样式: 排序: IF: - GO 导出 标记为已读
-
Losing foreignness: Johann Sigismund Elsholtz on the meaning of plants in the pleasure gardens of Berlin Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2024-02-28 Tracy Wietecha
As a result of trade and commerce in global empires, plants from around the world could be found growing in gardens throughout Europe, including Germany. Johann Sigismund Elsholtz (1623–1688), a member of the Leopoldina scientific academy, would never personally travel to the Americas or Asia, but he had direct experience with plants from abroad under his care in the pleasure gardens of Berlin. Elsholtz
-
Nineteenth-century Japanese and British science in context: an introduction to transnational-comparative studies Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Bernard Lightman, Efram Sera-Shriar, Yoshiyuki Kikuchi
This special issue focuses on the complex cultural connections between Japanese and British science in the nineteenth century. This was a period when intellectuals around the globe began to interact more intensively due to increased opportunities to travel and the growth in translations of important scientific works into many languages. This was also an era when, in the latter part of the century,
-
A Japanese Christian physicist defends evolution: Kimura Shunkichi's appropriation of British discourses in his philosophical scrutiny of science Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2024-02-14 Takuji Okamoto
Between 1889 and 1891, the Christian physicist Kimura Shunkichi strove to persuade his non-religious pupils at the First Higher Middle School that nature was harmonious, while encouraging his fellow Christians to enhance their belief by assimilating the accomplishments of contemporary science, especially the theory of evolution. The arguments of British scientists regarding the relationship between
-
Vegetal agency: the sap controversy in early eighteenth-century France treatises on plants and gardening Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Sarah Benharrech
This article examines how the apologetics of the abbé Noël-Antoine Pluche (1688–1761) impacted his presentation of botanical knowledge in the ten dialogues published in the first and second volumes of his natural history book Le Spectacle de la nature (1732–1750). Pluche popularized a conception of the physical world where plants are reducible to inert mechanisms, devoid of life and agency. First,
-
Creating life in the laboratory: Francis Bacon's journey from living spirits to animate bodies Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Dana Jalobeanu
This article aims to reconstruct a complex inquiry into the nature of life delineated in Francis Bacon's ‘last writings’, a series of manuscripts discovered at the end of the twentieth century. I show that these fragmentary texts can be understood if we place them in the larger context of Bacon's posthumous works: the Sylva Sylvarum and the Historia densi et rari. Taken together, these texts unveil
-
The impact of British chemistry and physics upon Japanese science in the late nineteenth century: the Williamson–Sakurai connection at University College London Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Yoshiyuki Kikuchi
The Meiji period between 1868 and 1912, when the introduction of Western science into Japan started in earnest, was also the time when specialization became an increasingly pressing and complex issue in natural science, especially in Victorian Britain where specialization went hand in hand with ‘interconnectedness’ between various fields of study. This article examines the impact of this complicated
-
The laureate as public intellectual: Paul Crutzen and the politics of the environment Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Declan Fahy
This article argues that Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen (1933–2021) spoke in the name of science over several decades as a public intellectual who shaped research fields, environmental policy, and public understanding of the environment. It analyses the atmospheric chemist as a case study to explain the formation and influence of the scientist as a public intellectual, tracing the trajectory
-
Originality conundrum: British education of engineers in Meiji Japan (1868–1912) Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Tomoko Yoshida
Britain played a vital role in the early years of Meiji Japan (1868–1912), when the country was undergoing rapid transformation as it adopted Western technologies like railroads and the telegraph. The British influence extended beyond simply transferring technical skills, however. Young, idealistic British instructors wanted to help cultivate in their Japanese students the spirit of an engineer—an
-
Plants and laboratories: the ascent of sap between physics and vegetal physiology Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-12-20 Fabrizio Baldassarri
The ascent of sap in plants represented a puzzle in early modern studies of nature. Although philosophers, gardeners and naturalists had traditionally explained it as a process of fermentation caused by the Sun, an alternative view emerged in combination with the physical studies of pressure. This latter field of experimentation somehow influenced the study of plants. While the mathematical study of
-
The making of early modern eye models Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Wenrui Zhao
Anatomical eye models became increasingly popular in the seventeenth century across Europe. They served as useful pedagogical tools, allowing the hands-on study of ocular anatomy and repeated re-enactment of the dissection process, while also being appreciated for their workmanship and aesthetics. Their makers included surgeons, anatomists and artisans, and they often collaborated to produce these
