Events for November 2008
November 12, 2008
Brian Kernighan, Princeton University
Informal Discussion: “The Origins and Evolution of the C Programming Language and Other Languages”
Computer and Information Sciences, Temple University | Visit site »
Time: 2:30 - 3:30 p.m.
Place: Rm 6 (ground floor), Wachman Hall, 1805 North Broad Street
Also see listing for 3:45 p.m.
November 12, 2008
Brian Kernighan, Princeton University
CIS Distinguished Lecture Series: “The Changing Face of Programming”
Computer & Information Sciences, Temple University | Visit site »
Time: 3:45 - 4:45 p.m.
Place: Rm 447, Wachman Hall, 1805 N. Broad Street
Brian Kernighan received his BASc from the University of Toronto in 1964 and a PhD in electrical engineering from Princeton in 1969. He was in the Computing Science Research center at Bell Labs until 2000, and is now in the Computer Science Department at Princeton. He is the author of eight books and some technical papers, and holds four patents. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2002. His research areas include programming languages, tools and interfaces that make computers easier to use, often for non-specialist users. He is also interested in technology education for non-technical audiences.
November 22, 2008 - April 19, 2009
“Hadrosaurus foulkii: The Dinosaur That Changed the World”
The Academy of Natural Sciences | Visit site »
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the scientific description of Hadrosaurus foulkii. This dinosaur occupies a singular place in the history of paleontology. At the time of its description by Joseph Leidy in 1858, Hadrosaurus was the world’s most completely known dinosaur. When the skeletal mount, a collaboration of Leidy with British sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, was put on display at the Academy in 1868, it was the first dinosaur skeleton ever mounted and would serve as a model for future dinosaur mounts in museums everywhere.
November 3, 2008
Rosemary Stevens, Weill Cornell Medical College and University of Pennsylvania
“U.S. Veterans Hospitals and the Politics of Scandal, 1918-1925”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Place: 337 Claudia Cohen Hall
Rosemary Stevens is DeWitt Wallace Distinguished Scholar, Social Medicine and Public Policy Program, Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Emeritus Professor, Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania.
November 4, 2008
Pierre Teissier
“The Fluoride Glass Case (1970-2000), or How a Chemical Dwarf Nearly Turned the Giant of Telecom Upside Down”
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
In the early 1970s, in a humble laboratory in the French province of Brittany, a Ph.D. student of mineral chemistry synthesized by chance a new glass composed of fluorine. Even if it was the first mention of a fluoride glass, it was hardly noticed by the academic community. As a matter of fact the chemical compound could have remained unknown, if not for some researchers from Bell Labs at Murray Hill who exhumed it two years later to point out its potential use as optical fiber to replace silica. Within a few months a shock wave passed through the telecom industry and gave rise to long-term, international efforts of R&D.
This case of serendipity will give the opportunity to describe the different scientific cultures involved—of solid-state chemistry in Europe and of materials sciences and engineering in America—as well as to analyze the structures and dynamics of a hybrid, occidental community in which academic, industrial, and political worlds were closely linked around epistemic, commercial, and strategic stakes.
After scientific studies in physics and chemistry, Pierre Teissier turned toward history of science and technology in 2003. His Ph.D. dissertation (2004–2007) recounts the emergence of solid-state chemistry in France after World War II. His work focuses on recent science through the dynamics of scientific communities, the relationships between science and society, and the instrumentation.
November 5, 2008
“Bartram’s Papers - Reconsidered”: Lecture & Show and Tell
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
RSVP: rsvp@bartramsgarden.org or 215-729-5281, ext 115
Peruse the Bartram’s Papers collection with Bartram’s Garden curator Joel Fry and Artist Mark Dion. Learn stories of the explorations of John and William Bartram and their cronies from letters, journals, maps, and deeds.
