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
Year 2, Volume #12
Monday 05 October 2015
EDITORIAL:
Another week, another edition of Whewell’s Gazette your weekly #histSTM links list, bringing you all of the histories of science, technology and medicine that could be scooped up from the distant reaches of cyberspace during the last seven days.
The week saw NASA announce that they had discovered mineral deposits on the surface of Mars that might have been made by flowing water. This announcement kicked off the expected hysteria of where there is water there will be life, as we know it. These reports set off alarm bells in my brain about Giovanni Schiaparelli, Percy Lowell and the canals of Mars.
1877 map of Mars by Giovanni Schiaparelli.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Humanity has been obsessed with Mars and the possibility of there being Martians for a long time now and the NASA announcement didn’t just trigger memories in my brain and a number of people throughout the Internet wrote about the history of that obsession. So this edition of Whewell’s Gazette is dedicated to David Bowie’s famous musical question “Is there life on Mars?”
Martian channels depicted by Percival Lowell
Source: Wikimedia Commons
“This week in science: scientists broke the secret pact & talked about water on Mars, making the moon turn red. Now the great doom befalls us” – Ed Yong (@edyong209)
History Today: Roger Hennessy tells of a hundred years of investigation, imagination and speculation about live on Mars
Ptak Science Books: The Positively Enormous Skyscraper Plant Eyeballs of Mars, 1912
Source: via Chronicles of America series at the Library of Congress, here, and first seen via the interesting Pinterest collection of Trevor Owens, here.
Ptak Science Books
The Conversation: NASA: streaks of salt on Mars mean flowing water, and raises new hopes of finding life
Popular Mechanics: A Short History of Martian Canals and Mars Fever
BibliOdyssey: Channelling Martian Maps
Source: BilbliOdyssey
Scientific American: How Our View of Mars Has Changed from Lush Oasis to Arid Desert
News.com.au: My favourite Martian: behind the science is the story of why we love Mars
Not just little green men … a scene from the Mars film John Carter.
“Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink
‘Cause it was all saturated with perchlorate salts” – Rime of the Ancient Rover – Matthew R. Francis (@DrMRFrancis)
Quotes of the week:
“People say history is written by the winners, but actually history is written by historians, and most of them are losers”. – @The TweetOfGod
“’The ohm is where the art is’ is a brilliant title for an article” – Steven Gray (@Sjgray86)
“Everything’s connected, but some things are more connected than others”. – Liam Heneghan (@DublinSoil)
“We need to figure out if Jonas Salk was on the spectrum. Only then can we definitely say whether autism cause vaccines” – @WardQNormal h/t @stevesilberman
“If you don’t feel guilty about using maps and satnavs, don’t feel guilty about using introductory philosophy books and study guides” – Nigel Warburton (@philosophybites)
“Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.” – Albert Einstein
“Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced”. – A. N. Whitehead h/t @PeterSjostedtH
BEAUTY TIP: Read a book
EMPATHY TIP: Read a book
EDUCATION TIP: Read a book
LOVE TIP: Read a book
HEALTH TIP: Read a book – Matt Haig (@matthaig1)
Birth of the Week:
The Space Race Began 4 October 1957
Leaping Robot: Apprehending the Artifact
Yovisto: The Sputnik Shock
Princeton University Press: Keep Watching the Skies!: The Story of Operation Moonwatch and the Dawn of the Space Age
NASA: NASA’s First 5o Years Historical Perspectives
Youtube: Omnicron & the Sputnik
PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY & SPACE SCIENCE:
Agenda.ge: Ancient astronomy manuscripts published in Georgia
Physics Today: Information: From Maxwell’s demon to Landauer’s eraser
Fermi.lib.uchicago.edu: Letter from Fermi to Szilard re: use of carbon to slow chain reaction
NASA: Alouette 1
The Alouette 1 satellite
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Outside Prague: The Astronomical Clock
AIP: Nobels of the Past
Science Notes: Today in Science History – October 1 – NASA
Science News: The amateur who helped Einstein see the light
With some help from Science News Letter (the precursor to Science News), a restaurant dishwasher named Rudi Mandl persuaded Einstein to explore the phenomenon of gravitational lensing.
