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* *
* ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER FOR THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY *
* *
* Published by the Working Group for the History of Astronomy *
* in the Astronomische Gesellschaft *
* *
* Number 27, May 8, 1998 *
* *
* A translation of *
* *
* ELEKTRONISCHE MITTEILUNGEN ZUR ASTRONOMIEGESCHICHTE *
* Nr. 29, 30. April 1998 *
* *
* Edited by: Wolfgang R. Dick *
* *
* Translated by: Donald Bellunduno *
* *
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Contents
--------
Editorial
1. Reimar Luest Grant
2. Conference Announcement: North American Sundial Society Meeting
3. Conference Announcement: On Time: History, Science, Commemoration
4. Tributes to Fritz Zwicky
5. Exhibitions
6. Conferences 1998
7. Other Events
8. [Omitted]
9. Antiquarian's Astronomy Catalog
Acknowledgements
Imprint
...........................................................................
Editorial
---------
No. 25 of the Electronic Newsletter for the History of Astronomy (ENHA)
was the first one being not a complete translation of Elektronische
Mitteilungen zur Astronomiegeschichte (EMA). Since then, EMA Nos. 26 to 29
and ENHA No. 26 appeared. Thanks to Donald Bellunduno, No. 27 is again a
complete translation, with exception of the omitted Item 8 "Author Needed",
which was intended for German readers only.
Wolfgang R. Dick
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Item 1 ENHA No. 27, May 8, 1998
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Reimar Luest Grant
------------------
The Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science offers the
Reimar Luest Grant
The time span of the grant is from 1 October 1998 up until the 30 September
2000. It recognizes the efforts of a recent graduate with outstanding
accomplishments in the field of the history of science, and was named after
the former president of the Max Planck Society Professor Dr. Reimar Luest.
The grant will be given for a scientific investigation on "The history
of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics". The grant can
be applied for by students from all nationalities.
Priority will be given to handicaped with equal qualification. We
encourage applications by women. The amount of the grant is 3,300.00 DM
per month. It is expected that the project will be carried out at the
institute in Berlin.
Candidates are required to provide a curriculum vitae, a list of
publications, a short sample text (for example, a chapter of the
dissertation) and a proposal for two referees. The material is due before
31 May 1998. Please send all materials to:
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Abt. I
Wilhelmstrabe 44, D-10117 Berlin, Germany
http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
...........................................................................
Item 2 ENHA No. 27, May 8, 1998
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Conference Announcement
North American Sundial Society Meeting
--------------------------------------
Seattle, USA, 11-13 September 1998
The fourth annual meeting of the North American Sundial Society
(NASS) will be held for the first time on the West Coast. A group of
Seattle diallists promise to put on a great meeting in the beautiful
Pacific Northwest. The meeting will begin with an informal get-together on
the evening of Friday, 11 September, and continue with activities the
entire weekend of 12-13 September (the weekend after Labor Day). September
is a lovely month in Seattle, one of the three months that are *not* part
of the 9-month Seattle rain festival. The meeting will be held in the new
Physics/Astronomy Building of the University of Washington (check
http://www.washington.edu to set the scene and
www.phys.washington.edu/Department/tour/ for the building, including its
large wall dial). The University is on the shore of Lake Washington and
about five miles from downtown Seattle, five miles from Puget Sound, and
two hours' drive from the Olympic and Cascade Mts. Detailed plans are
still developing, but preliminary ideas include a Swap Meet and Show & Tell
session, a bus tour of ~10-12 dials in Seattle (For a list as of 1996 see
www.sundials.co.uk/~seattle.htm), a banquet with live Renaissance music on
the topic of time and sundials (!), a software demonstration session, and
the usual talks on all aspects of gnomonics. For further information,
contact Woody Sullivan at 206-543-7773 (daytime) or 206-784-1052 (evenings)
or woody@astro.washington.edu or 6532 Palatine Ave N, Seattle, WA 98103
USA.