November 6, 2008
Steve Meyer, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
“The Legacy of the Model T: ‘Modern Times’ and the New World of Work, 1908-1945”
Hagley Museum and Library, Center for the History of Business, Technology and Society | Visit site »
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: Hagley Museum and Library
Information: Carol Lockman, clockman@Hagley.org or 302-658-2400
Steve Meyer is Professor of History/Urban Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. As a path-breaking historian of the automobile industry, Meyer will reflect on the many connections between Ford and our modern era. His talk is the keynote address for the Hagley’s “Automobility Conference” (see November 7).
November 7, 2008
Hagley Conference: “Automobility, the 100th Anniversary of the Model T”
Hagley Museum and Library, Center for the History of Business, Technology and Society | Visit site »
Time: 8:30 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.
Place: Hagley Museum and Library
Information: Carol Lockman, clockman@hagley.org or 302-658-2400, ext. 243
Program and Registration Form
The appearance of Ford’s Model T automobile in 1908 ushered in a century in which motorized vehicles spread across the American landscape, reshaping business and commerce, creating new industries, and generating endless technological innovations. For a conference marking the Model T’s 100th anniversary, the Center for the History of Business, Technology and Society has assembled thirteen papers that reflect broadly on the impact of motor vehicles since the Model T’s introduction.
The conference begins on the evening of Thursday, November 6, with a keynote address by Steve Meyer (see listing for November 6). On Friday, November 7, four panels will offer insights into the impact of passenger vehicles on our society, ranging from the challenges of keeping cars working to figuring out how to deliver the mail. Other papers address how buses came to look the way they do, and why they lost women riders to cars; the politics of Boston’s “Big Dig”; creating the rules of the road for drivers; the prosaic yet enduring challenge of snow removal; and the new steel technologies that made the striking cars of the mid-1930s possible. A final session will consider the international impact of the model T with presentations by American, French and Dutch scholars.
All sessions will take place in the Soda House of the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. There is no fee to attend but registration is required. To register or to obtain more information, contact Carol Lockman, clockman@Hagley.org or 302-658-2400.
November 10, 2008
Karen Detlefsen, Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania
“Ideas and Institutions: Some Thoughts on How to Think About Women’s Role in the Emergence of Modern Science”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Place: 337 Claudia Cohen Hall
November 11, 2008
Patrick J. Boner, Johns Hopkins University
“Kepler’s Earthly Alembic and the Distillation of Weather Conditions”
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
Johannes Kepler conceived of the earth as an animate being, performing natural processes in the same way as other organisms. In opposition to prevailing opinion Kepler argued that these processes proved the existence of a sublunar soul. Boner suggests that Kepler’s animate conception of the earth, expressed in his earliest writings, stemmed in part from his knowledge of alchemy. Further, he shows how this knowledge informed his innovative portrayal and prediction of weather conditions.
Patrick J. Boner received his Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of History of Science and Technology, Johns Hopkins University. Patrick’s research on early modern cosmology has recently led him to the role of alchemy in the interpretation of celestial novelties at the turn of the seventeenth century. Patrick is currently preparing for publication his doctoral dissertation, “Kepler’s Living Cosmos: Bridging the Celestial and Terrestrial Realms.”
November 12, 2008
Karol Weaver, Susquehanna University
“Good Neighbors: Women and Health Care in Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Coal Region”
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Place: 2U Conference Room, Claire Fagin Hall, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
Neighborhood women—medical caregivers who offered aid to family members and neighbors—were an important source of health care for female residents and children of the anthracite coal region. Using domestic medicine, these women extended their maternal roles beyond the confines of their own homes and out into the homes of their neighbors. While caring for the sick, these women doctored their feminine identities. Yet, as the maternal roles of women changed and the status of physicians improved during the second half of the twentieth century, much of the work once completed by neighborhood women came to be done by family doctors. Karol Weaver, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, Department of History, Susquehanna University.
November 12, 2008
Stacey C. Peeples, Curator - Lead Archivist, Pennsylvania Hospital
“258 Years of Caring for Philadelphia’s Sick”
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Established in 1751 and most famously known as America’s first hospital, Pennsylvania Hospital was also the first hospital in American organized exclusively for the medical treatment and care of people deemed the “sick poor and lunatics.” Before that time, psychological and emotional disorders were not treated as curable conditions. Spend an evening with Stacey C. Peeples, curator-lead archivist at Pennsylvania Hospital, as she shares the rich history of this extraordinary institution and its many other firsts in the medical community.
