#historyofscience

my #bookreview of The elements of #MarieCurie is out now in C&I: https://proseandpassion.blogspot.com/2025/07/a-radiant-legacy.html #HistoryOfScience #biography #women #womeninSTEM

It's often said that journal publishing is still using 17th-century technology, but I think that's unfair. After all, they didn't have DOIs in the 1600s.

#SciComm #JournalPublishing #HistoryOfScience

Martian Memories

Advances in NASA Imaging Changed How World Sees Mars

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/advances-in-nasa-imaging-changed-how-world-sees-mars

#Mars #Mariner4 #Viking1 #Sojourner #Spirit #Opportunity #MRO #HiRISE #Curiosity #Perseverance #Ingenuity #history #science #HistoryOfScience #MartianMemories

This blog has been a very long time in the making. Last summer I visited the Niels Bohr Library and Archives of the American Institute of Physics. That visit turned into an interview (Allison Rein interviewed me). Very excited to share this. I hope it will help a few more people find their way to our catalogue as well! https://www.aip.org/library/ex-libris-universum/inside-the-international-atomic-energy-agency-archives-unit #arhives #digipres #historyofscience #physics #nuclearphysics

149 years ago today #GeorgeMurrayLevick was born. This British Antarctic explorer made observations on penguins considered too shocking for the world, as recounted in A Polar Affair, an unusual and colourful book of #PolarExploration, #Penguins, and perversion.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2020/02/20/book-review-a-polar-affair-antarcticas-forgotten-hero-and-the-secret-love-lives-of-penguins/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #SciComm

It is 121 years ago today that the world lost #JohnBellHatcher. Meticulous in its historical detail, King of the Dinosaur Hunters is the definitive biography of this quietly famous and influential fossil collector.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2018/12/10/book-review-king-of-the-dinosaur-hunters-the-life-of-john-bell-hatcher-and-the-discoveries-that-shaped-paleontology/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Fossils #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Dinosaurs #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #SciComm

This week's #NewBooks at the library: I bought a second-hand copy of #JamesHutton: The Genius of Time from Birlinn Publishing and adopted a damaged copy of The Great Auk from Bloomsbury Sigma that I hope to review soon. Also very pleased to have found a second-hand copy of Peter Wellnhofer's classic The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of #Pterosaurs which was recommended by @markwitton for its section on the history of research (when Witton recommends, I listen).

#Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon #Geology #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Ornithology #Palaeontology #Paleontology @bookstodon

Good Will Hunting in reverse: the real-life story of Peter Putnam, promising physicist turned janitor.

HT @cdarwin

https://nautil.us/finding-peter-putnam-1218035/

#PeterPutnam #GoodWillHunting #NautilusMagazine #AmandaGefter #TheoreticalNeuroscience #ScienceMastodon #ScienceStories #JohnArchibaldWheeler #GayHistory #NeuralModels #LongReads #PrincetonUniversity #RobertFuller #HistoryOfPhysics #HistoryOfScience

Sic transit gloria mundi and the Unapologetic Vatican in the Shapley Supercluster: a recap on cosmic flows by Avi Loeb

https://avi-loeb.medium.com/the-unapologetic-vatican-in-the-shapley-supercluster-cc8e5023c305

#Cosmology #CosmicFlows #galaxies #AviLoeb #Vatican #science #history #HistoryOfScience #STEM #Laniakea #supercluster #LaniakeaSupercluster #DipoleReppler #Shapley #ShapleySupercluster #ZoneOfAvoidance #VelaSupercluster #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrodon #Cosmography #Earth #MilkyWay #Andromeda #LocalGroup

This week's #NewBooks at the library: Two academic books

- "Science for All: The Popularisation of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain" from the University of Chicago Press; and
- "The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire" from Harvard University Press.

Completely unrelated, won at auction, a vintage artbook from #GamesWorkshop by John Blanche and one of my favourite illustrators, Ian Miller.

#HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Anthropology #Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon @bookstodon

Congratulations to Quintino Lopes, whose paper about Armando de Lacerda and the Coimbra Phonetics Laboratory (co-authored with Francisco de Lacerda and Ana Simões) was the winner of the 2025 edition of the A. H. de Oliveira Marques Prize for Portuguese History!

Full story: https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/en/quintino-lopes-aholiveira-marques-prize/

@histodons
@histodon

#Histodons #PortugueseHistory #HistoryOfScience #HistoryfTechnology #Phonetics #Awards #ASPSH #AcademicLife #HistóriaDePortugal #HistóriaDaCiência #HistóriaDaTecnologia

Now online: Videos from the workshop "Large Language Models for the History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science",
April 2-4, 2025, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5rAX6ywmP7O_nT99Osd74uino78BJMVT

#LLM #historyofscience #HPSS

Said Robert Proctor: “If you don’t like the science that’s out there, create some of your own. And then claim ‘we need more research.’ And then label your opposition as a bunch of close-minded fanatics.”

