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 #39
Monday 16 March 2015
EDITORIAL:
Welcome to the thirty-ninth edition of Whewell’s Gazette your weekly #histSTM links list brought to you on the wings of an owl. All the blog posts and Internet articles on the histories of science, technology and medicine that our hard working editorial team could round up for your pleasure in a week that saw the 136th anniversary of the birth of Albert Einstein in the year which sees the centenary of the publication of his General Theory of Relativity. This week also saw the Internet go more than a little loopy about an American form of writing the date so-called once in a century Pi day, a phenomenon that doesn’t occur in any other countries form of writing the date.
All of this raises the question, why do we consider anniversaries of all sorts to be so significant in history? Is a theory more important when it’s some multiple of 365 days old than on any other day? Should we give more thought to a scientist on her or his birthday than on other days of the year? Does our obsession with marking #histSTM anniversaries somehow trivialise the study of history. We here at Whewell’s Gazette offer no answers to these questions, but merely suggest that all STM historians should give them some thought should they feel so inclined.
Quotes of the week:
Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats ~ Howard Aiken h/t @OnThisDayinMath
One Science only will one Genius fit;
So vast is Art, so narrow Human Wit – Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
Vladimir Nabokov had a ‘genitalia cabinet’ in which he kept his collection of male blue butterfly genitalia. It’s now housed at Harvard. – @InterestingLit
Heuristic: never nitpick a heuristic – @nntaleb
If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin – Charles Darwin
Birthday of the Week:
Albert Einstein born 14 March
Albert Einstein in 1921
Source: Wikimedia Commons
AHF: Albert Einstein
AIP Center for History of Physics: A. Einstein Image and Impact
AIP: 2015 The Centennial of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity
NJ.com: Albert Einstein’s birthday, deep connection to Princeton celebrated on special 3-14-15 Pi Day
The New York Times: Einstein Flees Berlin to Avoid Being Feted
Symmetry: Einstein’s most famous equation
The Age: Genius found inspiration in silent spaces
Yahoo News: Beyond Reletivity: Albert Einstein’s Lesser-Known Work
Fossilist of the week:
Mary Anning Died 9 March 1847
Mary Anning
Google Doodle
Letters from Gondwana: Remembering Mary Anning
Regency History; Mary Anning (1799-1847)
Mary Anning’s Ichtyosaurus communis skull, by Elizabeth Philpot, 1814
Evolve or Die: Mary Anning
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:
Berfois: Tempo Shifts:
BBC Earth: Why does time always run forwards and never backwards?
Medievalist.net: Early medieval science: the evidence of Bede
AIP: “Gravitational collapse” by Hong-Yee Chiu, May 1964
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Seth Wheatley’s Interview
Espace.net: Szilard’s Patent 12 March 1934: Improvements in or relating to the transmutation of chemical elements
Voices of the Manhattan Project: George Kistiakowsky’s Interview
APS: This Month in Physics History: March 13, 1781: Herschel Discovers Uranus
Frederick William Herschel
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Eugene Wigner’s Interview
Darin Hayton: Where Did De Revolutionibus Go?
Chart showing where copies of De Revolutionibus went.
Created by Darin Hayton
Medievalist.net: Ironing Out the Myth of the Flat Earth
Science Notes: What Is a Jiffy?
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
British Library: Maps and views blog: London through the artist’s eye
Wenceslaus Hollar, On the North Side of London , 1664 Maps K. Top. 28.9-e. – Source: British Library
British Library: Maps and views blog: A Rum Lot of Maps
Yovisto: Richard E. Byrd, Jr. – Aviator and Polar Explorer
The Public Domain Review: The Maps of Piri Reis
MEDICINE:
Conciatore: The Béguines of Mechelen
A Béguine of Antwerp,
from Pierre Hélyot,
L’Histoire des ordres monastiques… 1719 (v.8)
BBC: Medieval monastic bones in Ipswich could aid arthritis research
British Library: Beautiful Minds: Alexander Fleming (1881–1951): A noble life in science
The National Archives: Death of Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, 11 March 1955
Scientific American: Neurobiology of the Placebo Effect
academia.edu: Augmentative, Alternative, and Assistive: Reimagining the History of Mobile Computing and Disability
CBC:ca: A History of Chimps in Medical Research
Longreads: A Very Naughty Little Girl
Blood transfusion bottle. Photo via Wellcome Trust, Wikimedia Commons.