November 12, 2008
Climate Crises in Human History
Penn Museum and Penn Humanities Forum | Visit site »
Location: University of Pennsylvania Museumof Archaeology and Anthropology
5:00 to 6:30 p.m.
Penn Humanities Forum on Change
Climate Change: Moral and Political Challenges
Dale Jamieson, Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, New York University, talks about the challenges facing humanists who try to address the topic of global climate change. This program is part of the 2008-2009 Penn Humanities Forum on the topic of Change.
7:30-9:30 p.m.
International Catastrophes Conference 2008
Climate Crises in Human History
FREE for both Programs.
Pre-registration is requested. Call (215) 898-2680 or click here to register.
November 12, 2008
Film: “The Uncommon Man”
Hagley Museum and Library | Visit site »
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: Hagley Museum and Library, Soda House Auditorium
Join Hagley for a film produced by the Atomic Heritage Foundation about the life of Crawford Greenewalt. In 1959, Crawford Greenewalt wrote: ”The story of America is the story of common men who were inspired to uncommon levels of accomplishment.” No one fits that description better than its author. The son of a physician, Greenewalt rose to incredible heights. A key figure in the Manhattan Project, Greenewalt also made major contributions to chemical engineering, ran the DuPont Company, and published a definitive study of the world’s hummingbirds. The film tells the story of his amazing life. A reception will follow the lecture.
November 14, 2008
Alan Bewell, University of Toronto
“Colonial Natures in Translation”
Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University | Visit site »
Time: 10:15 a.m.
Place: 211 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University
Commentator: William Howarth, Princeton University
Copies of the paper are available by contacting Jennifer Houle at jhoule@princeton.edu one week before the date of the seminar.
Alan Bewell, Professor of English at the University of Toronto, is interested in the relationship between literature, medicine, and science, particularly within the context of British colonialism. His ongoing work involves literary representation of disease, and he is currently writing a book on Romanticism and natural history.
November 14, 2008
John Stillwell, University of San Francisco
Fall 2008 Mathematics Colloquium: “The Long Flirtation Between Logic and Combinatorics”
Department of Mathematics, West Chester University | Visit site »
Time: 3:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Place: UNA 161, West Chester University
Information: mfisher@wcupa.edu or sgupta@wcupa.edu
In the mid-17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a “calculus ratiocinator” that would settle all disputes in logic by combinatorial computation. But little happened until the development of set theory and symbolic logic in the 19th century, and the startling discovery of Godel incompleteness in 1930. This led to the search for natural theorems not provable by finitary methods--a search that turned up some remarkable theorems of combinations in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, with the assistance of some eminent mathematicians, logic and combinatorics seem on the brink of living happily ever after.
John Stillwell taught at Monash University in Melbourne from 1970 to 2001 before taking his present position at the University of San Francisco, in 2002. He is known for his books on a wide range of mathematical topics, among them Mathematics and Its History (Springer 2002).
November 17, 2008
Timothy Mitchell, New York University
“Carbon Democracy”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Place: 337 Claudia Cohen Hall, University of Pennsylvania
November 18, 2008
Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, Edelstein Fellow, Chemical Heritage Foundation
“British and American Models of Chemical Education in Meiji Japan: Similarities and Differences”
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
Japan underwent a process of institutionalization of Western-style scientific and technological education in many fields during the Meiji period (1868–1912). American and British teachers reigned in Japanese higher education between the 1860s and 1880s, and during this period many Japanese students traveled overseas to American and British universities and colleges to finish their training. As one of the first academic subjects institutionalized in Japanese higher education, chemistry was at the center of this educational development. In this lecture Kikuchi shows that the American and British, not German, dominance of higher education in early Meiji Japan had major consequences for Japanese higher education in chemistry, and he compares British and American models conceived by contemporary Japanese.
