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 #19
Monday 23 November 2015
EDITORIAL:
The overly warm autumn weather has disappeared overnight and the first signs of winter are poking their nose around the door, so it’s time to curl up warm inside and enjoy the latest edition of Whewell’s Gazette the weekly #histSTM links list bursting at the seams, as always, with the collective wisdom of the Internet on the histories of science, technology and medicine from the last seven days.
In the last two weeks of November exactly one hundred years ago, in 1915, the German physicist, Albert Einstein put the finishing touches to the theory that would elevate him from being one of the leading European scientists to the status of a twentieth-century icon, the General Theory of Relativity. The last weeks have all seen a fair number of reports, essay and blog posts on the theory and its creator but I thought we could bring this week’s crop to the fore and honour the great man here at Whewell’s Gazette.
Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921 by F Schmutzer
Source: Wikimedia Commons
We celebrate the centenary of this milestone in the history of physics at a time when the chorus of critics is growing louder and louder with the cries of “was Einstein wrong?” It is the inability of researchers to find a way of combing the general theory of relativity with that other great pillar of twentieth-century physics, that Einstein helped to found, the quantum theory that has led to this question. Many of those who pose it seem to do so with a certain sense of schadenfreude, as if they hope to see Albert pushed from his pedestal.
If the general theory of relativity comes to be replaced by a new ‘better’ theory combining gravity with quantum theory, as it probably will, just as Einstein’s own theory of gravity toppled that of Newton, it won’t do anything to change the enormity of Einstein’s achievement in 1915. Historian of science, should they or indeed the world still exist, will celebrate the bicentenary of this theory just as fulsomely in 2115.
Nature: Special: General Relativity at 100
arkansasonline.com: Einstein’s century-old theory stands strong
AHF: Albert Einstein
Brain Pickings: Einstein on the Common Language of Science in a Rare 1941 Recording
Dispatch-Argus: 100 years later, Einstein’s theory stands strong
Science Museum: The past, present and future of general relativity
The New York Times: General Relativities Big Year?
The New Yorker: Albert Einstein’s Sci-Fi Stories
Republican Herald: Century later, relativity still stands strong
Quotes of the week:
“Don’t just do something, stand there and think!” – Liam Heneghan (@DublinSoil)
“A university professor should “lead you to the fountain of knowledge”, but “whether you drink deeply or only gargle is entirely up to you””. – @GrrlScientist
“In a singing competition between Yoda and Steve Winwood, Steve win would”. – You can call me Q (@QuintinForbes)
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Unless they’re darker than, say, beige.”- Statue of Liberty. – @TheTweetOfGod
“People really hate it when you point out that their rhetorical moves don’t advance their argument”. – Jonathan Dresner (@jondresner)
“Don’t discuss infinity with a mathematician. You’ll never hear the end of it”. – Laura Lang (@MathsforGrownups)
“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” — George Carlin h/t @berfois
“Is the cup half-full, or half-empty? Either way, it’s hemlock”. – Damon Young (@damonayoung)
“Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the aims of education” – William Godwin h/t @douglassilas
“Just noticed that business books are next to books on potty training in Dewey decimal classification”. – John D. Cook (@JohnDCook)
“It may be said that the entire Renaissance was in Galileo’s library & more importantly in his Dialogue.” – Paula Findlen at HSS 2015 h/t @bhgross
“…when did the history of science society become the history of the scientific book society?” – Paula Findlen at HSS 2015 h/t @elizabeththeyale
“Philosophers often make better coffee than sense”. – Nigel Warburton (@philosophybites)
“Historians of science are not made, they are improvised.” – Robert Fox, Sarton Medalist. h/t @ColdWarScience
Q: “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door”
A: “Build a better fence, and you can stop them” – Jon Agar (@jon_agar)
“Just don’t think there is a good reason to write ‘quinquennially’ instead of ‘every five years’”. – Dolly Jørgensen (@DollyJørgensen)
Birthday of the Week:
Edwin Hubble born 20 November 1889
Edwin Hubble, doing what he loved best at Mount Wilson Observatory
ESA Space Science: 20 November
cosmology.carrnegiescience.edu: 1929: Edwin Hubble Discovers the Universe is Expanding
Popular Science: The 11 Most Important Cats of Science 2 of 12 Astronomy Cat
Wallifaction: Happy birthday to Edwin Hubble
Edwin Hubble! Seen here in 1923 at a Carnegie solar eclipse expedition to Point Loma, CA.
PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY & SPACE SCIENCE
University of Roehampton: Hearth Tax discovery by Roehampton historians may illuminate Isaac Newton’s life story
AMNH: Shelf Life: Episode Five: How to Time Travel to a Star
Voices of the Manhattan Project: General Leslie Groves’ Interview – Part 10
AIP: Eugene Wigner
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Dorothy McKibbin’s Interview (1979)
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Evelyne Litz’s Interview
Yovisto: Eugene Wigner and the Structure of the Atomic Nucleus
The Guidon: Manila Observatory celebrates 150th anniversary
AHF: George Kistiakowsky
Pat’s Blog: The analemma is Gone, Oh How I Miss it
Ptak Science Books: Astronomy Board Games, 1661 & 1804
Ptak Science Books: Graphs of Astronomical Discoveries
Ptak Science Books: An Unusual Set of Astronomical Images
AHF: “Hanford’s Pioneers” Tour Launches
Kaleidoscope: Science and Invention: How Did the Ancient Chinese Measure Time?
The Guardian: Maxwell’s Equations: 150 years of light
The Independent: The end of an odyssey – Homer’s epic is finally pinned down
AHF: Soviet Hydrogen Bomb Progam
Teyler’s Museum: Tellurium, George Adams, London
Tor.com: Utopian Mars: From Aleriel to The Martian
The Nature of Reality: Schrödinger’s Cat Lives On (Or Not) at the Age of 80
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
British Library: Maps and views blog: A Glance – from a Safe Distance – at the Human Monsters on Pierre Desceliers’ World Map of 1550
Mammoth Tales: The White Elephant of Rucheni
Desceliers Arctic elephant. North is at the bottom of the page.
Atlas Obscura: Hand-Drawn Maps That Jump Into the Geopolitical Fray
Royal Museums Greenwich: Christopher Columbus
Atlas Obscura: The Delights and Perils of Navigating New York City with a Guidebook from 1899
Dr. Caitlin R. Green: Some interesting early maps of Lincolnshire
It’s About Time: 1587 Sir Walter Raleigh & Roanoke Island, North Carolina
This illustration is a detail from a map in the 1590 edition of Thomas Hariot’s Briefe and True Account of the New Found Land of Virginia.
It’s About Time: 1590 John White’s Return to Roanoke – Where all had vanished
It’s About Time: 1586 Ralph Lane’s Report on the Colony of Roanoke
BBC News: Stark images of Shackleton’s struggle
MEDICINE & HEALTH:
Iridology, a pseudomedical practice, involves reading the patient’s iris for diagnosis
h/t @sunfilter
Thomas Morris: The eye-brush
Perceptions of Pregnancy: It’s all in the breasts: pregnancy aphorisms in the Hippocratic Corpus
Le Huffington Post: Portrait de médicin: Wilder Graves Penfield
The Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduates: Reading for Abortions in the Victorian Novel
Forbes: Here’s How Corsets Deformed the Skeletons of Victorian Women
From “Physiology for Young People” p. 84. Fig. 11.A purports to show the natural position of internal organs. B, when deformed by tight lacing of a corset. In this way the liver and the stomach have been forced downward, as seen in the cut. (Public domain image via wikimedia commons.)