Royal College of Physicians: ‘From her truly affectionate friend’
Duke University Libraries: Digital Collections: Anatomical Fugitive Sheets
BBC: Five research papers that revolutionised health
academia.edu: “Obstetrical and Gynecological Texts in Middle English” (1992), with an edition of “The Nature of Womman”
Medievalist.net: Is There a Doctor in the Castle?
TECHNOLOGY:
Lapham’s Quarterly: People Will Look: The tricycle has come to stay
History Today: Time Pieces: Working Men and Watches
City Lab: Now More Than Ever, London Needs a ‘Death Pyramid’
Yovisto: Howard H. Aiken and the Harvard Mark I
The Public Domain Review: Kodak No.1 Circular Snapshots
Cram Swansea: CRAM staff explain their research…
The Guardian: Berenice Abbott: the photography trailblazer who had supersight
Culture 24: Before the Apple Watch: Six of the best timepieces used through the centuries
Balance spring pocket watch in silver case (1675-1679)
Wellcome Collection blog: Death in a Nutshell
AEON: American petro-topia
Conciatore: Reticello
Smithsonian.com: Would You Pass Thomas Edison’s Employment Test?
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Dating the Past: Dating is Important for Understanding Past (and Future) Climate Change
Embryo Project: Wilhelm Friedrich Phillip Pfeffer (1845–1920)
International Science Times: Wooly Mammoth Poop Analysis May Solve Extinction Mystery; Beast May Have Relied Too Much On Flowers In Their Diet
Scientists still don’t know what killed off the woolly mammoth. But the latest theory suggests it had to do with their diet of little yellow flowers. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Tucson.com: UA researchers use tree rings to rewrite history
Niche: The Cold that Binds: Ice, Climate History, and a Hobbit Hole
The Public Domain Review: Sex and Science in Robert Thornton’s Temple of Flora
Illustration showing “Cupid Inspiring Plants with Love”, in this case specifically the Strelitzia reginae or Queen Plant, a plate from Robert Thornton’s Temple of Flora (1807) – Source: Wellcome Library.
NPR: Tea Tuesdays: The Scottish Spy Who Stole China’s Tea Empire
The Shells tell the Truth: Molluscs, some Stratigraphic Order and early Evolution
BBC: Anthropocene: New dates proposed for the ‘Age of Man’
The New York Times: Did Earth’s ‘Anthropocene’ Age of Man Begin With the Globalization of Disease in 1610?
Nature: Anthropocene: The human age
Notches: Globalizing the History of Sexology
Fossil History: Buckland’s Red Lady
The Guardian: Italian scientists ‘recreate DNA’ of fascist warrior-poet from semen stains
The Artful Amoeba: Ever Wish You Could Put Ernst Haeckel on Your Lamp Shade? Now You Can
Brown University Library: Curio: The Unicorn of the Sea Comes to Brown
The Recipes Project: Locating traditional plant knowledge in household recipes
io9: These Scientific Names Were Chosen Purely to Insult Certain People
BBC: JBS Haldane: Blue plaque for genetics pioneer
History of Geology: The Geology of the Mountains of Madness
CHEMISTRY:
Chemistry World: Dial chem for murder
Chemical evidence helped convict Marie Lafarge of poisoning her husband © Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy
Yovisto: Jeremias Richter and the Law of Definite Proportions
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
The many-headed monster: We the People, 1535–1787: Who were ‘the people’ in early modern England? Part III
Public History Commons: The AHA on the path to public history
American Science: Links for 9 March 2015
MPIFTHS: Engineering, Cartography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late-Sixteenth-Century Rome
Gresham College: The Gresham College App
UCL: STS Observatory: UK archives of post-war science – notes towards a list
Bodleian History Faculty Library: Social Media for Historians (pdf)
Bonhams: Turing, Alan Mathison. 1912-1954 Composition notebook
Now Appearing: Hit by a Newton bomb
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Discovery is a process not an act
Ether Wave Propaganda: “The Rational Life”: Issues in Quote Truncation
Rational Action: What did Warren Weaver mean when he spoke of “the rational life”?
