How did vitamins come to be called after letters of the alphabet? National Geographic's Erin Blakemore looks at the history and discovery of these vital dietary components, and why vitamin K bucks the naming trend.
Twenty years ago I wrote about how there was a plan to save photographic glass plates from #observatories (in the past they were frequently thrown out but do have useful data in them). One part of that story, the #DASCH project, is now complete. #astronomy#sciencehistory#science
New technologies can redefine the role of a region.
Here, in 1906, a part of the eastern reaches of Canada, and look at Nova Scotia, all those submarine cables were ushering a growing age of communication, and would underpin the connected age we live in now.
#OnThisDay, 7 Jan 1939, French physicist Marguerite Perey discovers element 87, which she later names francium. It was the last element to be discovered naturally.
Perey was a student of Marie Curie, and was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize but never received it.
Women in the History of Science brings together primary sources that highlight women’s involvement in scientific knowledge production around the world. Drawing on texts, images and objects, each primary source is accompanied by an explanatory text, questions to prompt discussion, and a bibliography to aid further research.
context: biological specimens of plants, insects, birds, skeletons, etc., were crucial to early western science. those early scientists were on an encyclopedic mission (wanting to know about all kinds of stuff from all over the world) & very few people got to travel, so receiving a specimen of, like, an ostrich egg from very far away could be a huge deal for an early scientist in england.
these specimens were often pulled together into collections owned by wealthy collectors, and many of these private collections formed the starting collections of large national institutions that are for-the-most-part still around, and still educating millions of people...like the british museum.
in fact, if you ever went to a museum of natural history & saw biological specimens, you've been a part of this history (in a small way).
herbaria were important places for the development of early botanical knowledge. i've actually been to an herbarium! at duke university, of all places. it was a wonderful place that smelled like tea, where thousands of dried plant samples were pressed between pages of huge books.
anyway, back when western scientists were developing taxonomies & basic understandings of plant biology (like the various parts of plants & their functions), herbaria were really important.
yea, it might suck to try & understand what's going on with a flattened, dried, little patch of some grass, but at least you could look at the actual plant & not just a drawing.
also, herbaria still provide value in botany because you can take small samples & do genetic analysis, or whatever other kind of analysis you want. the fact that they're historic specimens means that a scientist can do historic analysis as well. so these old samples are not just relics.
how these samples ended up in western herbaria is a very interesting question. there's a colonial romantic image of a "plant hunter" on a "collecting expedition". he's (it's almost always a 'he') single-minded, dedicated, unafraid, adventurous, and doing it for science. it has its appeal! that's why i call it the colonial romantic - it has a romance about it, but there's a nerdy purity too. i mean, it's indiana jones, right?
but that's not how it really happened (surprise!). if you know much about how things (and people) from around the world ended up in england (and its colonies, like america), you know that it was basically always a total nightmare.
these colonials were engaged in a project of moving people, plants, animals, and specimens all around the world, like pieces on a chess board.
so, a slave ship might be carrying enslaved people, but it might also be carrying live plant specimens, live animal specimens, seeds, nuts, dried plants, fossils, butterflies, & all kinds of other stuff.
and that's what this talk is about: how, exactly early science was related to the slave-trading industry of england, specifically.
on a personal note, i live in hawai'i, a place where you can see literally in what grows on the land and in what people are here the effects of that colonial project of moving around people, plants, and animals. so if i ever start to wonder "hey, how did tree x end up on the island?" maybe it was brought as part of a plantation project. and if you meet a third generation japanese or filipino person on the island, their grandparents might have been brought over as workers for a plantation, part of that exact same colonial project. so all of us are still very much living in the world created by this global colonial project of places like england, spain, portugal, etc.
every time i look into how colonial powers moved plants around, i see that that movement was intimately tied to the goals and material reality of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism.
The book tells the fascinating story of physics starting from the 19th century, from the wave theory of light, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism, up to the discoveries of the 20th century. It investigates the frequently contrasting ideas and the raging arguments that led to our current understanding of the physical world, from the theory of relativity to quantum mechanics.
Approximately every 80 years, a faint 10th magnitude star in the constellation of Corona Borealis dramatically increases its brightness. This star, T CrB, is known as a recurrent nova and last flared in 1946, peaking at magnitude 2.0, temporarily making it one of the 50 brightest stars in the night sky.
#OTD in 1803. British scientist John Dalton begins using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.
At that time, he was searching for an explanation of the law of multiple proportions to the idea that chemical combination consists in the interaction of atoms of definite and characteristic weight, the idea of atoms arose in his mind as a purely physical concept, forced on him by study of the physical properties of the atmosphere and other gases. via @wikipedia
It's a history of women in science as seen through the lense of women at MIT.
It's incredible, and also really, REALLY hard.
I don't think I have ever yelled FUCK YOU more times at a book in my life.
Sometimes, as a guy, it's easy to hear people talk about "the patriarchy" and see it as an abstract idea. It SO isn't, and this book will grind that lesson into your brain with all the painful ferocity we men deserve.
@feoh
I guessing you still see it as a viable possibility that Watson and Crick did in fact steal Franklin's work contrary to the thrust of the article below?
(Not something I've studied.
Though when folk stack a row of cupcakes on the table and declare, " Well you can see why I don't think that woman scientist was actually hard done by", I think, "Cake competition next door".)
About fifty years after Smith's seminal map for the Geology of Britain and we see numerous 19th century British publishers including some version of it into their atlases, such as this from c. 1860 by Bradbury - Agnew. Hand colored to distinguish the strata.
Still a relatively young science at the time, but clearly making an impact, and unveiling an important key to understanding our world.
A medieval manuscript likely hides a record of an impending recurrent nova (phys.org)
Approximately every 80 years, a faint 10th magnitude star in the constellation of Corona Borealis dramatically increases its brightness. This star, T CrB, is known as a recurrent nova and last flared in 1946, peaking at magnitude 2.0, temporarily making it one of the 50 brightest stars in the night sky.