Proposals for papers are now being accepted, whether in oral or
display format. The final deadline will be July 15, but expressions of
interest at this time will greatly aid in planning. Please send your
title, a brief summary (100 words max), proposed length of time (if oral)
or required display space, and any audio-visual needs other than an
overhead projector, VCR, or slide projector (all of which will be
available). We also plan on having a swap/sales session of gnomonica
(dials, books, gadgets) - please let us know if you plan to bring more than
a small amount to this session. We will try to accomodate all who wish to
contribute, but time constraints may mean that some proposed oral papers
will have to become display type, and others will have to be shortened.
This meeting is open to nonmembers, but we encourage you to join.
NASS was established in 1994, currently has several hundred members
(including many outside of North America), and publishes a quarterly
journal, "The Compendium." For more information about NASS and membership,
contact: Sara Schechner Genuth (Secretary), sgenuth@aip.org or 1142
Loxford Terrace, Silver Spring, MD 20901
There is the possibility that we may be able to charge no
registration fee for persons from overseas. Please inquire if you are
interested in this possibility.
Prof. Woodruff T. Sullivan, III woody@astro.washington.edu
Dept. of Astronomy, Box 351580 tel. 206-543-7773
Univ. of Washington fax 206-685-0403
Seattle, WA 98195
USA
...........................................................................
Item 3 ENHA No. 27, May 8, 1998
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Conference Announcement
On Time: History, Science, Commemoration
----------------------------------------
CALL FOR PAPERS
On Time: History, Science, Commemoration
at National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (NMGM), Liverpool, UK
a British Society for the History of Science (BSHS), Royal Historical
Society (RHS) and NMGM conference
16-19 September 1999
The approach of the millenium has heightened awareness of the conventions
and cultures of time. But what is time? This question has been of growing
interest amongst historians. Their research is markedly interdisciplinary,
spilling over the boundaries between social, economic and cultural
historians, and historians of science, technology, medicine and
mathematics. 'On Time', organised by the British Society for the History
of Science (BSHS), Royal Historical Society (RHS) and NMGM responds to this
interdisciplinarity.
The conference will be held at the NMGM (which includes the Merseyside
Maritime Museum, in the heart of Liverpool's historic Albert Dock), a
holder of a highly significant collection of timepieces.
Papers with a wide interest and historiographical scope are invited.
Possible sessions include:
Beginnings and Origin Stories
Commemoration
Maritime Time
Timetables and Technology
Workplaces and Time
Lifetimes and Servitude
Units of Time
Calendars
Time and Political Economies
Scientific Instruments and Time
Cultures of Time and Space
Religion and Time
Nostalgia
Rhythms and Cycles in the Natural Sciences
Evolution
Relativity
Anthropology and Time
Past-Futures
Ends of Time
Immortality
Roughly thirty minutes will be given for each paper chosen. Abstracts
of 50-100 words should be sent before 1 September 1998 to either:
Dr William J. Ashworth (BSHS)
Department of Economic and Social History, The University of
Liverpool, 11 Abercromby Square, Liverpool, L69 3BX,
e-mail: wja@liverpool.ac.uk
or
Dr Roland Quinault (RHS)
School of Historical, Philosophical and Contemporary Studies,
Faculty of HTE, University of North London, 166- 220 Holloway Road,
London N7 8DB, England
Interested speakers will be informed by the end of September 1998 as to
whether their paper has been accepted. The On Time programme
committee are: Dr Jon Agar (University of Manchester), Dr Jeff Hughes
(University of Manchester), Dr Roland Quinault (University of North
London), Dr William J. Ashworth (Liverpool University)
...........................................................................
Item 4 ENHA No. 27, May 8, 1998
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Tributes to Fritz Zwicky
------------------------
On the memory of his 100th birthday, the astrophysicist and morphologist
Fritz Zwicky will be honored in several different venues in Switzerland.
