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 #30
Monday 12 January 2015
EDITORIAL:
The week that is covered by the thirtieth edition of Whewell’s Gazette the weekly #histSTM links list is one that saw a sad loss in the #histSTM community with the death of the historian of science David C. Lindberg at the age of 79 on 6 January 2015.
Lindberg an expert for the history of optics, medieval history of science in general and the relationship between science and religion in the Middle Ages was one of the true giants of the discipline whose scholarship influenced all of those who came into contact with him or his writings. I personally never had the honour of meeting him but my own development as a historian of science has been heavily influenced, certainly for the better, in particular by Lindberg’s writings on the history of optics. His Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler is one of my all time favourite history of science books and I like, many, many others, have a copy of his The Beginnings of Western Science always close at hand. We have lost one of the greats but through his writings he will remain part of our community for a long time to come.
I humbly dedicate this edition of Whewell’s Gazette to the memory of David C. Lindberg, a fine scholar and a great teacher.
David Lindberg, History of Science, teaching class.
© UW-Madison University Communications 608/262-0067
Photo by: Jeff Miller
Date: 9/00 File#: 0009-171c-16a
University of Wisconsin-Madison: Death of Professor David C. Lindberg
UWMadScience: Lessons of a Lifetime
Birthdays of the Week:
Alfred Russel Wallace born 8 January 1823
A photograph of A.R. Wallace taken in Singapore in 1862
History of Geology: The Forgotten Naturalist: Alfred Russel Wallace
History of Geology: A.R. Wallace on Geology, Great Glaciers and the Speed of Evolution
Fossil History: Wallace, Darwin, and Human Origins
Yovisto: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Natural Selection
http://blog.yovisto.com/alfred-russel-wallace-and-the-natural-selection/
The Alfred Russel Wallace Website: Plants and animals named after Wallace
Youtube: Alfred Russel Wallace’s personal cabinet
Nicolas Steno born 11 January 1638
Steno as Bishop
J. P. Trap 1868 derivative work
Source: Wikimedia
Yovisto: Nicolas Steno and the Principle of Modern Geology
History of Geology: Nicolas Steno and the Origin of Fossils
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:
Great American Eclipses: American eclipse observations of the 17th and 18th centuries
Uncertain Principles: Science Story: Night Owls
Magic Transistor: Thomas Orchard, The Astronomy of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’
The Renaissance Mathematicus: If you’re going to blog about history of science then at least do the legwork
ScienceNews: Bell’s math showed that quantum weirdness rang true
Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Bog: When bad history meets bad journalism
The Renaissance Mathematicus: The Simon Marius Anniversary Celebratios 2014 have been a great success
The Collation: From comet tales to bear tails
Nautilus: The Vulgar Mechanic and His Magical Oven: A Renaissance alchemist pioneers feedback control
ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHON ROSEN
Nautilus: The Glassmaker Who Sparked Astrophysics
Chronologia Universalis: Serendipity in provenance research, part 3
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
arXiv.org: The search for longitude: Preliminary insights from a 17th Century Dutch perspective (pdf)
Annie Smith Peck: A Woman’s Place is at the Top
“Men, we all know, climb in knickerbockers. Women, on the contrary, will declare that a skirt is no hindrance to their locomotion. This is obviously absurd… For a woman in difficult mountaineering to waste her strength and endanger her life with a skirt is foolish in the extreme.”
Peck, Outing Magazine, “Practical Mountain Climbing,” 1901.
British Library: American studies blog: Christmas, locked in the ice Nova: Shakleton’s Voyage of Endurance
MEDICINE:
Conciatore: The French Disease Reprise
The Times Scotland: Lunatic who exposed the asylum
Dittrick Museum: The Stomach and its Discontents: Digesting the Winter Holidays
Chom News: Oedipus and the Spjinx: a Gift for Isador H. Coriat
English Historical Fiction Authors: Witches and Midwives in Early Modern England
The Recipes Project: Something old – something new: Greek and Roman recipes in focus
NYAM: Louis Braille and His System: The Quest for a Universal Script
A competing English system of encoding text for the blind, using symbols close to legible letters. In William Moon, Light for the Blind, 1879, opposite page 66.
