#Science History

[mineralsrocksandfossiltalks]

Throwback Thursday: Charlotte H. Murchison

This is Charlotte Murchison, wife of Roderick Murchison. She was born in Hampshire, England. She met Roderick in 1815 and they were married that same year. She had developed a love geology much earlier than her husband and had loved collecting and studying minerals. She encouraged her husband to return to geology and eventually, the moved to London so he could do just that.

She and her husband worked together both in the field and in their studies. She collected many fossils and was an exceptional painter. In fact, her fossil collection was so well-kept that it was studied by William Buckland and James Sowerby. Sowerby was so impressed by her sketches that he named an ammonite fossil she sketched after her, Ammonites murchisonae (now Ludwigia murchisonae).

She accompanied her husband and Charles Lyell to France and while they were out on their excursions, Charlotte would build panoramas of the region which would be incorporated into her husband’s work. Lyell was impressed with her skills at sketching and her diligence in labelling specimens. However, she had to push Lyell into allowing women to attend his geology lectures.

Sadly, due to her first trip to mainland Europe, Charlotte had contracted malaria which caused life long health problems and eventually killed her.

Thanks for coming to today’s lesson! Tune in tomorrow to learn more about the first land animal! Fossilize you later!

[rubiscodisco]

The US military has done thousands of unconscionable things, each one more evil than the last, but on top of all of those things, on a minor but more spiteful level, I'll also never forgive them for what they did to Lithium

[dndspellgifs]

look, I know I've talked about this essay (?) before but like,

If you ever needed a good demonstration of the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", have I got an exercise for you.

Somebody made a small article explaining the basics of atomic theory but it's written in Anglish. Anglish is basically a made-up version of English where they remove any elements (words, prefixes, etc) that were originally borrowed from romance languages like french and latin, as well as greek and other foreign loanwords, keeping only those of germanic origin.

What happens is an english which is for the most part intelligible, but since a lot everyday english, and especially the scientific vocabulary, has has heavy latin and greek influence, they have to make up new words from the existing germanic-english vocabulary. For me it kind of reads super viking-ey.

Anyway when you read this article on atomic theory, in Anglish called Uncleftish Beholding, you get this text which kind of reads like a fantasy novel. Like in my mind it feels like it recontextualizes advanced scientific concepts to explain it to a viking audience from ancient times.

Even though you're familiar with the scientific ideas, because it bypasses the normal language we use for these concepts, you get a chance to examine these ideas as if you were a visitor from another civilization - and guess what, it does feel like it's about magic. It has a mythical quality to it, like it feels like a book about magic written during viking times. For me this has the same vibe as reading deep magic lore from a Robert Jordan book.

[thebotanicalarcade]

Beatrix Potter

Writer, illustrator, conservationist, natural scientist

For the inaugural Arcade Feature, I'm excited to tell you about Beatrix Potter. Most people (including me) know her best for her picture books-

-which have sold over 250 million copies since they were published in the early 1900s.

Fun fact: In 1903, Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy, making him the oldest licensed character.

But what really caught my attention is the work she was doing before Peter Rabbit came along.

Beatrix Potter had a scientific eye for detail, and was able to faithfully depict the world around her. In particular, she was interested in mycology.

In 1897, she put forward a paper to the Linnean Society in London... but as a woman was not allowed to be a member of the society nor attend the meeting when her paper was read. When the society's members did not pay much attention to her work, and fearing her samples to be contaminated, Potter withdrew her paper, which became lost. Only after Potter left hundreds of mycological artworks to a museum in the Lake District, UK, on her death in 1943, were her scientific talents recognized... Potter's precise and beautiful paintings and drawings of fungi are now helping modern mycologists in their efforts to identify species.*

Potter eventually moved away from books in favor of land management and farming. She was a prize-winning sheep breeder and a prosperous farmer, and bought several farms surrounding her own to preserve the unique hill country landscape. Much of that land now constitutes the Lake District National Park.

Keep an eye out for more Beatrix Potter throughout the month of February.

* Fry, C., & Wayland, E. (2024). Introduction. In The Botanists’ Library, The Most Important Botanical Books in History (1st ed., pp. 9–10). introduction, Ivy Press.

More

[othmeralia]

When you accidentally type “moon faces” into Google instead of “moon phases.” Oops!⁠ ⁠ This resting moon face is from Liber Chronicarum (1493).⁠

[yeoldecryptid]

Ya know, sometimes a family is just a biologist, his brothers in Christ, and hundreds of pea plants.