The Fritz Zwicky Endowment is sponsoring two events: On the 14th of
February, his birthday, a memorial celebration took place in Zwicky's home
town of Mollis (Kanton Glarus). On the 14th of November a morphological
treatment of the theme "unemployment" will be demonstrated during a
conference in Glarus (Prof. R. Groner).
The town museum in Mollis has a long standing memorial exhibit.
Opening times: Tuesday: 3 pm - 5 pm, or after arrangement:
+41 (0)55 6123210/6123860. During school vacation, the exhibit is
closed. Information on the museum can also be obtained by calling
+41 (0)55 612 10 32.
On the 9th of April, from 8 pm to 9 pm, the Swiss radio station DRS1
repeated the broadcast "Fritz Zwicky, Explorer of the heavens", a document
from 1968, showing Zwicky also as a witty man and raconteur. In an
interview, that was done over 30 years ago with Otmar Hersche, Zwicky
reports in the Glarus dialect about his work in astrophysics in Pasadena,
of his successes and failures in rocketry, his many famous acquaintances,
and on his international contracts.
Sources: Neue Zuercher Zeitung, 14./15.2.1998, p. 30 ("Schweiz);
http://www.drs.ch/site/drs1/programm/19980406/092000.html
http://www.fridolin.ch/unterhaltung02.htm
http://www.tbw.ch/ksgl/Kultur.htm
http://www.glarusnet.ch/kultur/ku_htm/ku_samus.htm
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Item 5 ENHA No. 27, May 8, 1998
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Exhibitions
-----------
From the 3rd of May to the 21st of June 1998 the Staatliches Museum fuer
Naturkunde und Vorgeschichte [State Museum for Natural History and
Pre-History] of Oldenburg will have on display the exhibit "'Welt
erforschen - Welten konstruieren' [Exploring and constructing the world].
Experimentational culture in physics from the 16th to the 19th centuries".
In five separate clusters, the exhibit will portray information on the
lives of individual scientists. Among those depicted are Aristotle,
Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler,
Newton, John Herschel and Carl Friedrich Gauss. All will be portrayed in
the historical context of their time. On hand, physical experiments will
be performed which will attempt to duplicate and give form to the many
contributions these scientists gave to the world. Among the instruments
which also be on display, a copy of a sextant used by Tycho Brahe. From
"Changing world view" the exhibit will lead through "Electricity in the
salons" to the "French Revolution", and from the "Romantic awareness of
nature" to "Measuring and controlling the world".
Opening: Sunday, 3 May, 11:15 am
Opening lecture: Prof. Dr. Gudrun Wolfschmidt, Universitaet Hamburg
On Thursday, the 7th May, from 3.00 pm up until 5.00 pm, the museum
invites to a guided tour.
Opening times: Tuesday - Thursday 9 am - 5 pm, Friday 9 am - 3 pm,
Saturday/Sunday 10 am - 5 pm.
Information: Staatliches Museum fuer Naturkunde und Vorgeschichte
Oldenburg, Tel.: 0441/9244-300. E-mail: Museum@logiplan.de
URL: http://www.logiplan.de/museum/ (see escpecially
http://www.logiplan.de/museum/info/sonder.html for further information).
"'Lines of Faith' - Instruments and Religious Practice in Islam" is the
tile of an exhibition running from 10 March to 27 June 1998 at the Museum
of the History of Science in Oxford. The 1998 Student Exhibition displays
Islamic scientific instruments from this museum, which houses one of the
best collections of this type in the world. These instruments are
inscribed with many elaborate engravings, which show that they not only had
a scientific role - they also played an integral role in religious
practice. Art and scientific knowledge were cultivated intensively in the
Islamic world during its first six centuries, especially in the 9th and
10th centuries AD. In Islam, the study and practice of astronomy and
astrology were of practical importance and significance for two reasons -
the study of the cosmos could be seen as part of the revelation of the true
meaning of the Qur'an and of God's universe, and secondly for practical
reasons related to the rituals of religious life. The Qur'an states that
Muslims must pray in the direction of Mecca at certain times of the day,
and fast during the Holy Month. Each of these requirements involves
complex astronomical and mathematical problems, which led to the production
of scientific instruments with a clear religious function, displaying
'Lines of Faith'.
