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 #13
Monday 12 October 2015
EDITORIAL:
If you’ve been holding your breath, you can breathe out now, as the thirteenth edition of the second year of the weekly #histSTM links list, Whewell’s Gazette, is finally here. Putting aside their triskaidekaphobia our editorial team has collected together all that they could find on the histories of science, technology and medicine in the vast reaches of cyberspace over the last seven days.
Whenever I write a blog post or research a lecture, sooner or later I will almost always make a pilgrimage to consult the volumes of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, a cornucopia of history of science information presented at the highest levels of scholarship. This invaluable tool of historical research was put together under the editorship of Charles Coulston Gillispie one of the giants of post Second World War history of science. Beyond the DSB Gillispie was a important historian of science writing mostly about eighteenth-century French science, whilst teaching and establishing the history of science department at Princeton University.
Charles Gillispie died on 6 October at the age of 97. In the DSB he left behind a monument in the history of science that others will struggle to equal and with this thought I would like to humbly dedicate this edition of Whewell’s Gazette to him.
Charles Coulston Gillispie
6 August 1918 – 6 October 2015
Photo by Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications
News at Princeton: Charles Gillispie, trailblazer in the history of science, dies at 97
NCSE: Charles Coulston Gillispie dies
facebook: Marco Berratta: Charles Gillispie Obituary
Quotes of the week:
The *Great Man of Science* is a myth. They all had collaborators that disappeared from history. – Andrew David Thaler (@SFriedScientist)
“Sir Humphrey Davy was asked to name the greatest discovery he’d ever made. He answered “Michael Faraday””. – Verity Burke (@VerityBurke)
“‘thank God! there is no drinking of coffee [in the next world], and consequently no waiting for it.’”—De Quincey, quoting Kant h/t @GuyLongworth
“I’m a scientist. I don’t want to people to accept that what I say is accurate. I want to give them the tools to find out for themselves”. – John Hawks (@johnhawks)
“We must labour to find out what things are in themselves by our owne experience … not what another sayes of them” – John Wilkins 1640 h/t @felicityhen
“Science doesn’t suffer fools, but it can make fools suffer.” – Richard Hammond
h/t @Pillownaut
“Nothing more ruins the world than a conceit that a little knowledge is sufficient.” – Thomas Traherne. h/t @telescoper
“50 yrs from now, people will see the discovery of exoplanets as a major development in #HistSTM” – Patrick McCray (@LeapingRobot)
“The only reason that christianity imagined hell as a pit of fire is because Christ was born too early to experience a bus full of teens”. – Marc Girard Alleyn (@StevenAlleyn)
“Is it too much to ask for conference coffee that isn’t brown pisswater? Where is my Black Ichor of Awakeness?” Ed Yong (@edyong209)
“I rather like “defy the facts”. Ignorance is strength”. – Guy Longworth (@GuyLongworth)
“Shit doesn’t just happen. Shits make it happen”. – Peter Coles (@telescoper)
6 October was National Badger Day
A badger, as illustrated in Histoire Naturelle des Mammiféres, 1824-57.
(1257.l.1-4)
Birthdays of the Week:
Robert Goddard born 5 October 1882
Robert Hutchings Goddard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1882. The phyicist determinedly pursued his spaceflight obsession.
Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight Gallery: Robert Hutchins Goddard
NASA: Goddard Space Flight Center: Dr. Robert H. Goddard, American Rocketry Pioneer
Niels Bohr born 7 October 1885
Niels Bohr on G. Gamow’s motorcycle, with his wife Margrethe sitting behind.
Photo credit Emilio Segrè Visual Archives
h/t Alex Wellerstein
“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field”. – Niels Bohr h/t @ChemHeritage
Science Notes: Today in Science History – October 7 – Niels Bohr
PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY & SPACE SCIENCE:
Cambridge University Library Special Collections Blog: ‘It’s all in a day’s work’: the Royal Greenwich Observatory Audio-Visual Collection, Stories of Observatory Life
Cosmos: Émilie du Châtelet: the woman science forgot
Particle Decelerator: New Zealand recognised as major contributor to radio astronomy history
Physics Today: Seeing dark matter in the Andromeda galaxy
Vera Rubin
Source: Physics Today
Conciatore: A Fast Calendar
Collect Space: Astronaut Sally Ride’s personal items and papers acquired by Smithsonian
ahram online: Mars, the invincible planet
ethw.org: George Westinghouse AIEE membership application
Science Notes: Today in Science History – October 6 – Ernest Walton
Atlas Obscura: These Atomic Tourists Have Visited 160 Forgotten Nuclear Sites Across the U.S.