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

how much of the fossil record do you think has been lost because of oil drilling / production?

How much? Hmmm, this is basically impossible to quantify, we would first need to know how large the fossil record was in the first place.

Human activity has certainly lead to the loss of many fossils, on the other hand such human activities also made paleontology only possible in the first place. It is no accident that this field established itself during the Industrial revolution, when quarrying and mining intensified. Human had known and wondered about fossils for a long time, but only a constant stream of new discoveries enabled Victorian scientists to reveal the first pages of the fossil record.

So although an incredible amount of fossils is lost each year thanks to mining, only these fresh exposures of deeper layers often times enable us to peak into these lost worlds.

On the other hand human activity seems insignificant compared to the fossils we lost to natural causes. The eastern US has for example far less dinosaur fossils because the glaciers of the last ice age scraped of all the Mesozoic rocks, grinding them into sand and gravel.

[unbfacts]

Before the asteroid impact hypothesis gained prominence in 1977, scientists proposed various theories to explain dinosaur extinction, including ideas such as "T. rex ate all the eggs of other dinosaurs" and "their brains shrank until they became too unintelligent to survive."

[cookiewishesyou]

On this February 18, 2025, Cookie wishes you a planetary 95th anniversary of the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh, also known as Pluto Day (1930)!

[arconinternet]

Your Trip Into Space (Book, Lynn Poole, 1953)

You can digitally borrow it here.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Science and Scientists Throughout History

It is easy enough to look through the records of history and pinpoint famous scientists who have made incredible contributions to the field of materials science and engineering. One can come up with a list of the top 100 most cited materials scientists published since January 2000, or generate a list of the top 100 moments in materials science history, or even just look up all the materials scientists important enough to have a Wikipedia page. None of these methods are comprehensive but none of them are inherently wrong if one is looking to celebrate scientific achievement through the ages. I used the list of top 100 moments to come up with many of the scientists (though not all) that I posted about on this blog over the past year.

However, it is important to acknowledge that science is - like life - a collaborative effort. Scientists build on the knowledge of those who come before them and publish to share their own discoveries with those who will come after. No one scientist ever accomplished any task alone.

Image source.

Be proud of what you contribute to the world, scientist or not! All the ScientistSaturday posts can be found here.

[mineralsrocksandfossiltalks]

Throwback Thursday: Let's Wander

In the early 20th century, instruments were invented that enabled geologists to measure the weak magnetic field produced by rocks. This led to an amazing discovery. Not all rocks had the same orientation of the dipole.

Why is that such a big deal? Let's imagine for a second that we are on the equator in South America where the inclination and declination should be 0 degrees. If you measure the weak magnetic field in a 100 million year old rock, you'll find that it doesn't point to the present day north pole. This is because it's declination is different than the declination the compass would normally display at that spot. We call this paleomagnetism.

So, why don't paleomagnetic dipoles point to today's north pole? That was a tough question to answer for a long time. Most geologists at the time still believed that the continents were in a fixed position so they concluded that the magnetic poles had moved over time. With this concept in mind, geologists set out to measure the "paleopoles". What they found surprised them.

They measured the paleomagnetism in a succession of rocks of different ages in the same general location on a continent. Seems simple enough...until they put multiple continents apparent polar-wander paths together.

If the pole was moving, all the polar-wander paths should match. Clearly, they do not. How is that possible? Unless Wegener was correct and the continents moved not the poles.

This combined with sea floor spreading really brough continental drift to reality for many geologists. Tune in tomorrow to learn about a fossil that was part of Wegener's evidence of continental drift. Fossilize you later!

[chaosremlin1]

We all adore Laika the space dog, and she deserves it.

but no one talks about Félicette, a french cat sent into space. She was sent up with electrodes in her brain, and electrocuted during the flight to stimulate her legs and muscles to move. Félicette survived the flight only to be euthanised so that her brain could be studied.

Félicette was chosen on a mission, survived despite the challenge only to be put down.

Félicette had been trained with 13 other cats. one was sent up after her, but upon a failed launch, the second cat had been exploded. most did not survive.

A monument was only erected 50 years after her space flight.

[dinosaurspen]

John von Neumann and Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) Director J. Robert Oppenheimer in front of the IAS Computer in Princeton, New Jersey. Ca. 1952 — Via CHM

From what I've read of their friendship/rivalry, this picture's always cracked me up. Particularly the way von Neumann is looking at Oppenheimer.

[thebotanicalarcade]

Arcade feature #1: Beatrix Potter

Boletus granulatus

More