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 #26
Monday 15 December 2014
EDITORIAL:
The latest edition of Whewell’s Gazette, #26, your weekly #histSTM links list sees the completion of a half year of collecting the best of Internet histories of science, technology and medicine for your perusal and delectation; a point in time to pause and take stock. It’s turned out to be more work than our editorial team first imagined but they’ve settled down to a regular work rhythm and intend to carry on for the foreseeable future.
150 years ago on 8 December George Boole mathematician and logician passed away. The algebraic logic he created, Boolean algebra. Forms the foundation of both the hardware and the software of the computer I’m typing this on as well as the one you are reading it on. This weeks Whewell’s Gazette celebrates the passing of an often neglected and unsung hero of the computer age.
George Boole – 1815–1864
Boole’s gravestone at St. Michael’s Church, Blackrock, Cork
Irish Philosophy: Ones and Zeros
Forgotten Genius – George Boole: Part 2
Yovisto: George Boole – Founder of Modern Logic
BBC: George Boole and the AND OR NOT gates
Boole meets Babbage Carton 2D Goggles
The River-side: George Boole’s untimely death
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Killed by Homeopathy
The Irish Times: How George Boole gave birth to ‘pure mathematics’
The Renaissance Mathematicus: One of my worst academic puns!
Birthday of the Week:
Annie Jump Cannon (December 11, 1863 – April 13, 194)
Straitened Circumstances: Annie Jump Cannon, Featured On Last Week’s Cosmos, As Profiled In “Wonder Women of History”
Annie Jump Cannon outside Wellesley Coolege Hall 1884
She is an Astronomer: Annie Cannon (1863–1941)
Annie Jump Cannon with Henrietta Swan Leavitt in 1913
Search Engine Land: Annie Jump Cannon Google Logo Marks The 151st Birthday Of The Famous Female Astronomer
Annie Jump Cannon
Yovisto: Annie Jump Cannon and the Catalogue of Stars
Uncertain Principles: Advent Calendar of Science Stories
The page from Isaac Newton’s journal where he described using a needly to poke the back of his eyeball. From the Cambridge University library.
10. Anagrams. Oy.
11: Feynman’s Plate
13. Timing Light
14. A Slip of Card
The Rise and Fall of a Nobel Laureate:
A strange episode in the modern history of science has now turned positively weird! It turns out that a Russian billionaire paid all of that money for James Watson’s Nobel Prize medal and is giving it back to him whilst allowing him to keep the money.
Genotopia: Having His Medal and Selling It Too
Now Appearing: Defending James Watson
On Watson, humanity, and science heroes
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:
IEEE Spectrum: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
Atomic Heritage Foundation: James Chadwick
The Appendix: Atomic Anxiety and the Tooth Fairy: Citizen Science in the Midcentury Midwest
Button pins like this one were sent to children in recognition of their donation of a tooth.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch August 1, 2013
AIP: Oral History Transcript – Max Born
AIP: The Tale of the Hat: An Oral History
Our Niels Bohr statue in the reading room looking festive.