Devient Maternity: ‘For shipping his corpse which was becoming very loathsome and nauseous’. The provision of care for the poor, sick and dying in the eighteenth-century
Haverford College News: Studying Historical “Madness”
AEON: Better Babies
Gizmodo: The Secret WWII Club That Healed Burned Pilots and Revolutionized Plastic Surgery
Nursing Clio: The History of a Wrist: When Historians Fall Over
The History Company: The Wee Glasgow women and the birth of Caesarian
M Library Blog: A New Acquisition: A Japanese Illustrated Book on Surgery
Woodcut from Irako Mitsuaki. Geka kinmō zui (Kyoto: Ebisuya Ichiemon, 1809)
Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: The Girton and Newnham Unit of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in World War One
Thomas Morris: Pipe dreams
The Atlantic: Impregnated by a speeding Bullet, and Other Tall Tales
Notches: Bad for the Soul, Good for the Body: Religion, Medicine and Masturbation in the Middle Ages
Thomas Morris: In praise of temperance
Medievalists.net: The Sick and the Dead: Medieval Concepts of Illness and Spinal Disability
TECHNOLOGY:
The Ladybird Story of Radio (1968) knew about David Edward Hughes and e-m waves but didn’t quite get his name right. h/t Iwan Rhys Morus
Conciatore: Manganese Overload
The Ejection Site: 46.2Gs!!! The Story of John Paul Stapp “The Fastest Man On Earth”
Improbable Research: The Fastest Man on Earth (Part 2 of 4)
MAA 100: Mathematical Treasure: Polar Planimeter Invented by Jacob Amsler
The National Archives: ‘All change!’ on Britain’s railways
1812 The first effective locomotive-powered railway
Yovisto: The X-43A and the Scramjet Technology
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: The Tizard Mission – 75 Years of Anglo-American Technical Alliance
The Public Domain Revue: Colour Wheels, Charts, and Tables Through History
Two Nerdy History Girls: The Amazing Félix Nadar
Nadar Self-Portrait in Balloon
Yovisto: Doug Engelbart and the Computer Mouse
The Guardian: Barry Cooper obituary
The TZranscontinental Railroad: Time Standardization
The National Valve Museum: Website
Dolly Jørgensen: The Metamorphosis of Ajax, jakes, and early modern urban sanitation
Medievalists.net: Guns in Scotland: the manufacture and use of guns and their influence on warfare from the fourteenth century to c. 1625
Phys.org: What toilets and sewers tell us about ancient Roman sanitation
Ruin of a second-century public toilet in Roman Ostia. Credit: Fr Lawrence Lew, OP, CC BY-NC-ND
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Ascension of a Montgolfier Balloon
The Conversation: Building Hitler’s supergun: the plot to destroy London and why it failed
Graphic Arts Collection: The Principles of Static and Friction
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Making Science Public: Moderation impossible? Climate change, alarmism and rhetorical entrenchment
Making Science Public: Climate realism: What does it mean?
Occam’s Corner: Beard science: an examination of the power (and hazards) of Movember
The Dallas Morning News: Nearly pristine mammoth skeleton showcased at Perot Museum
Jae S. Lee/Staff Photographer
Ellie May is showcased as if she is floating above the ground, in a similar position to the way she was found. The Columbian mammoth skeleton is about 80 percent or 85 percent intact and an estimated 40,000 years old.
Gizmodo: Half the World’s Natural History Specimens Might Have the Wrong Name
Notches: Rape and the Sexual Politics of Homosexuality: The U.S. Military Occupation of Okinawa, 1955-56
NYAM: Extra, Extra, Get Your New Banana!
Yale Climate Connection: NYC Climate Museum
Inside Climate News: Climate Scientist Michael Mann: Exxon Story ‘Confirmed Things We Long Suspected’
Storia della Geologia: Storia della mineralogia – I primi passi
Atlas Obscura: Meet the Midwestern Pilots Who Risk Their Lives to Change the Weather
BHL: Travels in Southern Africa: William John Burchell
“A view in the town of Litakun.” Engraved from a drawing by William John Burchell. Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa. v. 2 (1824). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48905971. Digitized by: University of Pretoria.
Forbes: Half The World’s Museum Specimens are Wrongly Labeled, but Who is to Blame?
Open Sky: American Meteorological Society Oral History Project
Science League of America: Evolution for John Doe, Part 4
Niche: Workers as Commodities: The Case of Asbestos, Quebec
Jonathan Saha: Paratextual Pachyderms
NCSE: Excerpt Voyage of the Beagle: The Illustrated Edition
Geschichte der Geologie: Kunst & Geologie: Die Magie des Karfunkelsteins
Making Science Public: The book of life: Reading, writing and editing
BGS Geoheritage – images from the collections: Calx carbonata (calcite) from British mineralogy by James Sowerby 1802–1817
CHEMISTRY:
Yovisto: Nicolas Lemery and the Acid-Base Chemistry
Gizmodo: Badass Historical Chemists: The Woman Behind Antoine Lavoisier
Portrait of M. and Mme Lavoisier, by Jacques-Louis David, 1788 (Metropolitan Museum)
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Nature: thesis: Hard-luck Scheele
Situating Chemistry: Situating Chemistry Database 1760–1840
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
Yovisto: Albertus Magnus and the Merit of Personal Observation
Wellcome Trust: Researcher Spotlight: Louise Powell
BBC: Culture: Did Dickens invent time travel?