NASA History: James E. Webb
Pasadena Star-News: Astronomy: These women were ‘human computers’ before they were allowed to be astronomers
AHF: Operation Plumbbob – 1957
AEON: Light dawns
Scientific American: 20 Years Later – a O&A with the first Astronomer to Detect a Planet Orbiting Another Sun
Independent: Prague Astronomical Clock: Three things you probably didn’t know about today’s Google Doodle
Prague astronomical clock
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Heavy: Prague Astronomical Clock: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
Gizmodo: Prague Astronomical Clock Celebrated by Google Doodle on its 605th Birthday
The Guardian: A Fife church minister first imagined space flight – beating Jules Verne
AHF: Britain’s Early Input – 1940–41
IET Blog: The Great Melbourne Telescope
Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: Neglected Niigata
Science Notes: Today in Science History – October 11 – James Prescott Joule
AHF: The Einstein Letter – 1939
Dannen.com: Einstein to Roosevelt, August 2, 1939
BLink: Mystery of the starry sphere
Too big for the palm: Emperor Jahangir is shown holding a globe in this Mughal-era painting. The globe is believed to have been made by metallurgist Muhammad Salih Tahtawi. Photo: Wikipedia
AIP: Robert Marshak
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
Ptak Science Books: Blank and Missing Things: a Map of Missing people of Europe and Russia, 1881
University of Cambridge: Digital Library: Oppidium Cantebrigiae
British Library: Maps and views blog: Drawing Lines across Africa – from the War Office Archive
World Digital Library: Map of Louisiana, View of New Orleans
The French royal engineer, de Beauvilliers, drew this 1720 map of the entire hydrographic network of the Mississippi River
Source: World Digital Library
A Thoroughly Anglophile Journal: The Center of Space and Time, and History
Geographicus Rare Antique Maps: 1650 Jansoon Wind Rose, Anemographic Chart, or Map of the Winds
Factum Arte: Terra Forming: Engineering the Sublime
Atlas Obscura: Found: 39 Maps from the Mid-1800s That ‘Show Chicago Being Born’
MEDICINE & HEALTH:
Yovisto: James Lind and a Cure for Scurvy
Vice: How One Man Ran the World’s Only Menstruation Museum from his Basement
The first-ever Kotex advertisement, from January 1921
Thomas Morris: The case of the luminous patients
Remedia: Roaring Horses, Lame Dogs and the Re-framing of British Veterinary Surgery
Medievalists.net: Medieval Viagara [sic]
Early Modern Experimental Philosophy: “Secta Empírica y Domáticos Racionales”: medicine and the ESD in early modern Spain II
BBC Future: It’s time we dispelled these myths about autism
Conciatore: The Duke’s Mouthwash
The Conversation: Could ancient textbooks be the source of the next medical breakthrough
Center for the History of Medicine: On View: Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR). 1967-68
Circulating Now: Radam’s Microbe Killer: Advertising Cures for Tuberculosis
Advertisement in Roanoke Times, March 28, 1894
ph.ucla.edu: On The Inhalation of the Vapour of Ether in Surgical Operations (pdf)
Philly.com: Remember what ‘Aunt Sammy’ said … about babies and drafts?
The Recipes Project: From Bloodstone to Fish Soup: Iron Recipes
TECHNOLOGY:
Yovisto: John Atanasoff and the first Electronic Computer
Yovisto: Christiaan Huygens and the Pocket Watch
Atlas Obscura: The Simple, Elegant History of the Swiss Army Knife
Modell 1890, the first Swiss Soldier Knife produced by Wester & Co. Solingen. (Photo: Cutrofiano/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 3.0)
Engineering & Technology History Wiki: Reginald A. Fessenden Biography
BBC News: Forth Bridge ‘is Scotland’s favourite engineering work’
Atlas Obscura: Kansas Barbed Wire Museum
Conciatore: Antonio Who?
