On April 8, 1966, 4,808 barrels—208.2 L each—were buried at Savannah River nuclear cemetery in Aiken, South Carolina. They contained about 1,100 tons of radioactive contaminated soil and vegetation from Palomares, a village on the South Coast of Spain. Earlier that year, about 9 kg of plutonium had been scattered over Palomares due to a U.S. Air Force accident involving four nuclear bombs. In this

This paper is a preliminary study focused on the astronomical manuscript Marcianus latinus VIII.31 (2614) and its socio‐historical context of use and production, the Venetian colony of Crete in the 15th century. It is a relevant source for the study of scientific interactions in colonial, multilinguistic, and interreligious contexts in the Eastern Mediterranean for at least two reasons: (a) it contains

This paper asks how a scientific object functions in a diplomatic context by examining the distribution of radioisotopes by the United States to Japan in 1950. In particular, it aims to shed light on some material dimensions of the diplomatic roles that a scientific object can play. With diplomacy as its main focus, this study centers on those who received the radioisotopes (Japanese scientists) as

In this article, we document how, in the public arena, British readers of the first edition of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687) tried to make sense of the relation between gravity, matter, and divine and natural causation—an issue on which Newton had remained entirely silent in the first edition of the Principia. We show that readers attached new meanings to the Principia

Contemporary scholarship concerning science diplomacy is increasingly taking a historical approach. In our introduction to this special issue, we argue that this approach promises insight into science diplomacy because of the tools historians of science bring to their work. In particular, we observe that not only are historians of science currently poised to chart the diplomatic aspects involved in

This paper explores the construction of scientists' expertise on international affairs through a study of the rhetoric of U.S. atomic scientists during public and policy‐making debates on the international control of atomic energy between 1945 and 1947. It explores the claims scientists made about the nature of their expertise on issues of diplomacy and international relations and how their expertise

As COVID‐19 drags on and new vaccines promise widespread immunity, the world's attention has turned to predicting how the present pandemic will end. How do societies know when an epidemic is over and normal life can resume? What criteria and markers indicate such an end? Who has the insight, authority, and credibility to decipher these signs? Detailed research on past epidemics has demonstrated that

In the following article,1 the authors would like to add UID/HIS/00286/2019 as a funder to their article in the Funding information section. The authors apologize for any inconvenience caused.

In the following article,1 the authors would like to add UID/HIS/00286/2013 as a funder to their article in the Funding information section. The authors apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Due to a production failure, errors were introduced in the article “Giovan Battista Della Porta and Francis Bacon on the creative power of experimentation” in Centaurus Volume 62 Issue 3 (2020). The online version of the article has been corrected and can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1600-0498.12341.” We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Our aim is to shed light on the relationships between research, knowledge, and policy in the case of goitre and the use of iodine as a preventive measure against it in Norway from the 1850s onward. Goitre was previously widespread in certain areas of Norway, but disappeared around 1950. After many decades of silence about goitre and iodine, an expert report in 2016 argued that action should be taken

After a deadly 1958 nuclear reactor accident in Vinča, Yugoslavia, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) engaged in intensive nuclear diplomacy to assemble a major international scientific experiment on radiation dosimetry at the accident site. The 1960 Vinča Dosimetry Experiment made history as the first multinational “big science” project in this field. It was also a significant political

Bill Jenkins masterfully explores a brilliant era for science in Scotland, the first decades of the 19th century, in which Edinburgh received and participated in continental debates (led by the likes of Cuvier, Von Baer, Lamarck, and Geoffroy) on the formation and history of the Earth and, correlatively, on the possible history of life on the planet. The atmosphere of religious openness encouraged

After the outbreak of the Pacific War, the United States and the United Kingdom both set up cultural assistance programs to China in order to aid the fight against Japan in Asia and to shape the postwar world according to their interests. From 1942 to 1946, the United States sent 30 experts in science, technology, medicine, and public health to China. Among them was George Cressey, a geographer of

This article addresses the inter‐imperial collaboration in the social sciences promoted by the Commission for Technical Cooperation in Africa South of Sahara (CCTA) and its advisory board, the Scientific Council for Africa South of the Sahara (CSA), at the intersection of diplomatic history and the history of science during late colonialism. It is our purpose to re‐evaluate how the common aim of reinvigorating

This paper evaluates Kepler's 1618–1621 Epitome of Copernican Astronomy in light of two contextual events: the 1616 Decree of the Index banning Copernican books (including Volume 1 of Kepler's Epitome in 1619) and the start of the Thirty Years' War in 1618. Kepler's Epitome seems to defy traditional genre expectations: it takes the form of a textbook, and yet (especially in later volumes) it is more