-
Minakata Kumagusu in London: Challenging Eurocentrism in the pages of Nature Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-11-01 Bernard Lightman, Ruselle Meade
The Japanese biologist and ethnologist Minakata Kumagusu has achieved a degree of celebrity in Japan for being the first Asian contributor to the British scientific magazine Nature. However, although Minakata's many contributions to Nature from 1893 to 1914 provided British readers with rare insight into Asian scientific achievements, he is seldom discussed in history of science scholarship produced
-
Anthropological Glimpses of Japan in Nineteenth-Century Britain Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-11-01 Efram Sera-Shriar
This article explores two early anthropological works on Japan that were produced in Britain during the nineteenth century. The first is James Cowles Prichard's chapter on Japanese culture from the third edition of his Researches into the physical history of mankind (1844). It represents the first formative study by a leading ethnologist to tackle the subject. The second is Edward Burnett Tylor's essay
-
Plant alchemy, Paracelsianism and internal signature theory in the writings of Guy de La Brosse (1586–1641) Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-10-25 Georgiana D. Hedesan
In France, the Jardin des Plantes is one of the oldest surviving scientific institutions, the chief botanical garden and the host of many schools and centres studying the natural sciences. It was established in 1640 as the Royal Garden through the tireless labour of the physician Guy de La Brosse (1586–1641). The present article focuses on La Brosse's views of advancement of plant alchemy as the source
-
Mendel's closet: genetics, eugenics and the exceptions of sex in Edwardian Britain Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-10-25 Ross Brooks
This article situates formative Mendelian and chromosomal precepts and rhetoric as an integral part of ‘reproductive’ physiology and the broader sexological terrain in Edwardian Britain. Alongside the discovery of ‘internal secretions’ (hormones), the discovery of the sex chromosomes, made around the same time as the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of heredity at the turn of the twentieth century, transformed
-
R. A. Fisher on J. A. Cobb's The problem of the sex-ratio Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-10-25 Andy Gardner
The logic of the rarer-sex effect, concerning how natural selection acts to balance the sex ratio among newborns, was long supposed to have originated with Ronald Aylmer Fisher in his 1930 book The genetical theory of natural selection. However, the principle is now understood to have originated with John Austin Cobb in his 1914 paper ‘The problem of the sex-ratio’. Fisher did not provide a citation
-
Classification, Observational Practice, and Henry Seebohm’s The Birds of the Japanese Empire in Late-Victorian Britain Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-10-18 Nathan Bossoh
In the latter months of 1890 the ornithologist Henry Seebohm (1832–1895) published his transnationally well-received The birds of the Japanese Empire. However, although travelling widely to places such as Greece, South Africa and Siberia, Seebohm never visited Japan. Instead, his knowledge of Japanese birds was gathered through second-hand methods including knowledge and network building, specimen
-
‘Tarzan of the sciences’: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the communication jungle, CA 1970 Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Jenny Beckman
In this paper, I discuss how the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences attempted to transform itself from an unofficial government agency into what might be called a scientific public relations organization in the years around 1970. On an organizational level, this transformation manifested in the establishment of new positions at the Academy: an international secretary was hired in 1970 and an information
-
Decolonizing Veterinary History: On the benefits of telling the story of Dr Jotello Soga, the first South African veterinarian Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-10-04 Diana K. Davis
Although nearly erased from history, the first formally trained South African veterinarian was the little-known Dr Jotello Festiri Soga (1865–1906), son of the Xhosa Reverend Tiyo Soga and his Scottish wife. By detailing Soga's remarkable trajectory, this paper helps to decolonize the history of veterinary medicine, long dominated by the ‘great deeds’ of a succession of white men, and only recently
-
2022 Wilkins–Bernal–Medawar Lecture Remaking Ourselves: Technologies of Flesh and the Futures of Selfhood Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-09-27 Philip Ball
Our biotechnologies have entered uncharted territory. The facility for precision editing of the human genome raises the prospect of systematic, ‘post-Darwinian’ control of inheritance. Stem cells can be used to make embryo-like structures that were never fertilized eggs and which might or might not recapitulate normal embryonic development. Neural ‘organoids’ grown in a dish force us to ask what are
-
Harvesting Underground: (re)generative theories and vegetal analogies in the early modern debate on mineral ores (I) Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-09-13 Francesco Luzzini
The early modern use of vegetal terms to explain the origin and growth of ores was widespread in mining industry, alchemy, and natural philosophy. In the writings of authors from many different backgrounds, mineral veins were often described as ‘trees’ which moved upwards, bore fruits, and underwent a life cycle. Accordingly, the existence in ores of ‘seeds’ (and, therefore, of a (re)generative power)
