RESEARCH ARTICLES
Hansteen's magnetometer and the origin of the magnetic crusade VIDAR ENEBAKK The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 587 – 608 doi: 10.1017/S0007087413000903 Published Online on 07th November 2013
In the early nineteenth century, Norwegian mathematician and astronomer Christopher Hansteen (1784–1873) contributed significantly to international collaboration in the study of terrestrial magnetism. In particular, Hansteen was influential in the origin and orientation of the magnetic lobby in Britain, a campaign which resulted in a global network of fixed geomagnetic observatories. In retrospect, however, his contribution was diminished, because his four-pole theory in Untersuchungen der Magnetismus der Erde (1819) was ultimately refuted by Carl Friedrich Gauss in Allgemeine Theorie des Erdmagnetismus (1839). Yet Hansteen's main contribution was practical rather than theoretical. His major impact was related to the circulation of his instruments and techniques. From the mid-1820s, ‘Hansteen's magnetometer’ was distributed all over the British Isles and throughout the international scientific community devoted to studying terrestrial magnetism. Thus in the decades before the magnetic crusade, Hansteen had established an international system of observation, standardization and representation based on measurements with his small and portable magnetometers.
A British national observatory: the building of the New Physical Observatory at Greenwich, 1889–1898 REBEKAH HIGGITT The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 609 – 635 doi: 10.1017/S0007087413000678 Published Online on 12th November 2013
Over its long history, the buildings of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich were enlarged and altered many times, reflecting changing needs and expectations of astronomers and funders, but also the constraints of a limited site and small budgets. The most significant expansion took place in the late nineteenth century, overseen by the eighth Astronomer Royal, William Christie, a programme that is put in the context of changing attitudes toward scientific funding, Christie's ambitious plans for the work and staffing of the Observatory and his desire to develop a national institution that could stand with more recently founded European and American rivals. Examination of the archives reveals the range of strategies Christie was required to use to acquire consent and financial backing from the Admiralty, as well as his opportunistic approach. While hindsight might lead to criticism of his decisions, Christie eventually succeeded in completing a large building – the New Physical Observatory – that, in its decoration, celebrated Greenwich's past while, in its name, style, structure and contents, it was intended to signal the institution's modernization and future promise.
‘A thorn in the side of European geodesy’: measuring Paris–Greenwich longitude by electric telegraph MICHAEL KERSHAW The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 637 – 660 doi: 10.1017/S0007087413000988 Published Online on 19th February 2014
The difference in longitude between the observatories of Paris and Greenwich was long of fundamental importance to geodesy, navigation and timekeeping. Measured many times and by many different means since the seventeenth century, the preferred method of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made use of the electric telegraph. I describe here for the first time the four Paris–Greenwich telegraphic longitude determinations made between 1854 and 1902. Despite contemporary faith in the new technique, the first was soon found to be inaccurate; the second was a failure, ending in Anglo-French dispute over whose result was to be trusted; the third failed in exactly the same way; and when eventually the fourth was presented as a success, the evidence for that success was far from clear-cut. I use this as a case study in precision measurement, showing how mutual grounding between different measurement techniques, in the search for agreement between them, was an important force for change and improvement. I also show that better precision had more to do with the gradually improving methods of astronomical time determination than with the singular innovation of the telegraph, thus emphasizing the importance of what have been described as ‘observatory techniques’ to nineteenth-century practices of precision measurement.
Paolo Sarpi and the first Copernican tidal theory RON NAYLOR The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 661 – 675 doi: 10.1017/S0007087413000976 Published Online on 26th February 2014
Despite his demanding religious responsibilities, Paolo Sarpi maintained an active involvement in science between 1578 and 1598 – as his Pensieri reveal. They show that from 1585 onwards he studied the Copernican theory and recorded arguments in its favour. The fact that for 1595 they include an outline of a Copernican tidal theory resembling Galileo's Dialogue theory is well known. But examined closely, Sarpi's theory is found to be different from that of the Dialogue in several important respects. That Sarpi was a Copernican by 1592 is revealed by other of his pensieri, whereas at that time we know that Galileo was not. The examination of Sarpi's tidal theory and of the work of Galileo in this period indicates that the theory Sarpi recorded in 1595 was of his own creation. The appreciation that the theory was Sarpi's and that Galileo subsequently came to change his views on the Copernican theory and adopted the tidal theory has major implications for our understanding of the significance of Sarpi's contribution to the Scientific Revolution. Moreover, it appears that several of the most significant theoretical features of the tidal theory published by Galileo in the Dialogue – and which proved of lasting value – were in reality Sarpi's.