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/industry-weaponizing-science-agenda/

#history #learning #learn #sociology #reputation #truth #agnotology #historyOfScience #intelligence #ignorance #USPol #science #knowledge #politics #publicOpinion #mediaStudies #commOdon

For most of history, the disciplines of science and philosophy are tightly connected, arguably even the same.

Alchemy was considered a science, and indeed people like Newton and Bacon dabbled in it. Facts and theories as we now know them are much different, and bordered on philosophical arguments. Experimentation wasn't a standard procedure, and a community of scientific professionals hardly existed.

#history #histodons #quote #bookstodon #historyOfScience

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90 segundos para a Ângela Salgueiro nos contar o que anda a fazer no projecto #PHONLAB, dedicado à História da fonética experimental em Portugal, nomeadamente ao Laboratório de Fonética Experimental instalado na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, em 1936, por Armando de Lacerda.

https://www.90segundosdeciencia.pt/episodes/ep-2026-angela-salgueiro/

#Histodons #HistoryInThePublicSphere #SciComm #SciComPT #HistóriaNaEsferaPública #FonéticaExprimental #ExperimentalPhonetics #HistoryOfScience #HistóriaDaCiência #Coimbra

Today it is 69 years ago the world lost #GeorgeMurrayLevick.This British Antarctic explorer made observations on penguins that were considered too shocking for the world. They are recounted in A Polar Affair, an unusual and colourful book of #PolarExploration, #Penguins, and perversion.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2020/02/20/book-review-a-polar-affair-antarcticas-forgotten-hero-and-the-secret-love-lives-of-penguins/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #SciComm

In an paper published in History of Science, Inês Gomes and Frederico Ágoas examine ‘the intersection of environmental history and the history of science, specifically the impact of forestry science and fire management on land use and community dynamics in rural Portuguese mountains’.

An output of the #FIREUSES project!

https://doi.org/10.1177/00732753241304144

@histodons
@envhist

#Histodons #HistoryOfScience #EnvironmentalHistory #FireManagement #LandUse #Wildfires #HistóriaAmbiental #HistóriaDaCiência

I am currently reading Euler's “Introductio in analysin infinitorum” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introductio_in_analysin_infinitorum). The Wikipedia article calls it “the first precalculus book” — which is true in a strict sense, since there are no integrals or derivatives in it, but the book contains so much material about infinite series and products that it cannot be called precalculus in the modern sense.
The text looks quite modern (since all later authors followed Euler's style) but a lot of notations that today we take for granted are still missing, especially sum and product sign and even indices. How does he then manage to write about infinite series?
A generic power series takes for Euler the form

𝐴 + 𝐵𝑥 + 𝐶𝑥𝑥 + 𝐷𝑥³ + 𝐸𝑥⁴ &ct.,

and he also speaks of the series of coefficients, 𝐴, 𝐵, 𝐶, 𝐷, 𝐸 &ct., even if he apparently has no concept of a series as a mathematical object in its own right.
For more complex manipulations of series, Euler use the concept of the general term of a series (so that the general term of the geometric series is 𝑥ⁿ), and with this concept one can do almost the same calculations as with a sum operator.
And what is if there is more than one infinite series? A second series is for Euler often

𝑎 + 𝑏𝑥 + 𝑐𝑥𝑥 + 𝑑𝑥³ + 𝑒𝑥⁴ &ct.

and a third and fourth series may have the coefficients 𝑎', 𝑏', 𝑐', 𝑑', 𝑒' &ct. and 𝑎'', 𝑏'', 𝑐'', 𝑑'', 𝑒'' &ct. This way he produces a lot of mathematics.

And in one place (§214), when he has used up all other methods to create new types of coefficients, he even distinguishes between a series with coefficients in italics and one with coefficients in straight letters:

A + B𝑥 + C𝑥𝑥 + D𝑥³ + E𝑥⁴ &ct.,

#Mathematics #HistoryOfScience #Notations #LeonardEuler #Analysis

149 years ago today, #HMSChallenger returned to Spithead from a scientific expedition that birthed the discipline of #Oceanography, but what did they find? Read more about this in Full Fathom 5000, an engaging book that focuses on the many animals the expedition found in the deep sea.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2024/07/30/book-review-full-fathom-5000-the-expedition-of-hms-challenger-and-the-strange-animals-it-found-in-the-deep-sea/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Oceans #MarineBiology #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci

318 years ago today #CarlLinnaeus was born. The scholarly #biography The Man Who Organized Nature provides a full immersion in his life, revealing the polymath behind his reputation as the father of taxonomy.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2024/12/05/book-review-the-man-who-organized-nature-the-life-of-linnaeus/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Taxonomy #Botany #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #SciComm @princetonupress