#histsci — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #histsci, aggregated by home.social.
-
He weighed his food, his sleep, his feces, and, by his own accounting, his sex life. For thirty years he sat in a chair that took his dinner away. Santorio Santorio, founder of quantitative physiology, discovered that we are all quietly evaporating.
-
as would be visible over Paris.
She & husband adopted his nephew, Joseph Lepaute Dagelet in 1768 whom she trained as a mathematician & astronomer. He became a professor & was inducted in the French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1785.
-
257 years ago today, #AlexanderVonHumboldt was born. The Invention of Nature is a delightful biography that paints a lively portrait of this ever-restless polymath, showing he was a force of nature.
https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2025/02/11/book-review-the-invention-of-nature-the-adventures-of-alexander-von-humboldt-the-lost-hero-of-science/#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Biography #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Scicomm @andrea_wulf
-
He weighed strings with birdshot, photographed the sag, and flipped the picture to find his church. He carried hazelnuts and one key when the tram hit him. Taxis refused the rags. Antoni Gaudí, the dandy who ended up trusting what falls.
-
#histsci folks, if you're not following @[email protected] yet on all the things, now's the time!
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:batsswaxvws26rr3gf7wvm7k/post/3mvfhpbeils2l -
An excerpt on AI & robots from the “Machines” chapter of HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY, 1st published by @[email protected], now out from @[email protected] in a South Asian edition, is out in Newslaundry!
🧪💙📚 🗃 #ancient #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #histmed #18thCentury #politics #HAMH
If the only value lies in what... -
I wrote this blog when QUEER ORIGINS was published in the UK. I'm reposting it now that the book is out in Canada and the US.
Read about the natural wonder of sexual polymorphism — and why Richard Dawkins' view of Darwin needs amending. 🌈📚🦋
Darwin's Queer Inheritance: https://yalebooks.co.uk/blog/darwin-queer-inheritance/
#book #books #bookstodon #reading #readingcommunity #writing #author #science #nature #animals #darwin #Darwin #evolution #history #histsci #sts #histsex #queerhistory #queer #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia
-
He ate his meat raw, slept bolt upright by candlelight, and casually mentioned that 18,000 boys were sacrificed to an ox-headed god each year. Oxford gave George Psalmanazar rooms and asked him to teach the language. He was from Marseille.
-
In 1901, she strapped herself into a padded oak barrel with an anvil at her feet and went over Horseshoe Falls. She was sixty-three. A charm-school teacher. Broke. And she had already sent the cat. Meet Annie Edson Taylor, Queen of the Mist.
-
Avis aux Iséroises et Isérois : exposition sur Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu les 3–4 et 10–11 octobre prochains, à… Dolomieu, son village natal. Ce géologue et volcanologue a donné son nom à la roche dolomie, au principal cratère du Piton de la Fournaise, et surtout au massif italien des Dolomites. Cette exposition, conçue en Sicile en 2024 et désormais adaptée en français, retrace la vie aventureuse du savant et ses découvertes scientifiques à travers 34 panneaux richement illustrés (gravures, cartes…). Elle s’inscrit dans un projet plus vaste, qui vise à terme à créer un « espace Déolomieu » au sein du village. Bref, ça a l’air chouette ! Mon seul regret, que je n’ai pas manqué de notifier aux organisateurs : une affiche blindée de slop IAg, plutôt que de faire bosser un artiste, ou tout simplement de piocher dans la vaste iconographie d’époque… Je vous la partage quand même, attention les yeux.
#exposition #expo #Isère #géologie #histsci #histnat #FêtedelaScience
-
[Archive]
Simia to Homo: from C. F. Hoppe's Anthropomorpha (1760)
"As for me, I am still uncertain, by what characteristic mark the troglodytes can be distinguished from man, according to the principles of natural history"
#HistSTM #HistSci
https://until-darwin.blogspot.com/2012/05/simia-to-homo-from-c-f-hoppes.html -
He shot them with fine shot to spare the feathers, ran wires through the bodies, posed the wings mid-lunge, then often ate the model. Snowy owl, not indelicate. Bald eagle, like veal. John James Audubon, taxidermist of the sublime.
-
[Archive]
The Paradoxa from the Systema natura by Linnaeus (1735)
The Paradoxa are the various species Linnaeus did not include in his Systema Natura because he judged them to be either fabulous, the result of mistaken observations by travelers or, as in the case of the Hamburg hydra, simply fraudulent.