-
The ‘seductive scientist’: the emergence of a new persona centred on virility and joy in twentieth-century scientific memoirs Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Annelie Drakman
This text investigates the twentieth-century scientific memoir genre from the perspective of two of its perhaps most influential contributors, the American Nobel laureates Richard Feynman and James Watson, by using theoretical tools from masculinity studies and the studies of scientific personae. The term ‘the seductive scientist’ is proposed to describe the main innovation to scientific personae that
-
The making of a naturalist in Manchuria: Arthur de Carle Sowerby, 1885–1922 Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-08-02 Christine Y. L. Luk
This article examines the professional identity-building of Arthur de Carle Sowerby (1885–1954), a China-born explorer of Anglo descent who was a versatile hunter-sportsman aspiring to become a naturalist. Existing work on Sowerby acknowledges his role as the founder of the China Journal of Science and Arts and as president of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in Shanghai; yet his
-
Redhead, Paroissien, Parish & Co.: British Field Science in early Independent Río de la Plata Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-06-28 Miguel de Asúa
This article explores the activities of those British travellers and settlers who carried out open field research in the Andean northwest of Río de la Plata during the 1820s. The focus is set upon Doctor Joseph Redhead, who became a regional expert on questions of mountain altitudes and natural portents such as giant fossil bones and large masses of native iron. Redhead was at the centre of a network
-
Making science for the Portuguese Empire: The Royal Maritime, Military and Geographic Society (1798–1809) Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-06-28 Carlos Moura Martins, Fernando B. Figueiredo
The Sociedade Real Marítima, Militar e Geográfica (Royal Maritime, Military and Geographic Society) was a scientific institution founded in Portugal by the Minister of the Navy, Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, in the late eighteenth century. Its advent was contemporary with the rise of hydrographic institutes in several European maritime powers. However, the Royal Maritime, Military and Geographic Society
-
The campfire stories of Russell Marker, a pioneer of chemistry Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-05-31 Lajos Kovács
The maverick American chemist Russell Earl Marker (1902–1995) is known for his studies on the fragmentation of organic mercury compounds, establishing the concept of the octane number, investigating the rearrangements of hydrocarbons and exploring the relationship between optical rotation and the configuration of organic compounds. His greatest achievement, however, is the elaboration of seminal isolation
-
Eclipsed by history: underrecognized contributions to early British solar eclipse expeditions Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-05-24 Joel Beckles, Deborah A. Kent
Solar eclipse expeditions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to new scientific knowledge that is often credited to prominent male scientists such as Einstein and Eddington. Results generated by named individuals nonetheless depended on the collective effort of scientific administrators, government functionaries, manual labourers, domestic assistants, naval crew members and others.
-
The historical power of the natural science collection of Dominik Bilimek at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU) Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-04-12 Petra Lukeneder, Irene Liebhart, Franz Ottner, Anika Mikes, Petra Heinz, Radek Polách
The scientific world of the nineteenth century was shaped by far-reaching discoveries, expeditions, travel and collection activities as well as by the development of extensive natural scientific social networking. During the 1840s, Dominik Bilimek (1813–1884) arose as a key personality in European natural sciences, with a significant impact on the biological, geoscientific and even archaeological communities
-
Alfred Russel Wallace's Unrealized Last Book: Insights from the Plan for Darwin and Wallace Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-04-05 James T. Costa, George Beccaloni
In honour of the two hundredth birthday of naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) we present a transcription and analysis of the plan for Wallace's unrealized final book. Recently come to light, Darwin and Wallace was to have been a volume of eight chapters published by the well-known London publishing house of John Murray in the spring of 1915, a project derailed by Wallace's death at the age
-
Margaret Bryan: Newly Discovered Biographical Information about the Author of A Compendious System of Astronomy (1797) Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Gregory S. Girolami
This paper gives the results of a successful search to uncover new biographical details about Margaret Bryan, the English author of several textbooks intended to educate young women: A compendious system of astronomy (editions in 1797, 1799 and 1805), Lectures on natural philosophy (1806) and Astronomical and geographical class book for schools (1815). Among the hitherto unknown information collected
-
Did Christiaan Huygens need glasses? A study of Huygens' telescope equations and tables Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-03-01 Alexander G. M. Pietrow
In the later stages of his life, Christiaan Huygens semi-empirically derived a set of relations between the objective focus and diameter, the eyepiece focus, and the magnification that resulted from combining the two lenses. These relations were used by him and his brother to build what he believed were optimized telescopes. When comparing these equations to the ones derived from modern optical principles