This article examines the attempt by the Kingdom of Morocco—a country of pivotal geopolitical importance in the late 1970s and early 1980s—to secure a research reactor. It finds that by treating that reactor as a diplomatic object, we can observe the different diplomatic frameworks in which that object was conceived of, contextualized, and negotiated. The historical emergence of these frameworks occurred

Yves Simonin, a rather obscure professor of hydrography in Bayonne, submitted five scientific papers to the Paris Academy of Sciences between 1738 and 1740, which only survive in the original manuscript versions. The topics Simonin deals with in these texts are essentially three: the rectification of navigation charts of the Southern Sea, the shape of the Earth, and the heliocentric theory. Far from

History of science's spatial turn has focused on the horizontal dimension, leaving the role of the vertical mostly unexplored as both a condition and object of scientific knowledge production. This special issue seeks to contribute to a burgeoning discussion on the role of verticality in modern sciences, building upon a wider interdisciplinary debate about the importance of the vertical and the volumetric

The insight that scientific theories are “practice‐laden” has animated scholarship in the history of science for nearly three decades. This article examines a style of geographical thought that was, I argue, movement‐laden. The thought‐style in question has been described as a “vertical consciousness that engulfed science in the early nineteenth century,” and is closely associated with the geographical

Like other aspiring geologists in the 1830s, Darwin focused heavily on the rising and falling of the earth's crust. I use his time in the Andes to underscore the importance he placed on larger questions of vertical movement, which mountains helped to solidify in his mind. His most impressive ramblings occurred in 1835 on two high passes in the Andes. Prior to his upland journey, he was well prepared

The role of verticality in 19th‐ and 20th‐century fields of knowledge‐making has received increased attention among historians of science. Correspondingly, cultural historians have explored the growing importance of a bird's eye view in popular culture throughout the 1800s. The elevated positions created in science and public discourse have both contributed to a modern ability to see the bigger picture

This paper examines the practices and epistemic dimensions relating to subterranean space that led to a new three‐dimensional understanding of the terrain, its scientific investigation, and its political acquisition as territory. Although caves had been explored by upright descent since the 18th century, improved techniques for surveying, mapping, and exploring deep shafts established speleology (“cave

In 1942, American Nobel Prize‐winning physicist Arthur Compton pointed out that, “Because in this field of cosmic ray studies certain unique advantages are given by their geographical position, this field of physics has been especially emphasized in South America.” This paper seeks to interrogate the making of Latin America's uniqueness with respect to cosmic‐ray research through an analysis that considers

This paper is concerned with the way in which scientists speak—in extended life‐story interviews recorded recently—about the role of verticality (understood here as an orientation in space: up/down rather than across) in past scientific work. In particular, I explore several episodes of scientific work in which (the scientists involved tell us) verticality emerged unexpectedly as an important aspect

Between 1820 and 1850, the Dutch government sent several scientists to the Netherlands Indies as part of the Natuurkundige Commissie (Natural History Committee). One of these was naturalist Eltio Alegondus Forsten (1811–1843), who was sent on a collecting mission to Celebes (Sulawesi). This paper explores the ways in which Forsten was in a relationship of mutual interdependence with four spheres of

In May 1971, the Czechoslovak capital hosted an international conference on the environment that brought together high‐ranking government officials and scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain. The idea to organize such an event reflected Czechoslovakia's interest in environmental planning and was one of the main outcomes of the country's science diplomacy in the field of global environmentalism

This article considers a relatively unknown episode in the early Cold War that involved the US and Brazil, as well as a number of other countries. From 1950, the leading figure in Brazil's nuclear effort, Admiral Álvaro Alberto, established amicable connections with the representatives of other nations in order to make it possible for Brazil to develop an atomic energy complex. The U.S. reaction to

As technologies of ocean exploitation emerged during the late 1960s, science policy and diplomacy were formed in response to anticipated capabilities that did not match the realities of extracting deep‐sea minerals and of resource exploitation in the deep ocean at the time. Promoters of ocean exploitation in the late 1960s envisaged wonders such as rare mineral extraction and the stationing of divers

The year 1968 is universally considered a watershed in history, as the world was experiencing an accelerated growth of anti‐establishment protests that would have long‐lasting impacts on the cultural, social, and political spheres of human life. On September 26, amid social and political unrest across the globe, 62 physicists gathered in Geneva to found the European Physical Society. Among these were