The power of partnerships: the Liverpool school of butterfly and medical genetics DORIS T. ZALLEN The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 677 – 699 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000417 Published Online on 29th April 2014
From the 1950s to the 1970s, a group of physician–researchers forming the ‘Liverpool school’ made groundbreaking contributions in such diverse areas as the genetics of Lepidoptera and human medical genetics. The success of this group can be attributed to the several different, but interconnected, research partnerships that Liverpool physician Cyril Clarke established with Philip Sheppard, Victor McKusick at Johns Hopkins University, the Nuffield Foundation, and his wife Féo. Despite its notable successes, among them the discovery of the method to prevent Rhesus haemolytic disease of the newborn, the Liverpool School began to lose prominence in the mid-1970s, just as the field of medical genetics that it had helped pioneer began to grow. This paper explores the role of partnerships in making possible the Liverpool school's scientific and medical achievements, and also in contributing to its decline.
Elite science and the BBC: a 1950s contest of ownership ALLAN JONES The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 701 – 723 doi: 10.1017/S0007087413000927 Published Online on 07th November 2013
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the elite world of institutional British science attempted to take control of the BBC's management of science broadcasting. Delegations of scientists met BBC managers to propose an increased role for scientists in planning science broadcasts to a degree that threatened to compromise the BBC's authority and autonomy. The culmination was a set of proposals to the Pilkington Committee in 1960, principally from the Royal Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, under which a scientist-manager was to be appointed head of a unified science division in the BBC. BBC managers resisted these proposals. The outcome, in 1964, was a compromise giving the scientists little of what they wanted, and proving practically and strategically useful for the BBC. The article frames the story as a contest of jurisdiction between elite science and the BBC, and draws on scholarship relating to the social nature of authority and professions, and to the popularization of science. It shows the fundamentally different beliefs held by the scientists and the BBC about the purpose of science broadcasts and about the nature of the audience. The historical narrative is based on unpublished archive documents, and it contributes to the small but growing body of work on the historical background to the presentation of science in the broadcast media.
BOOK REVIEWS
Rhodri Lewis,William Petty on the Order of Nature: An Unpublished Manuscript Treatise.Tempe:Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,2012. Pp. xiv + 176. ISBN978-0-86698-447-8. £40.00 (hardback). Michael Edwards The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 726 – 727 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000661 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Rüdiger Campe,The Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist.Stanford:Stanford University Press,2012. Pp. viii+486. ISBN978-0-8047-6865-8. $35.00 (paperback). Laura Søvsø Thomasen, Henrik Kragh Sørensen The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 727 – 728 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000673 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Alison Walker,Arthur MacGregor andMichael Hunter (eds.),From Books to Bezoars: Sir Hans Sloane and His Collections.London:The British Library,2012. Pp. x+310. ISBN978-0-7123-5880-4. £45.00 (hardback). Meghan C. Doherty The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 728 – 730 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000685 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Alexandra Cook,Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Botany: The Salutary Science.Oxford:Voltaire Foundation,2012. Pp. xxi+436. ISBN978-0-729410557. £70.00 (paperback). Palmira Fontes da Costa The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 730 – 731 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000697 Published Online on 07th November 2014
E.C. Spary,Eating the Enlightenment: Food and the Sciences in Paris, 1670–1760.Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press,2012. Pp. xi+366. ISBN978-0-226-76886-1. £29.00 (hardback). Larry Stewart The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 731 – 732 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000703 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Jim Bennett andSofia Talas (eds.),Cabinets of Experimental Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Europe.Leiden:Brill,2013. Pp. xxxvii+253. ISBN978-90-04-25296-7. $147.00 (hardback). Richard Dunn The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 732 – 734 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000715 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Anna Echterhölter,Schattengefechte: Genealogische Praktiken in Nachrufen auf Naturwissenschaftler (1710–1860).Göttingen:Wallstein,2012. Pp. 365. ISBN978-3-8353-1071-1. €39.90 (paperback).Denise Phillips,Acolytes of Nature: Defining Natural Science in Germany 1770–1850.Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press,2012. Pp. 356. ISBN0-226-66737-9. £29.99 (hardback). Thomas P. Weber The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 734 – 735 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000727 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Anne Dewitt,Moral Authority, Men of Science, and the Victorian Novel.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,2013. Pp. ix +273. ISBN918-1-107-03617-8. £60.00 (hardback). Gowan Dawson The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 735 – 737 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000739 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Louise Miskell,Meeting Places: Scientific Congresses and Urban Identity in Victorian Britain.Farnham:Ashgate,2013. Pp. xi+192. ISBN978-1-4094-5237-9. £60.00 (hardback). Rebekah Higgitt The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 737 – 738 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000740 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Tatiana Holway,The Flower of Empire: An Amazonian Water Lily, the Quest to Make It Bloom, and the World It Created.Oxford:Oxford University Press,2013. Pp. xiv+306. ISBN978-0-19-537389-9. £18.99 (hardback). Donald L. Opitz The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 738 – 740 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000752 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Ted Benton,Alfred Russel Wallace: Explorer, Evolutionist, Public Intellectual – a Thinker for Our Own Times?Manchester:Siri Scientific Press,2013. Pp. 223. ISBN978-0-9574530-2-9. £21.00 (paperback). Ahren Lester The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 740 – 742 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000764 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Mitchell G. Ash andJan Surman (eds.),The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848–1918.Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan,2012. Pp. xi+258. ISBN978-0-230-28987-1. £50.00 (hardback). Oliver Hochadel The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 742 – 743 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000776 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Kenneth Bertrams,Nicholas Coupain andErnst Homburg,Solvay: History of a Multinational Family Firm.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,2013. Pp. xviii+630. ISBN978-1-107-02480-9. £60.00 (hardback). Peter Reed The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 743 – 745 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000788 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Jean-Paul Gaudillière andVolker Hess (eds.),Ways of Regulating Drugs in the 19th and 20th Centuries.Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan,2013. Pp. xiv+327. ISBN978-0-230-30196-2. £60.00 (hardback). Anna Simmons The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 745 – 746 doi: 10.1017/S000708741400079X Published Online on 07th November 2014
Staffan Müller-Wille andHans-Jörg Rheinberger,A Cultural History of Heredity.Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press,2012. Originally published in German in 2009. Pp. xiii+ 323. ISBN978-0-226-54570-7. $50.00 (hardback).Bernd Gausemeier,Staffan Müller-Wille andEdmund Ramsden (eds.),Human Heredity in the Twentieth Century. Studies for the Society for the Social History of Medicine, 15.London:Pickering & Chatto,2013. Pp. xviii+ 302. ISBN978-1-848-934269. £60.00 (hardback). Gregory Radick The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 747 – 748 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000806 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Annette Lykknes,Donald L. Opitz andBrigitte van Tiggelen (eds.),For Better or for Worse? Collaborative Couples in the Sciences.Heidelberg, New York and London:Birkhäuser,2012. Pp. xiv+319. ISBN978-3-0348-0285-7. €23.53 (hardback). Tatjana Buklijas The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 749 – 750 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000818 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Alison Winter,Memory: Fragments of a Modern History.Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press,2012. Pp. x+319. ISBN978-0-226-90258-6. £21.00 (hardback). Andrew S. Balmer The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 750 – 751 doi: 10.1017/S000708741400082X Published Online on 07th November 2014
Sevan G. Terzian,Science Education and Citizenship: Fairs, Clubs, and Talent Searches for American Youth, 1918–1958.New York:Palgrave Macmillan,2013. Pp. xv+235. ISBN978-1-137-03186-0. £55.00 (hardback). Audra J. Wolfe The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 752 – 753 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000831 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Ted R. Anderson,The Life of David Lack: Father of Evolutionary Ecology.Oxford:Oxford University Press,2013. Pp. x+246. ISBN978-0-992264-2. £37.50 (hardback). Kenneth E. Hendrickson The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 753 – 754 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000843 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Jahnavi Phalkey,Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth-Century India.Ranikhet:Permanent Black,2013. Pp. xvii+335. ISBN81-7824-376-8. INR 795.00 (hardback). Somaditya Banerjee The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 754 – 756 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000855 Published Online on 07th November 2014
John R. Walker,Britain and Disarmament: The UK and Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons Arms Control and Programmes 1956–1975.Farnham:Ashgate,2012. Pp. xv+305. ISBN978-1-4094-3580-8. £70.00 (hardback). Kristan Stoddart The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 756 – 757 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000867 Published Online on 07th November 2014
John Krige,Angelina Long Callahan andAshok Maharaj,NASA in the World: Fifty Years of International Collaboration in Space.New York:Palgrave Macmillan,2013. Pp. xvii+353. ISBN978-1-137-34092-4 . £22.00 (paperback). Jon Agar The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 757 – 759 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000879 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Renato G. Mazzolini andHans-Jörg Rheinberger (eds.),Differing Routes to Stem Cell Research: Germany and Italy.Bologna and Berlin:Il Mulino/Duncker and Humblot,2012. Pp. 271. ISBN978-3-428-13849-4. €22.00 (paperback). Mauro Capocci The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 759 – 760 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000880 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Scott L. Montgomery,Does Science Need a Global Language?Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press,2013. Pp. xiii+226. ISBN978-0-226-53503-6. £16.00 (hardback). Christopher Hollings The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 760 – 762 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000892 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Books Received
Books received The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 763 – 766 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000636 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Miscellaneous
Index of authors The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 767 – 768 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000648 Published Online on 07th November 2014
Books reviewed
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 47, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 769 – 771 doi: 10.1017/S000708741400065X Published Online on 07th November 2014