, Action, and Knowledge, Director: Prof Dagmar Schäfer, announces One Postdoctoral Fellowship for up to two years.
The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin Department III, Artefacts, Action, and Knowledge, Director: Prof Dagmar Schäfer, announces One Research Scholarship for up to three years
Whewell's Ghost 