Tag Archives: history of science

Whewell’s Ghost on Facebook and Twitter

Posted on November 14, 2012 by

I have decided that it is time to take the Facebook page and Twitter account of Whewell’s Ghost in a new direction. In part inspired by our earlier discussions about the future of The Giants’ Shoulders history of science blog … Continue reading →

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Catching up with The H Word

Posted on September 18, 2012 by

As mentioned in my previous post here, I have been cross-posting my posts from The H Word, hosted by the Guardian, to my personal blog Teleskopos. Please feel free to read and/or comment there, or follow the links below to … Continue reading →

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A tale of a telescope

Posted on August 17, 2012 by

In this month’s Journal for the History of Astronomy I have a book review of Richard Gillespie’s The Great Melbourne Telescope – a book I enjoyed reading and a review I enjoyed writing. Hop over to teleskopos to read it.

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The Historical Science Society of 1840

Posted on August 4, 2012 by

My second post on the new Guardian Science blog, The H Word, is now up – looking at The first HSS, a 19th-century venture doomed to failure as a result of its young founder’s succumbing to bibliophilic temptation.

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More than transitory interest: an instrument of note

Posted on August 1, 2012 by

Slightly belatedly, here’s a cross-posting of my last post on the Longitude Project blog, which takes a closer look at a significant astronomical relic: A lesson quickly learned in the world of museum collections and displays – perhaps especially in … Continue reading →

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Observing transit history in the media

Posted on June 12, 2012 by

I have a post up on the Guardian’s ‘Notes and Theories’ science blog. It’s called What they didn’t tell you about the transit of Venus. ‘They’ are all the potted transit histories that I’ve read/heard/watched over the last few weeks. What … Continue reading →

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Faraday’s motivation

Posted on June 9, 2012 by

In response to a comment stream on the Times Higher Education supplement, that raised the issue of whether Michael Faraday was about the business of pure or applied scientific research, I wrote this post.

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Cutting a dash: men of science as ‘historical hotties’

Posted on May 17, 2012 by

I had a bit of fun this week tweeting links to portraits of some 19th-century men of science, suggesting that they were ’19thC scientific hotties’. Such a phrase is not, I should add, my usual vocabulary, and nor is a … Continue reading →

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Inside a Herbarium (finding history amongst the science)

Posted on April 6, 2012 by

This week I had the pleasure of seeing inside the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. I have, very often and from earliest childhood, enjoyed walking in the gardens and hothouses, but this was the first time I … Continue reading →

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Tartu: “the Russian Empire’s leading observatory”

Posted on March 26, 2012 by

My review of Lea Leppick’s Tartu Old Observatory (2011), appeared in the  February 2012 issue (£) of the Journal for the History of Astronomy. You can read it here.

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