The first of the transfermium elements—those elements with an atomic number greater than 100—were discovered in the 1950s, largely by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) in California and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia. After each new element was claimed to have been discovered by one lab, the claim was contested by the other. The International Union of Pure and

This special issue brings to the attention of the scholarly community some of the common features and some of the subtle, but important, differences between Francis Bacon's and Giovan Battista Della Porta's ways of dealing with the reading, selecting, enacting, and recording of recipes. Focusing on questions of genre, intellectual and material context, strategies of research, and strategies of performing

The relationship between Francis Bacon's Sylva sylvarum and Giovan Battista Della Porta's Magia naturalis has previously been discussed in terms of sources and borrowings in the literature. More recently, it has been suggested that one can read these two works as belonging to a common genre: as collections of recipes or books of secrets. Taking this as a framework, in this paper I address another type

In 1622, Francis Bacon published his Historia naturalis et experimentalis. Many of the features of Bacon's natural and experimental histories were entirely new. This paper studies this literary form as a new epistemic genre. In particular, it analyzes its origin and evolution in Bacon's work, focusing on how its basic template and features were influenced by his specific epistemic requirements. It

This article is a case study of how geographical knowledge was practiced in China before the age of print. The Shazhou tujing, or Patterned Guidelines of Shazhou, represents the earliest material evidence of “patterned guidelines” (tujing), a geographical genre which is believed to have paved the way to “local gazetteers” (difang zhi), the most important genre for our knowledge of the history and geography

A frequently recounted episode in early modern medicine concerns the physician Helvetius's introduction of ipecacuanha to French medical practice after curing Louis XIV's son of dysentery using this medicinal drug. To this day, the Helvetius story remains riven with contradictions, obscurity, and confusion, even down to the nature of the drug involved. This article, challenging histories of “information”

This paper investigates the emergence, in the second part of the 17th century, of a new body of experimental knowledge dealing with the chemical transformations of water taking place in plants. We call this body of experimental knowledge a “chemical history of vegetation.” We show that this chemical natural history originated, in terms of recipes and methods of investigation, in the works of Francis

The history of climate research in the 20th century has been characterised by a crucial shift from a geography‐oriented, two‐dimensional approach towards a physics‐based, three‐dimensional concept of climate. In the 1930s, the introduction of new technology, such as radiosondes, enabled climatologists to investigate the high atmosphere, which had previously been out of reach. This “conquest of the

In the 1960s and 1970s, scuba technology, underwater cameras, and documentarians revealed a long‐hidden underwater world to the public. At this time oceanographic science was growing exponentially. Historians of the marine sciences have focused their studies of the period on institutional and military partnerships, and on the scientist‐administrators who shaped oceanographic research institutions (such

In the decades after World War I, the development of aviation and meteorology became increasingly entangled, with the result that meteorology became a necessary part of the epistemic infrastructure of routine aviation. This paper explores the complex re‐spatialisation of meteorological practice that occurred as the New Zealand Meteorological Service (NZMS) transformed its data collection, interpretation

On March 30, 2020, UNESCO hosted a global ministerial dialogue on scientific cooperation in the face of COVID‐19. By that time, WHO had called COVID‐19 a pandemic, cases in Europe and the USA were skyrocketing, and stock markets were crashing. The first virtual meeting of its kind was clearly a success, despite the unfamiliar tools (such as the “mute” function), with 77 science ministers and several

This spotlight issue encourages reflection on the current COVID‐19 pandemic, not simply through comparisons with previous epidemics, but also by illustrating that epidemics deserve study within their broader cultural, political, scientific, and geographic contexts. Epidemics are not solely a function of pathogens; they are also a function of how society is structured, how political power is wielded

The notion of “emerging infectious diseases” (EID) as a category of global health concerns was created in the 1990s to acknowledge that, although public health interventions, vaccines, and antibiotics since the late 19th century had given wealthier parts of the world control over most infectious diseases, the experience of Ebola and HIV/AIDS showed that new human diseases could still arise. “Emerging

The epidemic of COVID‐19 appears to be reshaping the world, separating before and after, present and past. Its perceived novelty raises the question of what role the past might play in the present epidemic and in responses to it. Taking the view that the past has not passed, but is present in is material and immaterial remains, and continuously emerging from these, we argue that it should not be studied

This paper looks at the role of state and society in the history of epidemic governance in China for an appreciation of the way China manages the current COVID‐19 epidemic.