distillatio: Medieval treatments for sore joints
CHEMISTRY:
Philly.com: Restoration of 17th-century painting at Villanova reveals mysteries
Chemical Heritage Magazine: Gas Stations
Detail of a photo displaying gas masks developed during World War I. (Othmer Library)
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
History of Geology: January 6, 1912: Happy Birthday Continental Drift
The Embryo Project: Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples Italy
Yovisto: Johan Christian Fabricius and his Classification System for Insects
Ptak Science Books: The Future of Oil in 1921
![[Image source:http://www.railsandtrails.com/AutoFacts/1921p12-100-8.jpg]](https://whewellsghost.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/6a00d83542d51e69e201b8d0ba132b970c-500wi.jpg)
The Irish Times: Intrigue and egos in a tussle over Irish amphibian fossils in 1866
Old Weather Blog: A history of the World in 1,399,120,833 observations
The Embryo Project: “Experimental Studies on Germinal Localisation” (1904), Edmund B. Wilson
Yovisto: Elizabeth Gertrude Britton Knight and the Study of Mosses
Renaissance Utterances: Lecture: Exotic birds and animals in the 18th Century garden
Letters from Gondwana: A Brief Introduction to the Origins of Birds
Space: io9: This Geological Field Notebook is an Elegant Look at Mountain-Building
The Guardian: Earthquakes, tsunamis and a naked tribe. It’s Chile – and not just Galápagos – that inspired Darwin
Fuegian tribespeople encounter members of Darwin’s expedition in a 1839 illustration by members of the crew. Photograph: British Library/Rex
TECHNOLOGY:
Slate: The Vault: How Photographs Tried to Capture the Terror of Night Zeppelin Raids During WWI
Science Museum: Drawn by Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection
History News Network: The Nuclear Disaster You Never Heard of
Priceonomics: The Invention of the Slinky
Images from James’ patent, filed in August 1946 and approved January 1947
Conciatore: Anatomy of a Misconception
Fig. of glass drop,
Thomas Hobbes, Problematica Physica, 1662
Conciatore: Le Fritte
BT’s Let Talk: Information Age – a turning point for society
Thick Objects: The Chambers’ Micromanipulator (1921)
Yovisto: Joseph Weizenbaum and his famous Eliza
BBC: “I was there” At the launch of the ‘worst gadget in history’ in 1985
Yovisto: The Watches of Abraham-Louis Bréguet
Ether Wave Propaganda: Schaffer on Machine Philosophy, Pt. 6: The Ideology of Charles Babbage
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:Inside Higher Ed: Pop History
U.S. National Library of Medicine: History of Medicine Finding Aids Consortium
Project Muse: Casebooks in Early Modern England: Medicine, Astrology, and Written Records
Journal of Digital Humanities: A Distinction Worth Exploring: “Archives” and “Digital Historical Representation”
jamesungureanu: Visions of Science: Epilogue
Early Modern Experimental Philosophy: Experimental Philosophy and Mechanical Philosophy I: The Case of Henry More and Henry Stubbe
Notches: 365 Notches: (re)marks on our 1st anniversary
The Recipes Project: First Monday Library Chat: New York Academy of Medicine
International Commission on the History of Meteorology: History of Meteorology – Volume 6 (2014)
Homunculus: The birth of the scientific journal
Museum Two: What I Learned about Strangers from Jane Jacobs on my Winter Vacation
Wellcome History: Issue 54: Winter 2014
New: The Cultural History of Philosophy Blog: Altruism
Early Television Museum: Ed Reitan – Obituary
About 40 years ago, when Ed got his Model 5
The Quad Video Tape Group: Restoring the Earliest Know Color Quad Tape: The Dedication of WRC-TV/NBC Washington DC
HASS: STS Reading List
Museum of Cycladic Art: Exhibition: Hygieia: Health, Illness, Treatment from Homer to Galen 19.11.2014–31.5.2015
ESOTERIC:
Wellcome Library: Spotlight: the power of angels – a charm against plague
A charm against the plague from Leech Book I, folio 30v, MS. 404, late 15th century. Wellcome Images L0073819.