#HistSTM #HistSci
https://until-darwin.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-paradoxa-from-systema-natura-by.html -
A leading historian of science just sent me this pic, with QUEER ORIGINS nestled among some of the most respected books about Darwin. It's a huge compliment — I'm quite emotional! 😊
Now that it's published in the UK, Canada, and the US, do please send me photos if you spot the book out 'in the wild' . . . 🏳️🌈 📚 🦋
#book #books #bookstodon #reading #readingcommunity #writing #science #nature #animals #Darwin #evolution #history #histsex #histsci #sts #queerhistory #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia
-
Rappel : à l'occasion des #JEP2026, vous pouvez visiter le petit Musée de la Radiologie et de l'Imagerie Médicale, dans le 13e arrondissement de #Paris ! https://journeesdupatrimoine.culture.gouv.fr/w/391796/evenement/19901988/visite-du-musee-de-la-radiologie-sur-inscription#/events/19901988
#histmd #histech #histsci #agenda -
Thrilled to announce our upcoming symposium exploring the interconnected histories of medicine, science and technology in Japan, Korea and Taiwan in the 20th century.
with @[email protected]
@[email protected] & online (17-18.09.2026)
#histmed #histsci #eastasia #sts #japan #korea #taiwan -
He entered Oxford at twelve, coined "international," and spent six decades redesigning civilization. He spent sixty-three years on his body's afterlife. UCL still wheels him into meetings. The minutes list him as present but not voting.
-
I’m really not sure about these two oddballs in this #MinCup26 matchup. Putnisite: pleochroism, unrelated to other mineralogical families, translucent purple. Hafnon is like zircon but with hafnium instead of zirconium.
I’m leaning towards Hafnon for the hafnium, an element predicted by Mendeleev!
Vote for your preferred mineral here: https://www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-results/vote-r1m09
I bet the vote will go the other way what with the “ooh, purple!” voting block this year. 😂
-
08-Sep: On this day in 1832, Charles Darwin observed gauchos using bolas. He later tried them out for himself, and managed to ensnare his own horse in the process… https://friendsofdarwin.com/articles/darwin-encounters-bolas/
#HistSci -
A gorgeous, lyrical essay by @[email protected]. If you're interested in literature, the history of science and technology, whales, or - of course - #StarTrek - you might love it, as I do.
#histsci
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3le7dvxqc2rhvyswiida2cgf/post/3muz5myjbms2z -
He set out honey for cold bees, moved worms off the road, and asked a red-hot cautery iron to be courteous before it touched his face. Then, in 1220, Francis of Assisi walked out alone to negotiate with the wolf eating the town of Gubbio.
-
I spoke with @[email protected] CEO Patrick Spero on the Useful Knowledge podcast! We discussed monster-thinking and first contact in #VastEarlyAmerica and in outer space.
🧪💙📚 🗃 #ancient #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #histmed #18thCentury #politics #HAMH 🧵 -
Découvrir une figure encore trop méconnue de l'histoire des mathématiques : la grande Sophie Germain (1776-1831) !
https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/serie-avoir-raison-avec-sophie-germain
#histmaths #histsci #womeninSTEM -
Word embeddings alone are not the be-all end-all for historical data: semantic changes over time trip them up 🤷♀️
BUT have you heard of contextual word embeddings? 👀
In this article, we use them to untangle the meanings of terms Ruland's 1612 alchemical dictionary.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2026.2692190 #DH #histsci #alchemy #computationalhumanities #digitalhumanities #wordembeddings
-
Book review: The Secrets of Alchemy by Lawrence M. Principe https://ianhopkinson.org.uk/2026/09/book-review-the-secrets-of-alchemy-by-lawrence-m-principe/ #histsci #bookreview #alchemy #chemistry #bookstodon
-
The South Asian edition of HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY is out from @[email protected]! It’s the history of the category of the human since antiquity, told through ideas about monsters and monster-making.
🧪💙📚 🗃 #ancient #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #histmed #18thCentury #politics #HAMH 🧵 -
The Feejee Mermaid was a monkey sewn to a fish. Fifteen thousand a day paid a quarter to see it, then lingered. So he painted a sign over the exit: THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS. Another quarter to come back in. P.T. Barnum, working as advertised.
-
He moved apartments up to sixty times in Vienna. When notes wouldn't come, he stripped down, poured pitchers of cold water over his head, and bellowed scales until the floorboards leaked. Beethoven: deaf, drenched, evicted repeatedly.
-
This week's #NewBooks at the library: three second-hand books, all revolving around the theme of ice.
- #Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of the World's Most Mysterious Continent by Gabrielle Walker, published by Bloomsbury Publishing.
- The Ice Finders: How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician Discovered the #IceAge by Edmund Blair Bolles, published by Counterpoint.