Radio Ne Zealand News: Rare telescope’s crucial lens survives quake
AIP: Otto Frisch
NASA: Dr. Robert H. Goddard, American Rocketry Pioneer
NASA: NASA “Hacks”: The Real Stories
El País: Un cura dio la “más bella explicación de la Creación”, según Einstein
The Atlantic: Standing the Test of Time (and Space)
WGBH News: Meet America’s First Woman Astronomer: Maria Mitchell
Maria Mitchell’s telescope, at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Credit Dpbsmith / WGBH News
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Mary Rockwell’s Interview
flickr: Project Apollo Archive
Sky & Telescope: Beyond the Printed Page: Soviet Stamps and Astronomy
Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings: Niels Henrik David Bohr
Museum Victoria Collections: Astrographic Catalogue
AIP: Happy Birthday Enrico Fermi
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
Atlas Obscura: The Maps That Helped The Citizens of a ‘Locked Country’ See The World
Half of “Screens of the Four Continents and People in 48 Countries in the World,” by an unknown Edo-era Japanese painter. (All images: Kobe City Museum/Google Cultural Institute)
D News: 1500-Year-Old Mosaic Map Found
Slate: A Bizarrely Complicated Late-19th-Century Flat-Earth Map
The Hakluyt Society Blog: Australia Circumnavigated: The Story of the HMS Investigator
The Shakespeare Blog: Mapping Shakespeare’s world
The Sheldon tapestry map of Worcestershire
Halley’s Log: Back in the Thames
Halley’s Log: Halley’s third logbook
MEDICINE & HEALTH:
History Today: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson passed her medical exams on September 18th 1865
Thomas Morris: Speaking in tongues
From the Hands of Quacks: Can Vitamin B Cure Deafness
Smithsonian.com: The Nose Job Dates Back to the 6th Century B.C.
Wellcome Trust: A Brief History of Childbirth: Exploring the National Childbirth Trust Archives
Remedia: The Window Operation: Hope through Surgery
Cross-section of the inner ear, showing the ossicles–mallelus, incus, and stapes. Illustrated by Henry Vandyke Carter for Henry Gray, “Anatomy of the Human Body ” (Philadelphia & New York: Lea & Febiger, 1918), plate 919.
Medium: Scurvy Dogs
Embryo Project: The Pasteur Institute (1887– )
Public Domain Review: Kaishi Hen, an 18th Century Japanese anatomical atlas
Early Modern Medicine: Dog Danger
Thomas Morris: The child with Bonaparte in his eyes
Wellcome Collection: Hysteria
Gross Science: The Horrors of Ancient Cataract Surgery
Countway Library of Medicine: The Archives for Women in Medicine
Concocting History: Strong as a mountain
Forbes: Ancient Pompeiians Had Good Dental Health But Were Not Necessarily Vegetarians
This Intrepid Band: More Misdeeds of Military Nurses
Embryo Project: The Effects of Thalidomide on Embryonic Development
John Rylands Library Special Collections Blog: History of Midwifery
Science Notes: Today in Science History – October 2 – Baruj Benacerraf
Science Museum: Brought to Life: Seishu Hanaoka (1760–1835)
Perspectives: The art of medicine: Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body Snatcher
MBL History Project: “By living we learn.” Happy Birthday Sir Patrick Geddes!