Opening hours: 12 noon - 4 p.m., Tuesday to Saturday, free admission.
Location of the museum: at the very centre of Oxford, on Broad Street,
next to the Sheldonian Theatre and directly opposite Blackwell's Bookshop.
Address: Museum of the History of Science, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3AZ,
Great Britain, phone (+44) [0]1865 277280, e-mail: museum@mhs.ox.ac.uk
More information: http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/students/97to98/exhibits/
The exhibition "Peter the Great in England 1698" is running at the
National Maritime Museum, London, from 2 April to 27 September 1998. It
commemorates the four months Peter the Great spent in England from January
to April 1698, and focus specifically on Tsar Peter's stay in Deptford,
where he learnt about shipbuilding in the adjacent Royal Dockyards and
astronomy at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
Opening times: 10:00-17:00 hours daily. Last admission 16:30
Enquiries: Miss Catherine Sones, Research Group Executive,
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, SE10 9NF, UK,
Tel: +44 (0)181 312 6716, Fax: +44 (0)181 312 6722,
E-mail: cesone@nmm.ac.uk
URL of the museum: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/
"'An University Within Ourselves'. Science in Cambridge in the Eighteenth
Century" is on display at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science
until the foreseeable future. This exhibition deals mainly with astronomy
and natural philosophy in the various Cambridge colleges, in particular in
Trinity and St John's College.
Further details: Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Department of
the History of Science, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH, Great Britain,
Tel: 01223 334545, Fax: 01223 334554, E-mail: lct1001@cam.ac.uk
Source: Scientific Instrument Society, Bulletin No. 56, March 1998, p. 36.
...........................................................................
Item 6 ENHA No. 27, May 8, 1998
...........................................................................
Conferences 1998
----------------
Further conferences in the years 1998 were already listed in previous
issues of ENHA. For a complete list of all conferences announced see the
following URL:
http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~pbrosche/hist_astr/ha_meet.html
12-14 June, Dresden, Germany
Conference "The photographic pioneer Hermann Krone. Photography and
devices. Culture of pictures and photographic technique in the 19 century"
Hermann Krone (1827-1916) took also astronomical pictures. The conference
program contains also a lecture by Prof. Dr. Klaus-Guenter Steinert on
"The beginnings of photographic astronomy in Dresden" and other lectures
related to history of science and technology.
Place: Kulturrathaus, Koenigstr. 15
Conference fee: 100 DM
Reservations up until 1 May: Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Photographie,
Rheingasse 8-12, D-50676 Koeln, Tel. 0221/9 23 20 69, Fax 0221/9 23 20 70
26-28 June, Feucht near Nuremberg, Germany
Celebration exhibit: 75 years "Rockets to the planets, and into space" by Prof.
Hermann Oberth 1923, and colloquium on the History of Space Travel
Information: Hermann-Oberth-Raumfahrt-Museum e.V., Tel.: 09128/3502,
Fax: 09128/14920
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Item 7 ENHA No. 27, May 8, 1998
...........................................................................
Other Events
------------
26 May, Dresden, Germany
Symposium of the Urania Dresden honouring Manfred von Ardenne (1907-1997)
Among the lectures: Ardenne - the Youth und the Heavens (Prof. Dr.