-
Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton and the Royal Society: three unnoticed letters at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Thomas Matthew Vozar
This article brings attention to three manuscript letters by Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton in the Darmstaedter collection at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, two of which are published here for the first time. Of principal interest is a 1678 letter from Hooke to Newton, which concerns the controversy with Anthony Lucas over Newton's prism experiments and Hooke's disinclination ‘to print transactions’
-
The origins and development of free-electron lasers in the UK Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Elaine A. Seddon, Michael W. Poole
This review article covers close to 45 years of free-electron laser (FEL) activity in the UK from the mid 1970s until 2022. Technical details of the projects are given together with personal insights provided by those who worked on specific projects. Both funded and unfunded projects are included to highlight the breadth of ideas generated over the years; this approach also clearly reveals the evolution
-
The ‘system of the world’ and the scientific culture of early modern France Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Oded Rabinovitch
Historians have long debated the origins of modern science in early modern Europe. Recently, however, scholars pointed to our need to understand how the ‘new philosophy’ became a sustained movement, which did not dissipate over the course of a few generations, as had previous scientific renaissances in other civilizations. This article suggests that the mediations of the printed book allowed a broader
-
The ‘system of the world’ and the scientific culture of early modern France Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Oded Rabinovitch
Historians have long debated the origins of modern science in early modern Europe. Recently, however, scholars pointed to our need to understand how the ‘new philosophy’ became a sustained movement, which did not dissipate over the course of a few generations, as had previous scientific renaissances in other civilizations. This article suggests that the mediations of the printed book allowed a broader
-
The cells of Robert Hooke: pores, fibres, diaphragms and the cell theory that wasn't Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-01-04 Winfried S. Peters
The early microscopist Robert Hooke (1653–1703) is commonly credited with the discovery and naming of biological cells in the course of his studies of plant tissues. Surprisingly, the theoretical context of this apparent discovery is rarely evaluated when Hooke's contribution to the development of modern biology is discussed. Hooke worked within the conceptual framework of the developing fibre doctrine
-
The cells of Robert Hooke: pores, fibres, diaphragms and the cell theory that wasn't Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2023-01-04 Winfried S. Peters
The early microscopist Robert Hooke (1653–1703) is commonly credited with the discovery and naming of biological cells in the course of his studies of plant tissues. Surprisingly, the theoretical context of this apparent discovery is rarely evaluated when Hooke's contribution to the development of modern biology is discussed. Hooke worked within the conceptual framework of the developing fibre doctrine
-
A scientific visit to the USSR in 1963 Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-12-07 Chris Garrett
In 1963, at the height of the Cold War, R. W. Stewart visited the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Moscow for three months, including a side trip to a field station on the River Don. The visit followed on from discussions at scientific meetings on the topic of turbulence in fluid flows. Major theoretical advances had been made in the USSR, while Stewart's group in Canada had conducted a key observational
-
A Scientific Visit to the USSR in 1963 Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-12-07 Chris Garrett
In 1963, at the height of the Cold War, R. W. Stewart visited the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Moscow for three months, including a side trip to a field station on the River Don. The visit followed on from discussions at scientific meetings on the topic of turbulence in fluid flows. Major theoretical advances had been made in the USSR, while Stewart's group in Canada had conducted a key observational
-
A geologist and an Egyptologist in conversation: Sir Charles Lyell and Sir John Gardner Wilkinson Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-11-30 Robert Frost
The history of archaeology, and of Egyptology, has traditionally been written as a linear narrative of progress, with narrow-minded amateurs—the antiquaries—giving way to professional archaeologists. For some, Joseph Hekekyan's excavations (co-directed by Leonard Horner) at Memphis and Heliopolis in the 1850s have been seen as a turning point, when the geological principle of stratigraphy was applied
-
A geologist and an Egyptologist in conversation: Sir Charles Lyell and Sir John Gardner Wilkinson Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-11-30 Robert Frost
The history of archaeology, and of Egyptology, has traditionally been written as a linear narrative of progress, with narrow-minded amateurs—the antiquaries—giving way to professional archaeologists. For some, Joseph Hekekyan's excavations (co-directed by Leonard Horner) at Memphis and Heliopolis in the 1850s have been seen as a turning point, when the geological principle of stratigraphy was applied