Embryo Project: Marie Charlotte Stopes (1880–1958)
Marie Stopes in her laboratory, 1904
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Thomas Morris: Electrical anaesthesia
Bustle: The Average Age Women Got Their First Period, Throughout History
Mosaic: How to mend a broken heart
Thomas Morris: The petrol cocktail: a cure for cholera
TECHNOLOGY:
Medievalists.net: Rapid Invention, Slow Industrialization, and the Absent Entrepreneur in Medieval China
Open Culture: The World’s Oldest Surviving Pair of Glasses (circa 1475)
Yale Books: Dirty Old London: 30 Days of Filth: Day 13 Deodorising and Flushing
Thomas Morris: Top Gear (steam edition)
Atlas Obscura: The Rise and Fall of the Cash Railway
Inside the Lamson ball, from a 1912 Lamson catalogue. (Image: Tony Wolf)
Science Notes: Today in Science History – September 29 – Rudolf Diesel Mystery
Airminded: The oscillation of R33
Conciatore: The Art of Metals
Conciatore: The Blue Tower
Medium: Backchannel: How Steve Jobs Fleeced Carly Fiorina
Yovisto: Tōkaidō Shinkansen – the Bullet Train
Tōkaidō Shinkansen passing tea fields between Shizuoka and Kakegawa
Yovisto: The Unfortunate Inventions of Charles Cros
IEEE Spectrum: When Engineers Had the Stars in Their Eyes
News Works: Sound it out: the (sometimes creepy) history of the talking machine
Slate: What Could Go Wrong?
Collectors Weekly: Rise of the Synthesizer: How an Electronics Whiz Kid Gave the 1980s Its Signature Sound
Paleofuture: Drunk Driving and The Pre-History of Breathalysers
BBC News: Drawings reveal Germans’ World War Two boobytrap bombs
One of Fish’s drawings shows an Army mess tin adapted for nefarious purposes
Picture: Anthony Thompson TWN
BBC News: Dorman Long: The Teesside firm that bridged the world
Science Notes: Today in Science History – October 31 – Joseph Wilson Swan
United States Patent and Trademark Office: A. C. Reid Handset Telephone
BBC News: The lost rivers that lie beneath London
Ian Visits: Unbuilt London: Straightening the River Thames
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Making Science Public: The pause
Ptak Science Books: Charting the Winds: a Superb Anemographic Chart from 1598
ChoM News: New Acquisitions: Rose E. Frisch Papers
Slate: The Great September Gale of 1815
TrowelBlazers: Lucy Allen: Curator and Librarian
Lucy Allen Smart, 1955. This photo is reproduced here under the Central Library Consortium’s fair use policy; may not be used for commercial purposes without contacting copyright holder.
NYAM: Censoring Leonhart Fuchs: Examples from the New York Academy of Medicine
University of Cambridge Museums: The Next Big Leap at the Whipple
io9: Which Animals Did Nuclear Scientists Pick to Represent the Entire World?
Science League of America: Did Darwin Know “Acres of Diamonds”?
Circulating Now: A German Botanical Renaissance
Perspectives on History: An Environmental History of the Real Thing
The Guardian: Calling all palaeo bloggers! Do you ant to write for the Guardian science blog network
Forbes: How Geologists Determined The Way That Mountains Formed
The mountains around the Urnersee, from Scheuchzer´s “Helvetiae Stoicheiographia” published in 1716 (image in public domain).