Slate: Spin a 3-D Representation of a Beautiful 17th-Century Celestial Globe
APS Physics: This Month in Physics History: December 1958: Invention of the Laser
Bildgeist: Tycho Brahe, Astronomical Instruments (1598)
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
APS: A chart of the zodiacal stars, used in finding the longitude at sea by the moon
Slate: An Early Arctic Explorer’s Dramatic Drawings of the Frozen North
Royal Museums Greenwich: Eccentric ideas for the discovery of Longitude
MEDICINE:
Winnipeg Free Press: A Lasting Legacy of Science
Advances in the History of Psychology: APA Monitor: “Silenced Voices,” the Work of David Boder
Perspectives on History: Genetics as a Historicist Discipline: A New Player in Disease History
AEON: Risky medicine
Early Modern Medicine: Medicine, the weather and Wilkes
Doctor visiting a patient c.1750 courtesy of Rijksmuseum
Culture 24: Ancient hypnosis techniques which spawned Freud’s couch revealed in madness, murder and mental healing
The Recipes Project: Follow the Recipe! Un/Authorizing Muslim Women’s Cosmetic Expertise in the Medieval and Early Modern West
Medievalist.net: Plague Remedies from Renaissance Italy
Medievalist.net: The Medieval Globe launches with special issue on the Black Death
The History of Emotions Blog: Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender Health
CHEMISTRY:
Homunculus: Chemistry for the kids – a view from the vaults
Conciatore: Royal Apothecary Reprise
Conciatore: Making Connections
Dittrick Museum Blog: The Colorful Chemistry of Show Globes
Whitall, Tatum, & Co, 1897
Nadia Berenstein: Skunkiness, Coffee Chemistry, and Naturalism in Flavor
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
BBC: Earth: The 9 rarest plants in the world
UCL Museum & Collections Blog: Specimen of the Week: Week 165
Infant orang-utan, Pongo sp. LDUCZ-Z2064
Daily News: Missing brains mystery solved at the University of Texas
EGU Blogs: Imaggeo on Mondays: An ancient landscape and the never setting sun
Molecular Ecologist: “Hurrah! Hurrah!” DNA barcoding and the lost story of Darwin’s meadow
Yovisto: Jan Ingenhousz and Photosynthesis
JHU Press: The modern period: why the history of menstruation is about so much more than blood and Kotex
Concocting Science: Breastmilk and other bodily fluids
Biodiversity Library Exhibition: Early Women in Science
Florence Merriam Bailey
Smithsonian Institute
Nautilus: Turning Back the Clock on Human Evolution
Until Darwin: Excerpt from the Introduction to Until Darwin: Science & the Origins of Race (2010)
Letters from Gondwana: Early Studies of South American Fossils
Notches: Challenging Heterosexism: The Haringey Experiment, 1986–1987
Mental Floss: How One Woman’s Discovery Shook the Foundation of Geology
Geological Curators’ Group: Six Questions for a Geological Curator – Isla Gladstone – Bristol
The Embryo Project: American Eugenics Society (1926–1972)
Trowelblazers: The Trowelblazing Enigma: Can you help us solve a trowelblazing mystery?
Who is this unknown trowelblazer examining the Kimmeridge Clay at Bliss’s Pitt, Stewkley, Bucks? Digitised from the Geologists’ Association Carreck Archive, reproduced with permission of the British Geological Survey.
Yovisto: Pierre-Marie-Alexis Millardet and his Battle against Phylloxera
TECHNOLOGY:
History Today: The Clifton Suspension Bridge opened: Brune’s crossing opened December 8th, 1864
Two Nerdy History Girls: No smoking in the house, please
Atlas Obscura: Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant
Yovisto: The Most Accurate Instruments of Gemma Frisius
Brown Alumni Magazine: Party Line
Ptak Science Books: A (possibly) Famous Chair
M: Margaret Hamilton, lead software engineer, Project Apollo
Margaret Hamilton, lead software engineer, Project Apollo
Yovisto: Maria Telkes and the Power of the Sun
Ether Wave Propaganda: Schaffer on Machine Philosophy, Pt. 5b: Automata and the Enlightenment
Yovisto: Hans von Ohain and the Jet Engine
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
British Council: Voices: Trying to explain science to the public is not a new thing
Museum of Marco Polo: For curious museum lovers everywhere
Caltech: Don L. Anderson 1933–2014 Obituary
Notre Dame News: Notre Dame’ Reilly Center releases 2015 List of Emerging Ethical Dilemmas and Policy Issues in Science and Technology
University of Cambridge: CRASSH: The Total Archive: Dreams of Universal Knowledge from the Encyclopaedia to Big Data 19-20 March 2015
Conecta: Russian History of Medicine
edSurge: Celebrating Grace Hopper’s Legacy in the Computer Science Classroom
CENHS: The Ethics of Conferences in the Age of Climate Change
Culture 24: Science Museum to care for “precious” Sir Patrick Moore archive collected at astronomer’s home
Making Science Public: Hype, honesty and trust
