Robert Hooke (1635–1703) is commonly credited for introducing the term cell into biology when describing the microscopic structure of plant tissues in his Micrographia of 1665. This narrative ignores that, at the time, cell was an established term denoting linearly arranged elements of structures with functions in the storage, modification and transport of materials (e.g. the uterus, colon, brain,

In this article we consider technical development and its role in digital humanities research efforts. We critique the concept that ‘novel’ development is crucial for innovation and tie this thinking to the corporatization of higher education. We suggest instead that sustainable technical development practices require a combination of need, creativity and reuse of existing technical infrastructure

In this essay I argue that Humphry Davy uses the figure of Proteus to illustrate his conception of a world in a state of perpetual change. Over the past four years, 11 417 pages of Davy's notebooks have been transcribed by more than 3500 volunteers from around the world. These have revealed the extent of Davy's poetic output and confirmed his world view that matter is constantly being made, unmade

In 1924 Casey Wood, founder of the Blacker Wood Library at McGill University in Montreal, acquired a large portfolio of paintings of Indian birds from an antiquarian dealer in London, England. In addition to 121 watercolours of birds, the portfolio contained a dozen botanical sketches and 31 watercolours of Indian fish. After further research, Wood concluded that the birds had been painted by Lady

Reading the Mind in the Eyes is a psychometric test first published by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues in 1997 and revised in 2001. It was designed to measure subjects' ‘mentalizing’ ability, or their capacity to attribute cognitive and emotional states to others. Although originally developed and used for autistic adults, this instrument has proven remarkably durable in the succeeding two decades

This article explores the biographies of two gentlewomen, María de Betancourt (1758–1824) and Joana de Vigo (1779–1855), who lived respectively in Tenerife and Menorca, two crucial nodes in the scientific, commercial and military global networks of the late eighteenth century. Some of their scientific and literary contributions are mapped, paying particular attention to how they became active in contemporaneous

This special issue investigates women's scientific networks in Europe roughly between 1720 and 1830, an interesting period from a gender point of view. The articles analyse the role that networks played in enabling, shaping and circumscribing women in their intellectual pursuits, social aspirations and ideals. They also focus on the nature of the members' relationships, how women negotiated their scientific

Known as a translator and illustrator of chemical texts, Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier (1758–1836) has been often represented as the associate of male savants and especially of her husband, the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier. This article explores her biography from a different angle and focuses on her trajectories as a secrétaire; namely, someone whose main charge was to store and exchange

In 1781, the first issue of The Lady's Poetical Magazine lauded Queen Charlotte (1744–1818) for her role in furthering the sciences, and indeed, to give but one example, the queen's interest in the geological researches of her reader, Jean André de Luc (1727–1817), induced him to write a treatise on his system for her perusal. Besides assembling a significant library containing volumes on all kinds

In 1667, twenty years before Isaac Newton published his mathematization of physics, and more than ten years before the publication of Giovanni Borelli's De motu animalium, the Danish anatomist Nicolaus Steno published an entirely new geometrical theory of muscle motion in the book Elementorum myologiæ specimen. Historians of science have studied this book in recent decades, but the recent rediscovery

This article discusses the dynamics between Western experts and local technocrats in Turkey in their quest for scientific development in the first decades of modern Turkey. Based on primary archival sources, it examines the work of İhsan Doğramacı (d. 2010) and Ş. Raşit Hatipoğlu (d. 1973), who led various projects in the fields of medical and agricultural development. İhsan Doğramacı, a prominent

Printed images played a role in the strategies of savant amateurs of the Enlightenment in consolidating their scientific networks, traced here through the case study of Johann Heinrich Merck. Convinced of the importance of his palaeontological findings, Merck developed an impressive network from Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Samuel Thomas Sömmerring to Petrus Camper and Joseph Banks. Academic celebrities

This paper explores female networking practices by comparing cases two centuries apart, an experiment made possible by a history of science renewed by a mutually enriching dialogue with science, technology and society studies (STS). The first part analyses the networking strategies of Clotilde Tambroni (1758–1817), a scholar who managed a university career in Bologna under the shadow of the Napoleonic

This article discusses the participation of women in the development of eighteenth-century French political economy and, more specifically, their role in the network of a prominent group of French economic authors of this period, known as the physiocrats. Our argument is that women played a significant, if seldom visible, role in the creation and dissemination of the ‘new science’ of physiocratic political

The mid sixteenth century wave of encyclopaedic publications about fish and other water creatures introduced massive numbers of newly made naturalia images. This article concentrates on the phase of image making and collecting that came before print. The focus is on the lost album with fish drawings created before 1551 by the Venetian humanist Daniele Barbaro and his personal painter Maestro Plinio

In 1974 the Nobel laureate Sir Robert Robinson OM PRS (1886–1975) was gathering information for the memoirs he was writing. As part of his research, he recorded a conversation with his former student, fellow Nobel laureate Professor Dorothy Hodgkin OM FRS (1910–1994), during which she outlined the key stages of her career. She explained the principles underlying crystallography and described her work