-273.15°C: Eminent Interview
The Bigger Picture: Looking Smithson’s Gift Horse in the Mouth
Edge Effects: Improving the Conversational Geography of Environmental Conferences
Science Museum Group Journal: Issue 4
Wikimedia Commons: Hooke’s Micrographia Diagrams from the National Library of Wales
Irish Philosophy: The “Incomparable Lady Ranelagh”
Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh: portrait in Lismore Castle
Picture courtesy of Michelle DiMeo
The Harvard Crimson: A Forgotten Field
DSI: Database of Scientific Illustrators 1450–1950
IsisCB Explore: An open access discovery service for the history of science
Science Notes: November 20 in Science History
Science Notes: November 21 in Science History
Science Notes: November 22 in Science History
Society for the Social History of Medicine: The Gazette
Society for Renaissance Studies: Remembering Lisa Jardine
Professor Lisa Jardine in 2015, portrait from the Royal Society
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Nicholson’s Journal: Website
NYAM: Discover the Past Support the Future
Metascience: Vol.24, Issue 3 Contents
Academia: Scientific Celebrity: The Paradoxical Case of Emil du Bois-Reymond
ESOTERIC:
Conciatore: Alchemist Cardinal
The Recipes Project: The Curious Case of the Homunculus, and the Allegorical Recipe
Conciatore: The Paracelsans
The Truth Garden: Odd Truths: The alchemical life of glassmaker Antonio Neri
BOOK REVIEWS:
Wonder of Words: The Hunt For Vulcan
Chad Comello: The Hunt for Vulcan
Boston Globe: How Einstein ended hunt for planet that never was
Contagions: The Black Death in the Ottoman Empire and Ragusan Republic
Nature: Books in Brief: Spooky Action at a Distance, Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin etc.
Science Museum Group Journal: The thrilling adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: the (mostly) true story of the first computer, by Sydney Padua
The Early Modern Intelligencer: The Royal Touch in Early Modern England: Politics, Medicine and Sin
Science Book a Day: What Galileo Saw: Imagining the Scientific Revolution
History Today: Books of the Year 2015
New Books in Science, Technology, and Society: Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age
The Page 99 Test: Melinda Baldwin’s “Making Nature”
Women’s History Association of Ireland: Aphrodisiacs, fertility and medicine in early modern England.
The New York Times: ‘London Fog: The Biography,’ by Christine L. Corton
Central London at night, 1936. Credit Lacey/General Photographic Agency, via Getty Images
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb: Q&A with Paul Halpern
NEW BOOKS:
Pool of London Press: The Mapmakers’ World
The Public Domain Review: Selected Essays, Vol. II
Historiens de la santé: Malades, soignants, hôpitaux, représentations en Roussillon, Languedoc & Provence
Johns Hopkins University Press: Alfred Wegener: Science, Exploration, and the Theory of Continental Drift
ART & EXHIBITIONS
Culture 24: A magical glimpse into the Tudor imagination: Lost library of John Dee to be revealed
Royal College of Physicians: Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee 18 January 2016–29 July 2016
Royal Museums Greenwich: Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution exhibition 20 November 2015–28 March 2016
Painting of Samuel Pepys by John Hayls
Source: Wikimedia Commons
J D Davies: Pepys Show and Tell
Londonist: Largest Ever Pepys Exhibition Comes to Greenwich
Heinz Nixdorf Museums Forum: Paderborn, Germany: IT began with Ada. Women in Computer History 2 September 2015–10 July 2016
Explore Brooklyn: The Morbid Anatomy Museum: how to get there, what to do, where to go after
Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Luxury of Time: European Clocks and Watches
Hyperallergergic: Celestial Art and Science in Albrecht Dürer’s 1515 Star Charts
ActiveHistory.ca: Science, Technology and Gender in Canada: An AcitveHistory.ca Exhibit in Collaboration with the Canadian Science and Technology Museum
Royal Society: Seeing closer: 350 years of microscope 17 December 2015
Hooke’s microscope, from an engraving in Micrographia.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Museum of the History of Science: Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost to War Runs until 31 January 2016
LAST CHANCE TO SEE: University of Dundee: A History of Nearly Everything Runs until 28 November 2015
The Huntarian: The Kangaroo and the Moose Runs until 21 February 2016