-
‘The correct name for the breadfruit’: on interdisciplinarity and the artist Sydney Parkinson's contested contributions to the botanical sciences Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-11-16 Russell Fielding
Breadfruit is a tropical fruit-bearing tree native to Oceania and a staple food in the diets of many Pacific Islander communities. During the so-called Age of Discovery, several European voyages returned from the Pacific with descriptions of the region's flora, including breadfruit. Since that time, scientists have sometimes struggled to agree upon an adequate acknowledgement of those early descriptions
-
‘The correct name for the breadfruit’: on interdisciplinarity and the artist Sydney Parkinson's contested contributions to the botanical sciences Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-11-16 Russell Fielding
Breadfruit is a tropical fruit-bearing tree native to Oceania and a staple food in the diets of many Pacific Islander communities. During the so-called Age of Discovery, several European voyages returned from the Pacific with descriptions of the region's flora, including breadfruit. Since that time, scientists have sometimes struggled to agree upon an adequate acknowledgement of those early descriptions
-
Nehemiah Grew, the illustrator Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-10-26 Pamela Mackenzie
The literature on seventeenth-century Royal Society member Nehemiah Grew's artistic production has been sparse and tentative. Although his publication record includes five illustrated books, some of which feature quite elaborate illustrative programmes, it has been challenging to credit any of this visual production directly to the books’ author. In this article, I aim to both contribute to the growing
-
Nehemiah Grew, the illustrator Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-10-26 Pamela Mackenzie
The literature on seventeenth-century Royal Society member Nehemiah Grew's artistic production has been sparse and tentative. Although his publication record includes five illustrated books, some of which feature quite elaborate illustrative programmes, it has been challenging to credit any of this visual production directly to the books’ author. In this article, I aim to both contribute to the growing
-
Lady Gwillim and the birds of Madras Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-09-28 Victoria Dickenson
In 1924 Casey Wood, founder of the Blacker Wood Library at McGill University in Montreal, acquired a large portfolio of paintings of Indian birds from an antiquarian dealer in London, England. In addition to 121 watercolours of birds, the portfolio contained a dozen botanical sketches and 31 watercolours of Indian fish. After further research, Wood concluded that the birds had been painted by Lady
-
Patrick Matthew's synthesis of catastrophism and transformism Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Joachim L. Dagg, J. F. Derry
Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) regarded natural selection as a force of conformity. Competition between species kept them from dysmorphic chaos. Catastrophes exterminated many species that would otherwise compete. The absence of this competitive natural selection allowed the remnants to ramify (their lineages to split). Matthew thus united elements of catastrophism and transformism in a way opposite to
-
Patrick Matthew's synthesis of catastrophism and transformism Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Joachim L. Dagg, J. F. Derry
Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) regarded natural selection as a force of conformity. Competition between species kept them from dysmorphic chaos. Catastrophes exterminated many species that would otherwise compete. The absence of this competitive natural selection allowed the remnants to ramify (their lineages to split). Matthew thus united elements of catastrophism and transformism in a way opposite to
-
How to read ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Chloe Silverman
Reading the Mind in the Eyes is a psychometric test first published by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues in 1997 and revised in 2001. It was designed to measure subjects' ‘mentalizing’ ability, or their capacity to attribute cognitive and emotional states to others. Although originally developed and used for autistic adults, this instrument has proven remarkably durable in the succeeding two decades
-
Maritime Crossroads: the Knowledge Pursuits of María de Betancourt (Tenerife, 1758–1824) and Joana de Vigo (Menorca, 1779–1855) Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-08-17 Mónica Bolufer, Elena Serrano
This article explores the biographies of two gentlewomen, María de Betancourt (1758–1824) and Joana de Vigo (1779–1855), who lived respectively in Tenerife and Menorca, two crucial nodes in the scientific, commercial and military global networks of the late eighteenth century. Some of their scientific and literary contributions are mapped, paying particular attention to how they became active in contemporaneous
-
Emigration or return? International mobility and Theodore von Kármán's Chinese students and associates Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Zhang Zhihui
This paper traces the experiences of about a dozen Chinese students/scientists who studied with the aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán at the California Institute of Technology in the 1930s and 1940s. This special group provides an early instance of a situation that has attracted significant scholarly attention since the 1960s—educational migration of highly talented individuals and the difficult choices
-
Enlightened Female Networks: Gendered Ways of Producing Knowledge (1720–1830) Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-08-03 Anna Maerker, Elena Serrano, Simon Werrett