In 1665, Thomas Sprat's efforts to defend the hospitality bestowed on Samuel Sorbière, when the French savant visited London, were published in his Letter containing some observations on Monsieur de Sorbier's voyage into England. This book, for which Sprat stopped work on his now more famous History of the Royal-Society, challenged Sorbière's account of how he had been ‘entertained’, insisting he ‘be

During the mid-nineteenth century, British naval expeditions navigated the world as part of the most extensive scientific undertaking of the age. Between 1839 and the early 1850s, the British government orchestrated a global surveying of the Earth's magnetic phenomena: this was a philosophical enterprise of unprecedented state support and geographical extent. But to conduct this investigation relied

Two pioneers of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg, were both nominated by Paul Dirac for election to the Royal Society in 1945. At first there was considerable opposition to Heisenberg's election from Max Born, Rudolf Peierls and Francis Simon. These three physicists were all refugees from Germany who had reservations about Heisenberg's activities in World War II. Born gave

This project illustrates as-yet-uncharted psychiatric patients from the Royal Edinburgh Asylum (REA) around the time of World War I, predominantly ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers. Primary patient notes help to elucidate definitions, symptoms and perceptions of ‘shell-shock’, in addition to its links with other psychiatric conditions. This includes general paralysis of the insane (GPI), alcohol excess, mania

Between 1605 and 1608 Knole was transformed into a dazzling Renaissance palace by Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset. All around its largest Gallery ran a frieze of nearly fifty oval portraits, of which thirty-eight survive on their original rectangular framed oak panels. In 1702 the paintings were prised from their walls and moved elsewhere in the house. The surviving panels had deteriorated, mostly

Scholarship on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her involvement in the introduction of smallpox inoculation into 1720s English society generally concurs that, were it not for Montagu, inoculation might never, or would have taken significantly longer to, come about. This article argues that whilst Montagu can take the credit for popularizing the notion of inoculating against smallpox, it was not the method

In this study of the history of brain injury, I take up the discursive study of medical cases as a genre for the purposes of illustrating clinically important, philosophically meaningful and socially pertinent elements of medical patients’ lives. My objective is to assert the value of single cases, which derives from the way they allow others insight into significant and otherwise often overlooked

An ample number of studies have shown that during the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, botany attracted the attention and involvement of women not only as readers of literature on the subject but also as participants in botanical activities and as authors. However, women are still largely absent from the historiography of Portuguese botany in this period. This article

No person proposed to the early Royal Society has a less certain biography than Giles Rawlins. A ‘Mr. Rawlins’ was proposed as a candidate for election on 26 December 1660 in a group of seven. The other members of this group were Robert Boyle, Henry Oldenburg, John Denham, Elias Ashmole, John Evelyn and Nathaniel Henshaw. But whereas these six other men are greater or lesser luminaries of the Society

When an unknown sea creature was washed ashore on the Orkney Islands in September 1808, the Edinburgh anatomist John Barclay declared that this was the first solid scientific evidence for the existence of the ‘great sea snake’. The testimony of witnesses along with some of its preserved body parts were examined by both the Wernerian Natural History Society in Edinburgh and the surgeon and anatomist

This article uses the records at the Royal Mint to explore how Isaac Newton worked with metal beyond his alchemical and natural philosophical pursuits. It demonstrates how institutional paperwork can be used to think in new ways about the management of working resources as well as the relationship of material and mental practices across the linked urban worlds of state, science and finance. It reveals

In the introduction to this issue of Notes and Records, I discuss key arguments of each of the essays and draw links between them. This volume is a rendering of both theory and practice in the history and narrative of neurology, facial difference, autism, face blindness and traumatic brain injury. The essays offer deep analytic insights but also a provocation: how do we frame individual cases and lived

Visualization is central to both the practice of astronomical science and its popularization. However, the dominant forms of imagery in many forms of mid-nineteenth century astronomical popularization are not observational images but rather geometrical diagrams. I describe two modes of visual representation of astronomy in this period and argue that these were based in two different conceptions of

The examination of unknown sources reveals that by the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, there was a widespread awareness in Italy of the damage produced by the passing of time on books and manuscripts. The expression used to describe such cases was lettere svanite or caduche, which indicated that the writing had faded and was almost unreadable, and, as such, hard to

This paper sets out a new interpretation of the agency of scientific instruments in the field. It uses Actor Network Theory as a conceptual framework, which invokes the concept of non-human agency, meaning that scientific instruments can affect outcomes and processes. It argues that the instruments taken on expeditions by travellers on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) had agency in knowledge

It has been said that the Royal Society of the eighteenth century was in decline. The ground-breaking experimentation of the Restoration period was long gone, to be followed by talk rather than action, and the pages of Philosophical Transactions were filled with papers by provincial clergymen on natural curiosities and antiquities. But the links between the Royal Society and the Spalding Gentlemen's

Conservation practice, material exploration and their respective ‘scientific’ rationales were not confined to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They also existed in the early modern and modern periods. The papers in this special issue seek to challenge the idea that these types of physical and intellectual interactions with collected objects only emerged in the Industrial Age. Great scientific