- Glaciovolcanism on Earth and Mars: Products, Processes and Palaeoenvironmental Significance by Benjamin R Edwards and John L Smellie, published by Cambridge University Press.#Books #Bookstodon #Glaciology #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Volcanology #EarthSciences #Geology #Scicomm @bookstodon
-
She stopped going to church at thirty. Skipped her own father's funeral one floor above. And yet Emily Dickinson lowered gingerbread by rope to the neighborhood children she called storm-tossed pirates.
-
I never thought I'd see the day.
Charles Darwin is currently trending above two porn-related articles, Luke Evans, and Kit Connor in Attitude Magazine! 🙃
The power of #histsci . . .
Thank you, one and all — please keep sharing. Here's the article: https://www.attitude.co.uk/culture/literature/darwins-queer-creatures-532721/
#reading #writing #science #nature #animals #Darwin #evolution #history #histsex #queerhistory #queer #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #PrideInSTEM
-
I'm overjoyed to be the featured author in the latest issue of IFLScience's Curious Magazine!
Read a 'book bite' from QUEER ORIGINS and discover what inspired me to write it. 🐟️ 🌈 🦋 🏳️⚧️ 🐦️
As ever, the whole issue is fabulous . . .
#book #books #reading #writing #science #nature #history #histsci #histsex #queerhistory #queer #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #PrideInSTEM
-
Queer history of science in Attitude Magazine — oh yes!
Read about some of the queer creatures that fascinated Charles Darwin, including the first fish discovered to be dual-sexed, butterfly species with multiple female forms, and good emu dads. 🐟 🌈 🦋 🏳️⚧️ 🐦
https://www.attitude.co.uk/culture/literature/darwins-queer-creatures-532721/
#reading #history #nature #animals #science #histsci #queerhistory #histsex #queer #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #PrideInSTEM
-
Friends and neighbours on the Sussex Coast (UK), I've signed some copies of QUEER ORIGINS for you at three Waterstones stores: Brighton, Eastbourne, and Worthing.
And, yes, there are a few of those coveted bookmarks too . . . if you get in quick! 🌈 📚 🌞 🌊 🍦
#book #books #bookshop #bookshops #reading #history #science #histsci #histsex #nature #queer #queerhistory #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #Brighton #Eastbourne #Worthing #Sussex #SouthCoast #UK
-
Last call for this fantastic offer as the month draws to a close . . .
Discount code HSS26 (from the recent history of science conference in Edinburgh) gets you a cracking 30% off QUEER ORIGINS from my publisher's website until the end of August: https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300287202/darwin-and-the-queer-origins-of-life/.
Several bookshops are discounting the book, but I think this remains the cheapest price (£17.50 with free UK postage). 🏳️🌈 📚️️ 🦋
#book #books #history #science #nature #histsci #histsex #queerhistory #queer #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia
-
It's just magical seeing QUEER ORIGINS in bookshops, especially the iconic Gay's the Word.✨
I've signed some copies there — nab one while you can (there are also some soon-to-be-collector's-item bookmarks)! 🏳️🌈 📚 :transgender: 🦋
https://www.gaystheword.co.uk/
#book #books #bookshop #bookshops #London #history #Darwin #evolution #science #nature #histsci #histsex #queerhistory #queer #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #PrideInSTEM
-
This week's #NewBooks at the library: second-hand copies galore!
- The #Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Life with a Lovable Tawny Owl, published by Bantam Press, bought at a local recycling shop.
- Lyell: The Past is the Key to the Present, published by the Geological Society of London.
- Volcanoes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions, published by @princetonupress.Books #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Birds #BirdsOfPrey #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Geology #EarthSciences #Volcanoes #Volcanology @bookstodon
-
Hey, still need to submit fall book orders? (I KNOW)
Teaching #envhist #envhum #envstudies #histsci #histtech #histstm #sts #discardstudies ?
🤩Please consider #TransformingNight 🌌💡🌃 -- out 3 Aug, just in time for the new academic year!
uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295...
Transforming Night -
#JobKlaxon: 3-year postdoc position at Manchester Metropolitan University
Application deadline: 29th June 2026
Manchester Metropolitan University is seeking to recruit a postdoctoral Research Associate in History (full-time, 3 years) to join the team for Dr Francesca Mackenney's Leverhulme-funded project, ‘‘The Making of Natural History, 1797 - Present'
#envhist #histsci #naturalhistory #envhum
https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRU994/research-associate-the-making-of-natural-history-1797-present
-
Happening today! Join us for the next lecture in our summer series given by Etienne Benson (@[email protected]) on UNESCO’s International Hydrological Decade (1965–1974). Sign up here to attend in person or on Zoom: www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectu... #envhist #histsci #hydrology #skystorians
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:y3ntue55m7m6s3qaarsct2ey/post/3mlvnlixlel2r -
Making an astronomer portrait with a juicy rainbow roll 🌈
-
Today is #EarthDay. 🌍 But what about Earth at #night? 🌌🌃 And how did scientists come to understand #night as environment, albeit in distinct ways? #envhist #envhum #histsci #histtech #sts @[email protected] uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295...