Yale Books Blog: Dirty Old London: 30 Days of Filth: Day 29: The Great Exhibition Toilet Myth
Pioneers of Flight: Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt flying from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore
Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt flying from Washington, DC to Baltimore in 1933
Ptak Science Books: A Massively Geared “Tricycle” of 1879
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Dispersal of Darwin: Article: Exploration and Exploitation of Victorian Science in Darwin’s Reading Notebooks
Dispersal of Darwin: Article: Flattening the World: Natural Theology and the Ecology of Darwin’s Orchids
Gizmodo: Here’s the Drawing That Proved the Earth has a Solid Core
Engineering Life: Putting synthetic biology in historical context: Becoming a Tralfamadorian
The Scientist: The First Neuron Drawings, 1870s
Notches: The Hunger of the Finnish Bachelor: Married Men, Desire and Domesticity in 20th Century Finland
geoitaliani: Tacchi a spillo, capigliature corte alla garconne, continenti alla deriva: Federico Sacco contro tutti
Atlas Obscura: The Scrappy Female Paleontologist Whose Life Inspired a Tongue Twister
Ancient Origins: The Ancestral Myth of the Hollow Earth and Underground Civilizations
MBL History Project: Zoology in Color: Rudolf Leuckart
“It is not possible for man, as a thinking being, to close his mind to the knowledge that he is ruled by the same power as is the animal world.” –Rudolf Leuckart
Physics Buzz Blog: Meteorite Markings Offer Clues to Their Past
Science Magazine: Beyond the “Mendel-Fisher Controversy”
Notches: “This is Your Pasty”: The Performance of Queer Domesticity in Small-Town Wisconsin
Embryo Project: Study of Fossilized Massospondylus Dinosaur Embryos from South Africa (1978–2012)
Audubon: John J. Audubon’s Birds of America: The life’s work of both a lover and observer of birds and nature
Plate 1 of Birds of America by John James Audubon depicting a wild turkey.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
U.S: Immigration and Customs Enforcement: ICE returns stolen Charles Darwin book
Road to Paris: A very short history of climate change research
Fistful of Cinctans: The Well Worn Paths of Natural History
Macroevolution: Orangutan-human hybrids?
MBL History Project: People of the Lab: Calvin Bridges
CHEMISTRY:
Science Notes: Today in Science History – October 8 – Henry-Louis Le Chatelier
Science Notes: Today in Science History – October 9 – Max von Laue
Science Notes: Today in Science History – October 10 – Henry Cavendish
Source: Wikimedia Commons
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
The H-Word: The Greenwich longitude exhibition on tour
Adam Matthew: To Publish 500 Years of Unique Materials on the History of Printing, Publishing and Bookselling (Stationers’ Company Archives)
Smithsonian.com: How Not to Win a Nobel Prize
3 Quarks Daily: How did the Nobel Prize become the biggest award on earth?
Washington Post: What people in 1900 thought the year 2000 would look like
Air Canada enRoute: The World’s 14 Coolest New Museums
Shanghai Natural History Museum
Independent: Paintings reveal what people in 19oo thought the year 2000 would look like
AHA Today: The Past for the Present: the New Mock Briefings Program and Reasons to Study History
Wynken de Worde: questions to ask when you learn of digitization projects
INKUNABULA: New Blog (German)
The Recipes Project: Exploring Six Degrees of Francis Bacon in Beta
Portrait of Francis Bacon, by Frans Pourbus (1617), Palace on the Water in Warsaw.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Science Museum: Clockmaker’s Museum
Scroll.in: The history of science has been West-centric for too long – it’s time to think global
University of Cambridge: Research: A world of science
Richard Carter: Bacon and X
Tincture of Museum: The Crime Museum Uncovered, Museum of London, October 2015
Somatosphere: Summer Roundup: Forums – Books & Films
Academia: Science in the Everyday World: Why Perspectives from the History of Science Matter
h-madness: How I Became a Historian of Psychiatry: Andrew Scull
Engaging Science, Technology, and Society: First Issue: Table of Contents
The Atlantic: 12 Historical Gems From One of the Best Time Capsules Online
ESOTERIC:
University of Cambridge: Digital Library: Chinese Oracle Bones
distillatio: Alchemy and Magic, are they related
BOOK REVIEWS:
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Science contra Copernicus
sehepunkte: Audra J. Wolfe: Competing with the Soviets (German!)
Nature: Geology: The continental conundrum
NEW BOOKS:
Routledge: Ancient Botany
URSUS: World of Innovation: cartography in the time of Gerhard Mercator
Historiens de la santé: On Hysteria: The Invention of a Medical Category between 1670 & 1820
ART & EXHIBITIONS
Bletchley Park: Last Chance to see the Imitation Game, The Exhibition: Closes 1 November 2015
Alan Turing memorial statue in Sackville Park, Manchester.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Right Relevance: Gender and Representations of the Female Subject in Early Modern England
Musée d’Orsay: Splendours and Misery, Pictures of Prostitution, 1850–1910
Museum of the History of Science: ‘DEAR HARRY…’ – HENRY MOSELEY: A SCIENTIST LOST TO WAR Extended to 31 January 2016
Hunterian Glasgow: The Kangaroo and the Moose 2 October 2015–21 February 2016
Dundee Science Centre: Nature’s Equations: D’Arcy Thompson and the Beauty of Mathematics Closes 25 October 2015
Science Museum: Cosmos & Culture
THEATRE AND OPERA:
Etcetera Theatre: LHF: The Devil Without 13–18 October 2015
Noel Coward Theatre: Photograph 51 Booking until 21 November 2015
Nicole Kidman as Rosalind Franklin Photograph: Johan Persson/Johan Persson
Source: The Guardian
FILMS AND EVENTS:
Dittrick Museum Blog: Conversations: Bodies Wanted – Anatomy and the Dissection Debate 4 November 2015
CHoM News: Celebrating 10 Years of the Archive for Women in Medicine 3 November 2015
Dittrick Museum: Lecture: Eye of the Artist 14 October 2015
Engraving of the eye in A Complete Physico-Medical and Churugical on the Human Eye and the Demonstration of Natural Vision (Degraver, 1780).