Harvard Gazette: Crowdsourcing old journals
Detail from Paul Pry’s (aka William Heath) ‘March of Intellect’ series featuring (and lampooning) fantastical modes of trasnport c. 1828. Photo by SSPL/Getty
ArchivesNext: Looking for history-related crowdsourcing projects for new site
Oxford Journals: Making the Case for History in Medical Education
Uncertain Principles: The Problem of Science Stories
Ptak Science Books: Magic in Nature, 1896
Symbiartic: Women in Science Illustrations
The Royal Society – Pinterest: Pattern Inspiration
Chemical Heritage Foundation: Chemical Heritage Magazine
American Science: A Great Resource for Early American Science
British Library – Medieval manuscripts blog: An Early Holiday Present: Forty-six new Greek manuscripts online
University of Glasgow Library: Glasgow Incunabula Project Update
Conciatore: Francesco’s Studiolo
ESOTERIC:
BOOK REVIEWS:
George Campbell Gosling: Reviewing Almost Worthy: The Poor, Paupers, and the Science of Charity in America 1877-1917
The Guardian: The best science books of 2014
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Retelling a story – this time with all the facts: Review of Finding Longitude
Physics Today: The year in review: Five books that stood out in 2014
Science Friday: The Best Science Books of 2014
The Atlantic: Empire of Cotton
NEW BOOKS:
Amazon: The Quantum Dissidents: Rebuilding the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (1950–1990)
Routledge: Complaints, Controversies and Grievances in Medicine: Historical and Social Science Perspectives
Whatever: The Big Idea: Chad Orzel: Eureka! Discovering Your Inner Scientist
Nouveautés Éditeurs: Éric Simac (1874-1913) : Un oublié du “mouvement de libération” homosexuel de la Belle Époque
C19 MAD MEN: New Book Out Now: Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century
Historiens de la santé: Santé et société à Montpellier à la fin du Moyen Âge Geneviève Dumas
Marcial Pons: Arte y Ciencia en el Barroco español Marcaida López, José Ramón
THEATRE:
FILM:
TELEVISION:
SLIDE SHARE:
VIDEOS:
BBC The Sky at Night: 1963 Bases on the Moon
CBC Digital Archive: 1986: John Polyani awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Tom Mcleish Faith and Wisdom in Science
Alfred Binet: Vie et carriere
West Midlands History: Erasmus Darwin
RADIO:
PODCASTS:
White House: The Untold History of Women in Science and Technology
Radiolab: Buttons Not Buttons by Alex Wellerstein (@wellerstein)
The Royal Society: The private life of Isaac Newton
Portrait of Isaac Newton by François Boucher (1741) Credit: © The Royal Society
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Society of the Social History of Medicine: CfP: Australian and New Zealand Society of the history of Medicine – 14th Biennial Conference 30 June – 4 July 2015 Sydney
Historiens de la santé: European Association for the History of Medicine and Heath (EAHMH) book prize: Call for submissions
University of Southampton: CfP: Cannibalism in the Early Modern Period 15-16 June 2015
H-madness: Call for thesis abstracts
CHSTM – University of Manchester: CfP: Pedigree Chums: The Dog in 20th century Science – Science in the 20th century Dog 26 June 2015
Science Museum: The Longitude Project and Exhibition in Retrospect 17 December 2014
Women and Land: CfP: Women, land and the making of the British Landscape, 1300–1900 29-30 June 2015 University of Hull
University of Durham: CfP: History of Thermodynamics and Scientific Realism 12 May 2015
Social History Curators Group: CfP: A Toast to the Future! New ways of engaging June 2015
University of London: Institute of Latin American Studies: CfP: New historical perspectives on nature and knowledge in Latin America 22 May 2015
University of Manchester: CfP: Stories of Science: Exploring Science Communication and Entertainment Media 4-5 June 2015
ChoM News: Colloquium on the History of Psychiatry and Medicine “Infant Science: Global Intervention and Production of Knowledge around Infant Mortality, 1942-1965″December 18 2014
LOOKING FOR WORK:
The John Carter Brown Library: Short- and Long-Term Fellowship at the JBC
University of Edinburgh: Postgraduate Philosophy
University of Cambridge: Department of History and Philosophy of Science: Funding for graduate students
University of Kent: Science, Government and Reputation: The Role of the Royal Observatory in the 20th century – University of Kent 50th Anniversary Project-based PhD Research Scholarship
Queen Mary: University of London: The Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies: Postgraduate Study
Birkbeck: University of London: History of Science and Medicine (MA)
University of Cambridge: Research and Teaching Associate in Philosophy of Science and Bioethics
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