Dis/unity of Knowledge: Models for the study of modern esotericism and science (pdf)
BOOK REVIEWS:
Time to Eat the Dogs: Inventing the American Astronaut
Heterodoxology: The Occult World – a new reference work for heterodoxologists
Brain Pickings: Albert Einstein’s Little-Known Correspondence with W.E.B. Du Bois on Race and Racism
NEW BOOKS:
The University of Chicago Press: Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the Anthropology of the Knowing Subject
Historiens de la santé: The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919: Perspectives from the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas
Notre Dame Press: The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters
Historiens de la santé: Healing Bodies, Saving Souls: Medical Missions in Asia and Africa
University of Pittsburgh Press: New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies
THEATRE:
FILM:
The Guardian: Every great individual stands on the shoulders of others
Science Observed: The opposite of a “lone genius”
TELEVISION:
SLIDE SHARE:
Ron Townsend: From Problems to Solutions: Recruiting, Training, and Placing History PhDs in Non-Faculty Careers
VIDEOS:
Youtube: Jonathan Foyle discusses RCP ceremony and tradition
RADIO:
PODCASTS:
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
University of Munich: Environmental Histories of Design: A workshop in Munich 19 June 2015
University of Cambridge: CRASSH: Lent 2015 Programme
University of Budapest: The CEU Summer University invites applications from MA and PhD students to the course “Cities and Science: Urban History and the History of Science in the Study of Early Modern and Modern Europe” 29 June-4 July 2015
Diseases of Modern Life: CfP: Working with Nineteenth-Century Medical and Health Periodicals St. Anne’s College, Oxford 30 May 2015
La Lettre de L’Ehess: Mardi 27 Janvier 2015 Une autre histoire: Jacques Le Goff Journée d’étude organisée par la BnF et l’EHESS
The Swedenborg Society: Talks and Readings: Professor Simon Schaffer: Swedenborg’s Lunars
Digital Humanities Awards 2014 Nominations
H-Sci-Med-Tech: CfP: Medicine, Translations and Histories 11-12 June 2015 CHSTM Manchester
H-Sci-Med-Tech: CfP: Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) now accepting open panel proposals for 2015 meeting Denver Colorado 11-15 November
Society for Social Studies of Science (4S): Call for Open Panels: Denver 2015
University of Birmingham: Seminars and Conferences: Thursday 29 January Dr Clare Hickman: ‘Dr John Coakley Lettsom and the Mangle-Wurzel: Botany, Agriculture and Medical Practitioners in the Eighteenth-century’
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens: CfP: University Heritage and Cultural Engagement of European Universities 11‐13 June 2015
Confessions of a Curator: Call for Chapter Proposals: The 21st Century Special Collections Reader: contemporary approaches for special collections Due 1 Feb 2015
‘Maps and Society’ Lectures: 15 January Dr Yossef Rapoport (Queen Mary, University of London). ‘The World Map in the Fatimid Book of Curiosities (c.1050): Mathematical Geography between Late Antiquity and Islam’
University of Leeds: CfP: The History and Future of Rationing 25 March 2015
Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy): CfP: “Medical Terminology and Epistemology for a Dictionary of Genetics and its Degenerations from Hippocrates to ICD-10” 4-6 May 2015
Making Science Public: Citizen Science
Hektoen International: Third Hektoen Grand Prix Essay Competition
8TH EUROPEAN SPRING SCHOOL ON HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND POPULARIZATION CfP: LIVING IN A TOXIC WORLD (1800-2000) EXPERTS, ACTIVISM, INDUSTRY AND REGULATION Maó (Menorca), 14-16 May 2015
LOOKING FOR WORK:
University of Oxford: Directorship of the Pitt Rivers Museum
Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine Fellowships
CHoM News: 2015-2016 Women in Medicine Fellowship: Application Period Open
CHoM News: 2015-2016 Countway Fellowships: Application Period Open
New York University: Post Doctoral Fellowship in the History of Science and Technology
ConsortiumHSTM: Fellowships
H-Sci-Med-Tech: Duke University History of Medicine Travel Grants
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