Mommoth Tales: Mammoth in the News: Michigan Edition
Scientific American: Tetrapod Zoology: Piltdown Man and the Dualist Contention
Wired: The Battle Over Genome Editing Gets Science All Wrong
The Leakey Foundation: Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey
Science Insider: Q&A: Francis Crick’s granddaughter on her genomic sculpture
CHEMISTRY:
Science Notes: Today in Science History – September 28 – Henri Moissan
News Work: A Nobel Prize for noble gasses
William Ramsay in 1904 (Munn & Co./Appleton’s Magazine)
Science Notes: Today in Science History – October 4 – Mole
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
History Matters: Voices from 1915: Public Engagement with the First World War
New HSS: Sleep Laboratories, Psychiatry in Penguin Books, & More
The Renaissance Mathematicus: The Penny Universities
Coffeehouse in London, 17th century
Source: Wikimedia Commons
ChoM News: Archivist attends “Women in Biotech” symposium at Radcliffe Institute
Chronologia Universalis: A Moment of Wonder: Overlapping Networks
Chronologia Universalis: Pervolvi totum librum…
JCOM: Ships, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for Impact
Deathplanation: Publishing with Integrity (Whilst Still Having Career Options)
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Political correctness and the history of science
The Conversation: Jesuits as science missionaries for the Catholic Church
BBC Culture: The places the world forgot (includes several #histSTM sites)
Flanders and Brabant power station, Belgium
Source: BBC
The Recipes Project: The Digital Humanities Turn
THE: What it’s like to work with the academic greats
MHS Oxford: Newsletter – October 2015
The Harvard Crimson: Gathering the Galleries
Medieval Books: The Incredible Expandable Book
Wired: The Nobel Committee Hasn’t Always Picked the Right Winners
THE: Progressive Science Institute challenges researcher ‘bias’
Nautilus: Why Science Needs Metaphysics
ESOTERIC:
Conciatore: Alchemy of Plants
Compasswallah: Annie Besant: The Occult Freedom Fighter
Annie Besant
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Sociatas Magia: A Medieval Charm with Music
BOOK REVIEWS:
The Space Review: A Sky Wonderful with Stars: 50 Years of Modern Astronomy on Maunakea
Thinking Like a Mountain: Food, Inc: Mendel to Monsanto – The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest
Public Domain Review: Bad Air: Pollution, Sin, and Science Fiction in William Delisle Hay’s The Doom of the Great City (1880)
Front cover of Hay’s The Doom of the Great City
Source: The British Library
The New York Times: Sunday Book Review: ‘The Invention of Nature,’ by Andrea Wulf
Dissertation Reviews: Chemistry in Imperial and Weimar Germany
Geographical: Alfred Russel Wallace; Letters from the Malay Archipelago OUP
The Dispersal of Darwin: Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution
Popular Science: 13.8: the quest to find the true age of the universe and the theory of everything John Gribbin
Los Angeles Review of Books: Paula Findlen on Galileo’s Telescope: A European Story
Archives of Natural History: Benton, Ted: Alfred Russel Wallace: explorer, evolutionist, public intellectual – a thinker for our own times?
Science News: Centennial books illuminate Einstein’s greatest triumph
NEW BOOKS:
Vrin: Psychologie et psychologisme
Enfilade: Scenes of Projection: Recasting the Enlightenment Subject
Historiens de la santé: Bretonneau: Correspondance d’un médicine
NCSE: The Story of Life in 25 Fossils
Emotions Blog: History in British Tears
ART & EXHIBITIONS
Nature: Space Travel: When Soviets ruled the great beyond
MHS Oxford: ‘Dear harry…’ – Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost to War Extended till 31 January 2016
CHF: Science at Play On view through September 2 2016
Skil-Craft No. 430 Microscope Chemistry Lab, ca. 1955. CHF Collections. Photo by Gregory Tobias.
Massachusetts Historical Society: Terra Firma: The Beginnings of the MHS Map Collection
Dundee Science Centre: Nature’s Equations: D’Arcy Thompson and the Beauty of Mathematics Closes 25 October 2015
Hunterian Glasgow: The Kangaroo and the Moose 2 October 2015–21 February 2016
THEATRE AND OPERA:
Noel Coward Theatre: Photograph 51 Booking until 21 November 2015
Etcetera Theatre: LHF: The Devil Without 13–18 October 2015
Gielgud Theatre: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
FILMS AND EVENTS:
Wellcome Collection: ‘The Thing is …Beards!’ 15th October 2015
World Health Organization Global Health Histories: Webinar: Ebolar: exploring the cultural contexts of an epidemic 8 October 2015
Royal Museums Greenwich: Plague takeover 21 November 2015
Royal Society: Cells: from Robert Hooke to Cell Therapy – a 350 year journey 5_6 October 2015
Royal Astronomical Society: Fred Hoyle Birth Centennial – his remarkable career and the impact of his science 9 October 2015
A statue of Fred Hoyle at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Providence Public Library: Exploring the Eye of History: NEA Symposium on 19th Century Photography 7 November 2015
Dittrick Museum: Lecture: The Eye as Art: Anatomy and Vision in the 18th Century 14 October 2015
CHoM News: Celebrating 10 Years of the Archive for Women in Medicine 7 November 2015
Musée Claude Bernard: Colloque: Claude Bernard et le diabète 10 Octobre 015
Discover Medical London: Walking Tour One for the Road!