This brief survey article examines the strategies to cope with plague in early modern Italy, often hailed at the time and by historians as the country that provided the model for public health policies in other parts of Europe and even formed the basis for policies in subsequent centuries. The study is organised according to three mains themes that are familiar today, containment, mitigation, quarantine

Publication of population‐level data can help balance a government's need for authority with individual residents' practical need for autonomy, even during the chaos and urgency of an epidemic. Starting in the early 16th century, efforts to track the spread of epidemic plague across England and Wales included royal orders to compile weekly, parish‐by‐parish mortality reports. The City of London devised

We are currently experiencing one of the most disruptive pandemics in modern history. The outbreak of COVID‐19 that was first recorded in Wuhan, China and quickly spread across the globe has resulted in nearly 5 million confirmed cases to date and more than 300,000 deaths. Where we stand now, it is still uncertain how many it will infect or kill worldwide, how long it will continue, and when—if ever—life

Epidemic diseases are defined by excess. They are dramatic and they attract attention. Endemic diseases, on the other hand, are regarded as “normal” and tend to be neglected. Yet it is clear that this contrast can entail inaccurate impressions of risk, as well as disparities in the imperative to action. This paper looks at two examples, one from the early modern period and the other from the 19th century

The current SARS‐CoV‐2 crisis raises questions about the challenges faced by nation states and international organisations in offering a coordinated international response to the pandemic, and reveals the great vulnerability of European countries, which are implementing lockdown measures and imposing restrictions on international travel, for the most part on a unilateral basis. Such measures run counter

This article compares the management of COVID‐19 in different Asian states—China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam—after their reactions to the SARS crisis in 2003. It uses animal metaphors and the concept of sentinel territory to describe the way these states have prepared for the next pandemic crisis in a mix of competition and collaboration that produces solidarity.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has raised questions about what efforts were made across the world to prepare governments and healthcare systems for such an event. This spotlight article looks at developments made in “pre‐pandemic preparedness planning” following a number of outbreaks of influenza type A virus in 1997. At that time, a specific avian influenza subtype, referred to as A(H5N1), wreaked havoc among

This piece seeks to elucidate how and why Latin America is neither anecdotal nor peripheral to pandemic preoccupations—nor to larger health and disease narratives—past and present. First, it examines the world's proportionately most destructive pandemic as coterminous with the rise of imperialism. Next, it traces how the impetus for international health cooperation based on regional crises predated

Amid the current COVID‐19 crisis, everyone has been called upon to offer assistance. What can historians contribute? One obvious approach is to draw on our knowledge of the history of epidemics and proclaim the lessons of history. But does history offer clear lessons? To make their expertise relevant, some historians assert that there are enduring patterns in how societies respond to all epidemics

In the present paper, I present and discuss some new information about the life of Paul Wittich from Wrocław, Poland (formerly Breslau, Germany), an elusive mathematician and astronomer of the late 16th century. Wittich seems to have played a significant role in the emergence of two important, though short‐lived, developments of late 16th‐century science: the so‐called prosthaphaeresis calculating

This is a study of Bernardino Ramazzini's De fontium mutinensium (1691) as an artefact that reveals how disparate historiographical approaches were shaped by the culture of the new science, when novel investigative practices and a new instrument‐mediated vision transformed the historical imagination in a similar way, creating a common 17th‐century experience of history. In England, De fontium was valued

In this paper, I explain Francis Bacon's use of plants as philosophical instruments in the context of his Historia vitae et mortis. My main claim is that Bacon experimented with plants in order to obtain knowledge about the hidden processes of nature, knowledge that could be transferred to the human case and used for the prolongation of life. Bacon's experiments were based on Giambattista della Porta's

In this paper, I suggest that research results from the history and philosophy of modern science provide a valuable methodological contribution for investigating early modern experimental philosophy and employ them to reassess the contribution of Giovan Battista Della Porta to its development. In modern science, the production of experimental knowledge is dependent on a complex array of communication

This paper explores the editorial influence of Joseph Banks on the Philosophical Transactions—still, at the time of his accession to the Presidency of the Royal Society in 1778, the most prestigious scientific periodical published in English. In particular, it examines how Banks forged, and wielded, personal influence over what went into the Transactions. Nominally, at least, the periodical was under

In 1798, astronomer Franz Xaver von Zach in Gotha and publisher Friedrich Justin Bertuch in Weimar launched the first astronomical‐geographical journal, Allgemeine geographische Ephemeriden (AGE). The journal was intended to provide professionals and interested lay readership with high‐quality maps, information about new discoveries, and statistical data. The periodical was shaped by Zach's expertise