Category Archives: Local Heroes
The house where Emmy lived
Yesterday Paul Halpern at PACHS posted a nice short piece with a photo of the grave stone of the German mathematician Emmy Noether at Bryn Mawr College. As I wrote in an earlier post I (almost) live in Emmy’s home … Continue reading
Filed under History of Mathematics, Local Heroes
Nürnberg: Pencil Capital of the World!
The title of this post is something I wrote in a comment on my previous post on Conrad Gesner. Nürnberg which is home-base to two of the world’s largest produces of drawing and writing instruments Faber-Castell and Staedtler Mars, both … Continue reading
Filed under Local Heroes, Renaissance Science
One day later
In my last post I commented on the priority disputes that Galileo carried out with other users of the telescope in the early years of telescopic astronomy. Some of his most vitriolic comments were launched from the pages of his … Continue reading
Filed under History of Astrology, History of Astronomy, Local Heroes
Emmy and the Habilitation
This is my contribution to Ada Lovelace Day1 I live on the edge of the university town of Erlangen in Franconia. Because I work afternoons and evening I go most mornings into the town to do my shopping, visit various … Continue reading
Filed under History of Mathematics, Local Heroes
What’s in a Name?
Today is also the 533 rd. anniversary of the death of the 15th century’s most important mathematician and astronomer, John Miller. Now anybody reading the previous sentence is probably thinking who the f##k is John Miller? Shall we try with … Continue reading
Filed under History of Astronomy, Local Heroes, Renaissance Science
RIP Mr Ohm
On this day 155 years ago Georg Simon Ohm, he of the resistance omega, departed this life. Almost every day I walk past the little house in Erlangen in which he and his brother Martin, an algebraic logician, were born. … Continue reading
Filed under Local Heroes
City Seductions
This weekend the Nürnberg Stadt(ver)führungen 2009 are taking place and I am involved. The name is a play on words in German, combining the words Stadt (city) Verführung (seduction) and Führung (guided tour). The principle is actually quite simple, over … Continue reading
Filed under Local Heroes
Local Historian
I am a member of that oft ridiculed specious the local historian. A figure much loved by the makers of Hollywood B-movies and TV crime series. The local historian an eccentric, pipe smoking, intellectual figure, and if English, usually with … Continue reading
Filed under Local Heroes
A loser who was really a winner.
Christoph Clavius (1538-1612) Educational Reformer. There is an unfortunate tendency amongst non-specialists when viewing the history of science to divide the scientists of the past into ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, famous examples being Copernicus and Ptolemaeus or Darwin and Lamarck. Regarded … Continue reading
Filed under Local Heroes, Small animals also make manure