Hyperjeff: Visual timelines to accompany Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy without any gaps
Ether Wave Propaganda: Why Joseph Agassi Is No Longer Read as Much, An Introduction
HNN: Why Historians Should Use Twitter: An Interview with Katrina Gulliver
ESOTERIC:
History of Alchemy: Faust
Laham’s Quarterly: Animal Magnetism
Franz Anton Mesmer
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The Collation: Early modern eyebrow interpretations, or what it means to have a unibrow
BOOK REVIEWS:
academia.edu: Emil du Bois-Reymond and the tradition of German physiological science
academic.edu: Emil du Bois-Reymond: Neuroscience, Self and Society in Nineteenth Century Germany
Science Book a Day: Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud
New Scientist: How fudged embryo illustrations led to drawn-out lies
History to the Public: Humdinger in the everyday: Greg Jenner’s A Million Years in a Day
Popular Science: Professor Stewart’s Incredible Numbers
Centre for Medical Humanities: The Severed Head Capital Visions
Science Book a Day: Drugged: The Science and Culture Behind Psychotropic Drugs
The Guardian: Half Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy by Frank Close – review
Biodetectives: Life science books everyone should read
The Guardian: John Aubrey: My Own Life review – the taxidermist of a dying England
Project Muse: The Princess and the Philosopher: Letters of Elisabeth of the Palatine to Rene Descartes
BSHS Dingle Prize Short List:
University of Chicago Press: Earth’s Deep History
Yale University Press: Voyaging in Strange Seas
Harper Collins Publishers: Finding Longitude
University of Chicago Press: Visions of Science
WellCome Book Prize Shortlist 2015:
The Guardian: Wellcome Trust 2015 Book Prize shortlist announced
NEW BOOKS:
Historiens de la santé: More Than Medicine: A History of the Feminist Women’s Health Movement
Taylor & Francis: Reimagining (Bio)Medicalization, Pharmaceuticals and Genetics
Ashgate: Boyle Studies
Routledge: Spaces for Feelings: Emotion and Sociabilities in Britain 1650-1850
University of Washington Press: Feminist Technosciences
THEATRE:
FILM:
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Why the Imitation Game is a disaster for historians
TELEVISION:
SLIDE SHARE:
VIDEOS:
Youtube: Bertrand Russell – Face to Face Interview (BBC, 1959)
Youtube: Be curious… about AIR QUALITY
Youtube: Fifty billion chips and counting
Youtube: The Genius of Einstein: The Science, the Brain, the Man
Laughing Squid: A Look at Four Lesser-Known Scientific Discoveries and the Women Behind Them
RADIO:
PODCASTS:
Native American Medicine: The Sequah Limited: Commoditising the Native
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
University of Bucharest: Workshop: Natural History, Mathematics and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century 26-27 April 2015
Museum Boerhaave and Naturalis Biodiversity Centre: Materia medica on the move. Collecting, trading studying and using medicinal plants in the early modern period 15-17 April 2015
John Innes Centre: Cultivation Innovations 14 April 2015
University of Oxford: CfP: Space, place, and landscape in the history of communications 16 June 2015
University of Durham: The History of Thermodynamics and Scientific Realism 12 May 2015
University of Manchester: Stories about Science 4-5 June 2015
Open Quaternary: Call for Papers
IHPST: Announcements
Computer History Museum: Book Prize 2015: Call for submissions
London Medieval Society: Medieval London and the World 2015 1-4 May 2015
Parasynchronies: CfP: Divergent Bodies and the Making of the Middle Ages
CRASSH: Graphical Displays: Challenges for Humanists 18 May 2015
History of Education Society (UK): Conference: CfP: Science, Technologies, and Material Culture in the History of Education Liverpool Hope University 20-22 November 2015
Historiens de la santé: CfP: Food as Medicine: Historical Perspectives 9-10 October 2015 Dublin
Dittrick Medical History Centre: Upcoming Events
University of York: CfP: Epistolary cultures – letters and letter-writing in early modern Europe
BSHS: Conference: Leibniz-scientist, Leibniz-philosopher University of Wales Lampeter 3-5 July 2015
BSHS: Conference: Ruling Climate The Theory and practice of environmental governmentality 1500-1800 University of Warwick 16 May 2015
Morbid Anatomy: The Lost Museum Symposium: Providence Rhode Island 6-8 May 2015
10th International Conference on the History of Chemistry: CfP: Chemical Biography Aveiro Portugal 9-12 September 2015
H–Environment: CfP: Workshop: Experiencing the Global Environment MPIFTHOS Berlin 4-6 February 2016
LOOKING FOR WORK:
University of Chester: Lecturer in Early Modern Global History 1650–1800
University of Sydney: Associate Lecturer History of Science
University of Glasgow: The Leverhulme Trust: “Collections” Scholarships
University of Chester: Lecturer in Historic Landscapes and Environments
How We Get to Next: Editor and Staff Writer
King’s College London: Lecturer in the History of Science and Technology
University of Kent: Postgraduate Funding
University of Leeds: Studentship: Object Journeys: Community co-production of collections knowledge and displays at a national museum
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