Science Museum: Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age Runs until 13 March 2016
Museum of Science and Industry: Meet Baby Every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, & Saturday
Guiding Lights: 500 years of Trinity House and safety at sea Runs till 4 January 2016
Southbank Centre: Faraday’s synaptic gap Runs till 10 January 2016
Hunterian Museum: Designing Bodies: Models of human anatomy from 1945 to now 24 November 2015–20 February 2016
THEATRE, OPERA AND FILMS:
The Dream Team: Surgeon to the Dead The Old Operating Theatre London 10-12 & 15-17 December 2015
Gielgud Theatre: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Booking to 18 June 2016
EVENTS:
Institute of Historical Research: British Maritime History Seminar: Drawing and Photography in the History of Astronomy 24 November 2015
The Royal Society: Lecture: Lifting the lid – the Royal Society since 1960 10 December 2015
Salle des Fêtes, Hôpital civil, Strasbourg: Colloque: Retour sur le genre des biopics de grands scientifiques : Pasteur, Pavlov, Koch, Ehrlich 23 novembre 2015
medhumlabmanchester: Medicine in Art Society Launch Event Whitworth Art Gallery 26 November 2015
Gresham College: Was Einstein Right? 24 November 2015
Diseases of Modern Life: Seminar: Radical Requiems: The return of the past in British Agriculture, 1850–1950 St Anne’s College Oxford 25 November 2015
Morbid Anatomy: Upcoming Events
Natural History Museum: After Hours Lates 27 November 2015
Royal Society: Life through a lens: Celebrating science photography 26 November 2015
Wellcome Collection: Crucial Interventions with Richard Barnett 26 November 2015
Royal Institution: The Tsar’s cup 27 November 2015
PAINTING OF THE WEEK:
Norbert Wiener by David Levine, New York Review of Books
TELEVISION:
BBC Four: Timeshift: How Britain Won the Space Race: The Story of Bernard Lovell and Jodrell Bank
Lovell Telescope, Jodrell Bank Observatory
Source: Wikimedia Commons
io9: On Manhattan, Terrible Things Happen When You “Wake The Dragon”
Channel 4: Building Hitler’s Supergun
SLIDE SHOW:
VIDEOS:
Youtube: THUNK – 79: Science, Pseudoscience, & the Demarcation Problem
RADIO:
BBC Radio 4: Self Drives: Maxwell’s Equations
PODCASTS:
BBC Global News Podcast: Challenges of curating natural science collections from 23 mins
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Royal Society: Notes and Records: Announcing the 4th Notes and Records Essay Award
H-Physical Sciences: CFP: The Third Biannual Early-Career Conference for Historians of the Physical Sciences
University of Edinburgh: Sixth International Conference on Integrated History and Philosophy of Science (in collaboration with the UK Integrated History and Philosophy of Science) 3-5 July 2016
University of Amsterdam & Utrecht University: CFP: Connecting Collections XVII Universeum Network Meeting 9-11 July 2016
The Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize 2016: The prize is awarded annually to the best paper in the history of electrotechnology—power, electronics, telecommunications, and computer science—published during the preceding year Deadline 15 December 2015
All Souls College, Oxford: Workshop: Charles Hutton (1737–1823): being mathematical in the Georgian period 17–18 December 2015
Portrait of Charles Hutton (1737–1823), English mathematician
Source: Wikimedia Common
University of Leiden: CfP: Gender, Power and Materiality in Early Modern Europe 1500–1800 7-9 April 20916
Stony Brook University: Periods and Waves: A Conference on Sound and History 29–30 April 2016
University of Leuven: CfP: Ancient Medicine 30–31 August 2016
Charles Schmitt Prize 2016: Submissions will be accepted in any area of intellectual history, broadly construed, 1500 to the present Deadline 31 December 2015
University of Cambridge: CfP: BSHS Postgraduate Conference 2016 6–8 January
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: CfP: Eighth Joint Meeting of the BSHS, CSHPS, and HSS, 22-25 June 2016
University of Kent: CfP: Medicine in its Place: Situating Medicine in Historical Context 7–10 July 2016
LOOKING FOR WORK:
Queen Mary University of London: Postgraduate Research Studentships
Canadian Association for the History of Nursing: Margaret M. Allemang Scholarship for graduate students
British Library: Curator, Map Collection
Royal Signals Museum: Museum Technical Curator
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