The Birth and Death of Astronomy: The Contribution of Freeman Dyson to the UK Museum of Egypt, Ilona Regulski, and the Scientific Foundations of Science

The 196 bc Rosetta Stone is the most visited object in the British Museum, London — a source of fascination for its role in explicating Egyptian hieroglyphics. The British Museum exhibit on Egyptologist Ilona Regulski states that it changed their understanding of the ancient world. In this companion book, expert contributors vitalize two centuries of Egyptology with erudition and entrancing illustrations.

When it came to acceptance into the establishment, theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson had a contrarian streak. After a colleague extolled his work at a 1949 conference, physicist Richard Feynman told Dyson: “Well, Doc, you’re in.” But Dyson proudly never finished his PhD. The editor of the collection of tributes says he was a ” determined autodidact” who “developed a lifelong suspicion of organized curricula”. His early denial of the scientific consensus on climate change might have been related to that.

Silk won a doctorate in 1968, a year before Apollo 11 went to the Moon. In this book setting out his vision for the next half-century, he argues with passion for further lunar exploration as soon as possible. He posits that only telescopes on the Moon can realistically probe the origins of the Universe and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. But he recognizes the commercial and environmental risks. He states that international legal treaties must forbid “freefor-all lunar exploitation reminiscent of the Wild West”.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, published from 1665 in London, is regarded as the first scientific journal. Four historians recount the society’s publishing history up to 2015, including the journal Proceedings, with erudition and acuteness. They reject the idea that the 1665 journal established four basic principles of current scientific publishing: registration, verification (peer review), dissemination and archiving. They show the gradual emergence of these as science evolved.

A Conversation with David Chanoff and Louis Sullivan about the History of Inequality in Health Care: The Great Divide and Flicker’s Legacy

David Chanoff and Louis Sullivan wrote about the disparity between the death rate for African Americans and the white population during the first year of the COVID-19 epidemic. Their history of inequity starts withhealth during slavery, and focuses on the Association of Minority Health Professions Schools co- founded by Sullivan in 1976. Sullivan became Head of the US Department of Health and Human Services after the group gained national political influence.

The median male worker in the United States isn’t earning as much as they used to, but the 400 richest families pay less in taxes than any other income group. austerity measures promoted over the last century include fiscal tightening and cuts in wages and benefits. She focused on 1920s liberal-democracy Britain and fascist Italy and found that austerity was used as a tool of class control.

Wolfgang Pauli, a founder of quantum mechanics, had a different take on Schmutzphysik. Felix Flicker made this the opening chapter title of his introduction to the field which employs one-third of today’s physicists. He says that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. They don’t exist in a vacuum yet, and sound travels through matter as quasiparticles, which can be measured.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04570-y

Petrols as catalysts of World War II: Keith Fisher’s fascinating history of warp fuel and the floodwatering Noah’s Ark

During the First World War, monthly fuel-oil consumption by Britain’s warships surged: from 60,000 tonnes in 1914 to around 310,000 tonnes in 1918, most of it imported from the United States after Russian and Romanian supplies were cut off. Oil might even have been a catalyst for the war’s outbreak, proposes Keith Fisher, a journalist and researcher on corporate and environmental issues. His deeply researched, inevitably lengthy history of oil from Neanderthals to 1918 includes its purported use in waterproofing Noah’s Ark.

Hassett was studying dental anthropology to understand the lives of humans in ancient teeth. Her book looks at a different aspect of childhood. Humans take so long to grow up. We are playing even when other apes are reproducing. What’s weird about a human childhood? She looks at a lot of things, such as the human fondness for formal education and love of the written word.