Transforming Night -
Happy #ValentinesDay! 🐌❤️🐌
Delightful, if fanciful, depiction of garden snails exchanging love darts. By English artist Frederick Polydore Nodder and published in the Naturalist’s Miscellany in 1790. [The darts don’t propel through the air as the image depicts but are fired on contact.]
#ValentinesDay2026 #snails #animals #nature #naturalhistory #biology #science #histsci #histstm @[email protected] @[email protected] @histodon @histsci #histsex #sex #queer #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #queerhistory #PrideInSTEM
-
Bonus #ArtAdventCalendar day 17 - Happy birthday to Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749), a natural philosopher, #mathematician and #physicist, shown here in my #linocut portrait with #diagrams from her ‘Principes Mathématiques de la Philosophie Naturelle’, a two-volume translation and commentary of Newton’s ‘Principia’, published in 1759 in French in Paris.⠀
⠀🧵
⠀
#printmaking #histsci #WomenInSTEM #duChâtelet #SciArt #mathematics #mastoArt -
Bonus #ArtAdventCalendar day 17 - Happy birthday to Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749), a natural philosopher, #mathematician and #physicist, shown here in my #linocut portrait with #diagrams from her ‘Principes Mathématiques de la Philosophie Naturelle’, a two-volume translation and commentary of Newton’s ‘Principia’, published in 1759 in French in Paris.⠀
⠀🧵
⠀
#printmaking #histsci #WomenInSTEM #duChâtelet #SciArt #mathematics #mastoArt -
Bonus #ArtAdventCalendar day 17 - Happy birthday to Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749), a natural philosopher, #mathematician and #physicist, shown here in my #linocut portrait with #diagrams from her ‘Principes Mathématiques de la Philosophie Naturelle’, a two-volume translation and commentary of Newton’s ‘Principia’, published in 1759 in French in Paris.⠀
⠀🧵
⠀
#printmaking #histsci #WomenInSTEM #duChâtelet #SciArt #mathematics #mastoArt -
Bonus #ArtAdventCalendar day 17 - Happy birthday to Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749), a natural philosopher, #mathematician and #physicist, shown here in my #linocut portrait with #diagrams from her ‘Principes Mathématiques de la Philosophie Naturelle’, a two-volume translation and commentary of Newton’s ‘Principia’, published in 1759 in French in Paris.⠀
⠀🧵
⠀
#printmaking #histsci #WomenInSTEM #duChâtelet #SciArt #mathematics #mastoArt -
Bonus #ArtAdventCalendar day 17 - Happy birthday to Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749), a natural philosopher, #mathematician and #physicist, shown here in my #linocut portrait with #diagrams from her ‘Principes Mathématiques de la Philosophie Naturelle’, a two-volume translation and commentary of Newton’s ‘Principia’, published in 1759 in French in Paris.⠀
⠀🧵
⠀
#printmaking #histsci #WomenInSTEM #duChâtelet #SciArt #mathematics #mastoArt -
The #Mathober day 3 prompt is ‘#Polyhedron’. I have no art to offer, but I thought I would use the occasion to draw attention to a lesser-known role of polyhedra in Johannes Kepler's (1571–1630) thought.
Start with the famous part: Kepler argued that the five regular (or Platonic) solids fitted between the orbs of the then-known six planets [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kepler-solar-system-1.png].
When Galileo discovered four moons of Jupiter, Kepler sought a similar polyhedral structure for the Jovian system, and suggested that ‘semiregular’ solids provided the key. ‘Semiregular’ for Kepler meant that the polyhedra had rhombic faces and satisfied certain technical criteria. (The concept differs from today's notion of semiregular polyhedra.)
There were exactly three such ‘semiregular’ polyhedra:
• the cube (the square being a special kind of rhombus).
• the rhombic dodecahedron (12 faces; diagram attached).
• the rhombic triacontahedron (30 faces; diagram attached).
Kepler placed the rhombic dodecahedron between Io and Europa, the rhombic triacontahedron between Europa and Ganymede, and the cube between Ganymede and Callisto.
Kepler thought that there were six planets because God had shaped the cosmos around the five platonic solids. The three ‘semiregular’ solids would similarly explain why there were four moons of Jupiter.
Perhaps someone who is a better artist than I am could draw a diagram of the three rhombic solids and the orbs of the four Galilean moons in the style of Kepler's famous diagram of the Platonic solids between the orbs of the planets.