The Royal Society: The Big Draw – Seeing Closer 17 October 2015
Dr John Dee Mortlake Society: Events: AGM 13 October 2015
Open Culture: Watch Breaking the Code, About the Life & Times of Alan Turing (1996)
Wellcome Library: Talk: A history of health? Integrating food and drink into the history of medieval medicine 13 October 2015
Discover Medical London: Walking Tour: Women and Medicine
Wellcome Library: Joseph Banks: Lincolnshire botanist 12 October 2015
Sir Joseph Banks, as painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1773
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Royal Society: A new visible world: Robert Hooke’s Micrographia 17 October 2015
Museum of the History of Science Oxford: Too Valuable to Die? 13 October 2015
PAINTING OF THE WEEK:
Don Shank: Laboratory Still Life 1
TELEVISION:
Indiewire: Can WGN America’s Stellar ‘Manhattan’ Finally Break Through?
SLIDE SHOW:
VIDEOS:
Youtube: Turkey
Youtube: Invention of Radio – Reginald A. Fessenden Part 1
The Excavator: Bill Bailey on Alfred Russel Wallace
Youtube: Gresham College: Was the Great Plague of 1665 London’s Problem? – Professor Vanessa Harding
RADIO:
BBC Radio 4: Great Lives: Andrew Adonis on Joseph Bazalgette
BBC Radio 4: Natural History Heroes
BBC Radio 4: Natural Histories: Anemone
PODCASTS:
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
University of Winchester: CfP: Death, Art and Anatomy 3–6 June 2016
Anita Guerrini: Notes and Records – Essay Prize – deadline 31-01-16
University of Flensburg: 1st European IHPST Regional Conference: Science as Culture in the European Context: Historical, Philosophical, and Educational Perspectives 22–25 August 2016
Notches: CfP: Histories of Sexuality and Religion
British Society for the History of Mathematics: Christmas Meeting Birmingham 5 December 2015
St Anne’s College Oxford: CfP: Knowing Demons, Knowing Spirits – Scientiae 2016 5–7 July
University of Exeter: Online Store: One day workshop: Framing the Face: New perspectives on the history of facial hair Friends Meeting House London 28 November 2015
H–Material–Culture: CfP: American Material and Visual Culture in the “Long” Nineteenth Century
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine Oxford: Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology Michaelmas Term 2015
Cleveland.com: Dittrick Medical Museum to host series of ‘Conversations’ on hot-button medical topics
HSTM Network Ireland: Inaugural Conference Maynooth University 13-14 November 2015
University of Groningen: CfP: Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, Religion and Science 21–23 March 2016
The Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association Marburg: Entangled Science? Relocating German-Polish Scientific Relations 28–30 October 2015
Source: Wikimedia Commons
University of Lancaster: Culture, Society and Medicine Seminars
eä: Journal of Medical Humanities & Social Studies of Science & Technology CfP: Information for Authors
University of Lyon: Séminaire de l’Institut d’histoire de la médecine de Lyon Cycle 2015-2016
Rowan University, NJ: CfP: Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice Sixth Biennial Conference 17–19 June 2016
LOOKING FOR WORK:
University of Stirling: Chair in Environmental History and Heritage
University of Harvard: History of Pre-Modern or Early Modern Science or Medicine Tenure Track
University of Hull: PhD Studentships in Visual Culture
British Library: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships
Academic Jobs Wiki: History of Science, Technology, and Medicine 2015–2016
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine: Wellcome Trust History of Medicine PhD Studentship: Health Systems in History: the case of Nigeria 1946–c. 2000
Telegraph Museum Porthcurno: Director
n the 19th century Porthcurno was connected to the rest of the world by submarine cables
Source: Wikimedia Commons
University of Hertfordshire: PhD Studentship in Early Modern History
California Institute of Technology: Postdoctoral Instructor Position in Philosophy of Science
Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy: Postdoc
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