Science History

Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179)

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was a remarkable woman. At a time when few women wrote, Hildegard, known as "Sybil of the Rhine", produced major works of theology, medicine and visionary writings. Hildegard composed music and spoke of Christ as ...

Article - Camillo Di Cicco - Mar 6 2010 - 12:35pm

The Evolution Of Evolution

Show Me The Science Month Day 19 Merriam-Webster's dictionary says the word 'evolution' originated in 1622 and derives from the Latin evolutio, "unrolling, from", as in a parchment, and this is actually the perfect way to think of ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Feb 22 2009 - 12:56pm

Darwin Versus Mendel- Why Darwin Couldn't Discover Genetics

Mendel solved the logic of inheritance in his monastery garden with no more technology than Darwin had in his garden at Down House, so why couldn't Darwin have done it too? A Journal of Biology article argues that Darwin's background, influences ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 28 2009 - 11:12am

Pride And Piltdown

Tomorrow is Sunday, and as I prepare to mount my plastic pulpit I will take as my text the introduction to Chapter 5 (Complex Numbers) of A Survey of Modern Algebra by Birkhoff&Mac Lane.  This is a classic and accessible work, first published in 1941, ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Mar 2 2009 - 10:56am

Russian Forensic Mystery Solved- Czar Nicholas II, Anastasia And The Bolsheviks

Czar Nicholas II, eldest son of Tsar Alexander III, succeeded hs father in 1894 and, while he wasn't the most incompetent leader in the history of Russia, much less all of Europe, he was without question a disaster, losing a war to Japan and ordering ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 15 2009 - 10:59am

Sparks ahoy!

Recently, walking through the grounds of HASYLAB at the German Synchrotron DESY (we are NOT a Daisy!) I was reminded of my favourite book on radio, namely The Science of Radio, by Paul J. ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Mar 28 2009 - 3:40pm

Take A Look At Charles Darwin's Student Days

Yes, Charles Darwin did important things for science, but what we really want to know is how he squandered his money as a student.    Did he drink and smoke a lot?   Yeah, actually, which makes him all the more likable.    200 years after the great natural ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 2 2009 - 4:52pm

The Medieval Standard Model

Laurence Arnold has said: ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Apr 14 2009 - 12:05pm

Science Citation Classics: Sanger Sequencing

Sanger F, Nicklen S, Coulson AR. 1977. DNA sequencing with chain-terminating inhibitors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U S A 74: 5463-7. This paper describes the most important (IMHO) technical breakthrough in the biological sciences:  ...

Article - John Dennehy - Apr 16 2009 - 9:51pm

Best-Sellers of a Bygone Era

Best-Sellers of a Bygone Era In times gone by, if a book sold fifty copies, the author was celebrated as a 'best-seller'. Some of the best-selling authors of that era led their readers to the discovery of amazing new facts about the cosmos.  The ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Apr 19 2009 - 1:25pm