This special issue investigates women's scientific networks in Europe roughly between 1720 and 1830, an interesting period from a gender point of view. The articles analyse the role that networks played in enabling, shaping and circumscribing women in their intellectual pursuits, social aspirations and ideals. They also focus on the nature of the members' relationships, how women negotiated their scientific
-
From philanthropy to business: the economics of Royal Society journal publishing in the twentieth century Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-08-03 Aileen Fyfe
Scientific journal publishing has become a lucrative enterprise, for commercial firms and (some) society publishers alike; but it was not always thus. The Royal Society is the publisher of the world's longest-running scientific journal, and for most of the history of the Philosophical Transactions, its publication was a severe drain on the Society's finances. This paper uses the rich archives of the
-
From philanthropy to business: the economics of Royal Society journal publishing in the twentieth century Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-08-03 Aileen Fyfe
Scientific journal publishing has become a lucrative enterprise, for commercial firms and (some) society publishers alike; but it was not always thus. The Royal Society is the publisher of the world's longest-running scientific journal, and for most of the history of the Philosophical Transactions, its publication was a severe drain on the Society's finances. This paper uses the rich archives of the
-
Madame Lavoisier and the others: women in Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier's network (1771–1836) Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Francesca Antonelli
Known as a translator and illustrator of chemical texts, Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier (1758–1836) has been often represented as the associate of male savants and especially of her husband, the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier. This article explores her biography from a different angle and focuses on her trajectories as a secrétaire; namely, someone whose main charge was to store and exchange
-
Queen Charlotte's Scientific Collections and Natural History Networks Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-07-06 Mascha Hansen
In 1781, the first issue of The Lady's Poetical Magazine lauded Queen Charlotte (1744–1818) for her role in furthering the sciences, and indeed, to give but one example, the queen's interest in the geological researches of her reader, Jean André de Luc (1727–1817), induced him to write a treatise on his system for her perusal. Besides assembling a significant library containing volumes on all kinds
-
Drawing muscles with diagrams: how a novel dissection cut inspired Nicolaus Steno's mathematical myology (1667) Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Nuno Castel-Branco, Troels Kardel
In 1667, twenty years before Isaac Newton published his mathematization of physics, and more than ten years before the publication of Giovanni Borelli's De motu animalium, the Danish anatomist Nicolaus Steno published an entirely new geometrical theory of muscle motion in the book Elementorum myologiæ specimen. Historians of science have studied this book in recent decades, but the recent rediscovery
-
Localizing Western expertise: İhsan Doğramaci, Ş. Raşit Hatipoğlu, and the quest for scientific development in modern Turkey Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Ali Erken
This article discusses the dynamics between Western experts and local technocrats in Turkey in their quest for scientific development in the first decades of modern Turkey. Based on primary archival sources, it examines the work of İhsan Doğramacı (d. 2010) and Ş. Raşit Hatipoğlu (d. 1973), who led various projects in the fields of medical and agricultural development. İhsan Doğramacı, a prominent
-
Bones of contention: Johann Heinrich Merck's palaeontological encounters with academic scholars and professional printmakers Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Grażyna Jurkowlaniec
Printed images played a role in the strategies of savant amateurs of the Enlightenment in consolidating their scientific networks, traced here through the case study of Johann Heinrich Merck. Convinced of the importance of his palaeontological findings, Merck developed an impressive network from Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Samuel Thomas Sömmerring to Petrus Camper and Joseph Banks. Academic celebrities
-
Feminist networks beyond the science wars: the ‘female brain’ in the 1790s and the 1990s Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-06-15 Paola Govoni
This paper explores female networking practices by comparing cases two centuries apart, an experiment made possible by a history of science renewed by a mutually enriching dialogue with science, technology and society studies (STS). The first part analyses the networking strategies of Clotilde Tambroni (1758–1817), a scholar who managed a university career in Bologna under the shadow of the Napoleonic
-
Les femmes économistes: the place of women in the physiocratic community Notes Rec. Royal Soc. J. History of Sci. (IF 0.88) Pub Date : 2022-06-08 Loïc Charles, Christine Théré
This article discusses the participation of women in the development of eighteenth-century French political economy and, more specifically, their role in the network of a prominent group of French economic authors of this period, known as the physiocrats. Our argument is that women played a significant, if seldom visible, role in the creation and dissemination of the ‘new science’ of physiocratic political