Yoshiyuki Kikuchi is a Sidney M. Edelstein Fellow at CHF for 2008–2009. He was awarded B.A. and M.Sc. degrees in the history of science by the University of Tokyo. He received a Ph.D. from the Open University, United Kingdom, for his dissertation on “The English Model of Chemical Education in Meiji Japan: Transfer and Acculturation.” Kikuchi is broadening his research interests to include the U.S.-Japan nexus in chemistry and 20th-century science and technology in Japan.
November 19, 2008
Afaf I. Meleis, Dean, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
“Women at Risk: A Historical Perspective”
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Place: 2U Conference Room, Claire Fagin Hall, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
The historical roots of women’s health care research and agenda were informed by values and assumptions that stereotyped women and their places and position in society. Dr. Afaf will discuss some of the theoretical assumptions and will challenge the group to think about the role that nursing scholarship may have played in substituting views of women as subjects and objects, to view women as agents of their own bodies and care.
Afaf I. Meleis, Ph.D., Dr.PS(Hon.), FAAN, is the Margaret Bond Simon Dean of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Professor of Nursing and Sociology, and Director of the School’s WHO Collaborating Center for Nursing and Midwifery Leadership.
November 19, 2008
David Kirsch, University of Maryland
“The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History”
Hagley Museum and Library, Fall Lecture Series | Visit site »
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: Hagley Library, Copeland Room
David Kirsch will discuss his book on automobiles, which considers the relationship of technology, society and the environment. He will explain why the gasoline engine became the dominant propulsion device of electric engines--and why a given technology’s superiority over another cannot be determined without taking into account the social context. Kirsch is Associate Professor in the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.
November 19, 2008
Howard Markel, University of Michigan
“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bird Flu Pandemic: How Medical History Can Inform Health Policy in the 21st Century”
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Section on Medical History | Visit site »
Time: 6:15 p.m.
Place: The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Pre-registration required, at http://www.collegeofphysicians.org or call 215.563.3737, ext. 304
Samuel X Radbill Lecture by Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases and the George E. Wantz Professor of the History of Medicine, University of Michigan. Reception follows program.
November 20, 2008
George Rosenstein, Franklin & Marshall College, Emeritus
“How Did Gibbs Discover the Gibbs Phenomena? A Speculation.”
Philadelphia Area Seminar on the History of Mathematics (PASHoM) | Visit site »
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: Villanova University
Although it is very easy with computers to demonstrate the Gibb’s Phenomena to today’s students of Fourier Series, it was not a simple matter in 1899. Professor Rosenstein will trace the interesting history leading up to Gibbs’s announcement and will then speculate on his discovery.
November 20, 2008
Janet Browne, Harvard University
“The Many Lives of Charles Darwin”
University of Pennsylvania, School of Arts and Sciences | Visit site »
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Janet Browne, Aramont Professor in the History of Science at Harvard University, is author of the critically acclaimed two-volume biography, Charles Darwin: Voyaging (1995), covering the naturalist’s youth and years on HMS Beagle, and Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (2002), about his post-Beagle years through the publication of his theory of evolution and beyond. In this program, Dr. Browne shares what she believes is most important about the life and work of Charles Darwin—and why his influence continues to resound 150 years after the printing of his seminal work, On the Origin of Species.
The program is co-sponsored by Penn Museum, the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences, School of Medicine, School of Engineering, and the Provost’s Office as part of the Year of Evolution program.
November 21, 2008
“Understanding Darwin: The Legacy of Evolution”
University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Place: Auditorium (G17), Claudia Cohen Hall,
University of Pennsylvania
Symposium with lectures by John Beatty, Rasmus Winther, PZ Myers, Jane Maienschein, and Janet Browne, with discussion to follow.
The program is co-sponsored by Penn Museum, the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences, School of Medicine, School of Engineering, and the Provost’s Office as part of the Year of Evolution program.
November 24, 2008
Beth Linker, University of Pennsylvania
“Limb Lab: Prosthetic Design in World War I America”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2008 Workshop | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Place: 337 Claudia Cohen Hall