Museum of the History of Science: Sacrifice of a Genius Tonight!
PAINTING OF THE WEEK:
Joaquin Sorolla 1863- 1923 Doctors Laboratory, an investigation, Oil on canvas
TELEVISION:
BBC 2: Bletchley Park: Code-breaking’s Forgotten Genius
Gordon Welchman
Source: Wikimedia Commons
AHF: “Manhattan” Season One Recaps
SLIDE SHOW:
VIDEOS:
Museo Galileo: Eudoxus’s system
Youtube: Royal Society: Science stories – Small
Youtube: Interview with J. Robert Oppenheimer
Youtube: The Royal Institution: Quantum Physics and Universal Beauty – with Frank Wilczek
Youtube: Polio Hero Frank Shimada
Youtube: Gilbert White: The Nature Man (2006) May Vision International
RADIO:
BBC Radio 4: Natural History Heroes
PODCASTS:
The Diane Rehm Show: Andrea Wulf: “The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies: Symposium: Early Modern Journeys: Practice and Everyday Experiences of Travel, 1450–1800 15-16 October 2015
University of Leeds: Centre for HPS: HPS Seminars, Semester 1, 2015-2016
Harnack House Berlin: The 100th anniversary of Einstein’s field equations 30 November–2 December 2015
Historiens de la santé: CfP: ISCHE 38 Education and the Body
University of Kent: CfP: Medicine in its Place: Situating Medicine in Historical Contexts 7-10 July 2016
Oxford Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine, and technology: Michaelmas Term 2015
HSS: THATCamp: The History of Science Society hosts its second annual THATCamp on November 19 2015 San Francisco
The Haluyt Society: Conference: Maritime Trade, Travel and Cultural Encounter in the 18th and 19th Centuries 13–14 November 2015
University of Birmingham: History of Medicine and Health Seminars
UCL STS: Seminar Series
University of Vienna: CfP: Claiming authority, producing standards: The IAEA and the history of radiation protection 3–4 June 2016
Maynooth University: HSTM Network Ireland Inaugral Conference 13–14 November 2015
Birkbeck College University of London: CfP: After the End of Disease 26–27 May 2016
University of Edinburgh: CfP: Eighteenth–Century Research Seminars Series 2016
University of London: School of Advance Study EMPHASIS Seminar: Amateurs and Authorship: Oronce Fine’s Projection of a Republic of Mathematics 17 October 2015
Oronce Fine
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Res Philosophica: CfP: Res Philosophica Essay Prize: Philosophy of Disability
The Warburg Institute: Colloquia 2015–2016
LOOKING FOR WORK:
University of Huddersfield: Research Assistant in History of Health or Medicine
H-Sci-Med-Tech: Fully Funded PhD Studentship – Science and Religion in Society
Ohio State University Department of History: Assistant or Associate Professor in Environmental History and Sustainability
University of Harvard: Tenure–track Assistant Professor History of Pre-Modern or Early Modern Science or Medicine
University of Groningen: Netherlands Research School for Medieval Studies: 4 PhD Positions: Communication and Exploitation of Knowledge in the Middle Ages
Oxford Brookes University: PhD Studentships
University of Copenhagen: Professor of History and Philosophy of Science
Think Oxford: Over 1000 Scholarships
University of London: Research fellowships in cultural and intellectual history
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