Dieter B. Herrmann)
Place and Time: Studiotheater des Kulturpalastes, 7 pm
Entrance fee: 7.00 DM
20 June 1998, Potsdam, Germany
Open house day for the Astrophysical Institute in Potsdam
Place and Time: Observatory Babelsberg, An der Sternwarte 16,
D-14482 Potsdam, Tel. +49-331-74990; 10 am - 6 pm
Among the displays for visitors: History of astronomy in Potsdam/Berlin
Further information: http://www.obs.aip.de/Astro-WWW/AIP_tag.html
http://kosmos.aip.de/~lie/publications/plj351.html
6 July 1998, Munich, Germany
Colloquium in the German Museum. Prof. Dr. Helge Kragh,
Aarhus/Denmark: National and scientific styles in mid-20th-century
cosmology.
Place and Time: Filmsaal im Bibliotheksbau des Deutschen Museums,
Museumsinsel 1, 80538 Munich; 4:30 pm
Up-to-date information via the Internet:
http://www.deutsches-museum.de/forsch/wissen/kolloq.htm
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Item 8 ENHA No. 27, May 8, 1998
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Author Needed
-------------
Omitted here (intended for German readers only).
...........................................................................
Item 9 ENHA No. 27, May 8, 1998
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Antiquarian's Astronomy Catalog
-------------------------------
In February 1998 the antiquarian Gerhard Renner issued as No. 86
"Astronomy" a 92-page illustrated catalog of old to nearly new books and
journals in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics and space flight (62
pages), geodesy, cartography, geophysics, theory of relativity,
meteorology, scientific instruments and clocks. For many of the 1861 items
bibliographical details are given. Some examples: Fontenelle, Dialoge
ueber die Mehrheit der Welten, Berlin 1780 (DM 400.00); Gauss, Theorie der
Bewegung der Himmelskoerper, welche in Kegelschnitten die Sonne umlaufen,
Hannover 1865 (DM 1450.00); Ley, Vorstoss ins Weltall, Wien 1949 (DM
65.00). [The catalog contains also entries in other languages.]
Free copies of the catalog may be requested from:
Antiquariat Gerhard Renner, Postfach 1648, D-72439 Albstadt, Germany,
email: buch@antiquar-renner.com
Gerd Kueveler
...........................................................................
Acknowledgements
----------------
In addition to the authors, we also thank:
Jon Agar (Great Britain), William John Ashworth (Liverpool), Peter
Brosche (Daun), Klaus-Dieter Herbst (Jena), Jochen Schneider (Berlin),
Klaus-Guenter Steinert (Dresden).
...........................................................................
Imprint
-------
Electronic Newsletter for the History of Astronomy (ENHA)
Published by the Working Group for the History of Astronomy in the
Astronomische Gesellschaft
Editor: Dr. Wolfgang R. Dick
Translator: Donald Bellunduno
All items without an author's name are editorial contributions.
Articles as well as information for the several sections are appreciated.
Subscription for ENHA is free. Readers and subscribers are asked for
occasional voluntary donations to the working group.
Copyright Statement:
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re-distributed in the case that no charge is imposed. Public offer in
WWW servers, BBS etc. is allowed after the editor has been informed.
Non-commercial reproduction of single items in electronic or printed media
is possible only with the editor's permission.
Arbeitskreis Astronomiegeschichte / Working Group for the History of
Astronomy:
URL: http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~pbrosche/aa/aa.html
Chairman: Prof. Dr. Peter Brosche, Observatorium Hoher List der
Sternwarte der Universitaet Bonn, D-54550 Daun, Germany,
Tel.: (++6592) 2150, Fax: (++6592) 985140
Secretary: Dr. Wolfgang R. Dick, Bundesamt fuer Kartographie und
Geodaesie, Aussenstelle Potsdam, Postfach 60 08 08, D-14408 Potsdam,
Germany, Tel.: (++331) 316 618, E-mail: wdi@potsdam.ifag.de
Bank Acct. of the Working Group of the Astronomische Gesellschaft:
Acct # 333 410 41, Sparkasse Bochum (BLZ 430 500 01)
Contributions from foreign countries: acct # 162 18-203, Postgiroamt
Hamburg, BLZ 200 400 20
Please sign with: "Fuer Arbeitskreis Astronomiegeschichte"
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