Simon-Suzanne-Nérée Boubée was born in Toulouse (France) in May 1806 and died in August 1862 in Luchon (France). This paper discusses Boubée's activities as a science popularizer exemplified through the journal L'Écho du Monde Savant, published in Paris from 1834 to 1846. L'Écho intended to ‘present a summary of the most important news taking place within the savant world’ to the public. In this journal

The three oil sketches on paper forming the basis of this study—all of elderly, male sitters—are attributed to unknown sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century Bolognese artists: painters associated with the Carracci family and their Academia degli Incaminati. This context was notable for its near-constant examination of the world around it through consistent drawing and painting, and for its success

Historians have unanimously credited Christopher Wren with having constructed a weather clock (a self-registering instrument) in the early 1660s. This conclusion was based on the account of the French diplomat Balthasar de Monconys, which included a sketch uncannily similar to an undated drawing by Wren of the weather clock. By critically re-examining the available sources, I argue that one can infer

Einstein became world famous on 7 November 1919, following press publication of a meeting held in London on 6 November 1919 where the results were announced of two British expeditions led by Eddington, Dyson and Davidson to measure how much background starlight is bent as it passes the Sun. Three data sets were obtained: two showed the measured deflection matched the theoretical prediction of Einstein's

In 1520, Segovia's rebel city council besieged the impregnable royal fortress located on a narrow stone outcrop at the far west of the city. The cathedral stood just in front of the fortress, and the rebels demolished part of the church's structure to use it as a secure stronghold. Beyond the physical damage, the revolt demonstrated the peril posed by the proximity of cathedral and castle. Unsurprisingly

Precisely how to reconstruct the planetary past is not predetermined. This article compares three contemporary plans, dreamed up in the United States during the Interwar and Depression years, that deploy diverse techniques to evoke extinct environments. Building on Martin Rudwick's historicization of ‘scenes from deep time’, this article develops the concept of designs on deep time to explain how public

In 1734 a young Fellow of the Royal Society, Taylor White, made a proposal to the Council that the dried plants in the Society’s RepositoryMuseum ‘be painted by the hand ofMrVanHuyssen’. Sir Hans Sloane, the President, added his support, and the Council adopted Mr White’s recommendation and charged him with engaging the botanical artist Jacob van Huysum (ca 1687–1740) to depict in watercolour the plants

Against an assumption that conservation practices only became ‘scientific’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this essay shows how, on the contrary, preservation techniques in early modern England were an inspiration for new forms of scientific inquiry and knowledge. Following the framework of ‘thrifty science’, the essay demonstrates how the thrifty value of making use and extending

In 1701, the Cotton Library became Britain's first nationally owned manuscript collection, before entering the newly instituted British Museum in 1757. In the intervening years it was threatened by damp, neglect, inadequate organization, and a fire that wrought havoc on its material's survival. Through a detailed analysis of the content, form and language of contemporary inventories and catalogues

A piece of historical research about the construction of the ancient Arch of Taq-iKisra, part of the imperial palace of the Sasanian Empire in the city of Ctesiphon, has been carried out. The information obtained, an analysis using graphic statics, the use of a physical model with hanging chains, and an ad hoc optimization program written in MATLAB have shown that the designer of this sixth century

This article enables an understanding of scientific practice and funding in a peripheral country ruled by a dictatorship in the interwar period, and thus provides the basis for comparison with studies of other non-democratic regimes. We examine the work of Portugal's Junta de Educação Nacional (National Education Board), which administered and provided funding for science from 1929 to 1936. Our findings

Havi Carel suggested that to ‘fully understand illness it also has to be studied as a lived experience … [in its] existential, ethical and social dimensions’. This paper focuses on empirical work with those with Möbius syndrome on face perception and its implications, on their resilience and on their first person experiences. Möbius is characterized by the congenital absence of movements of the facial

The downfall of the Parramatta Observatory during the 1840s led the British Government to reconsider the funding it provided to observatories. George Biddell Airy—the Astronomer Royal at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich—recommended the establishment of a central Colonial Board of Visitors (based in London) to oversee the management of observatories within the British Empire. The recommendation ultimately

Mycology, the study of fungi, is a relatively young and underexplored discipline with a strong culture of field collection and study. The Yorkshire Mycological Committee (YMC) of the Yorkshire Naturalist's Union, formed in 1892, became the first permanent mycological organization within Great Britain. Well renowned and highly competent, the members of the YMC espoused a distinctive philosophy and practice

The popularizer of astronomy Mary Proctor was well known in her days but has been little remembered since. A prominent lecturer and author, Proctor was trained in the craft of science writing by her father, Richard Proctor. She ‘held the very first place in the profession as a woman’ and promoted the role of women in science throughout her career. Her life illuminates many themes. Mary Proctor spanned

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS, established in 1825), similar to the academies of the old Soviet bloc, ran a research network from 1950 until 2019 when it was detached from the Academy. The first research institute of the HAS was the Institute of Biochemistry, which started its operation in 1950. Its first director was Imre Szörényi (1905–1959) who lived in emigration in Kiev until he was called

This article presents a hitherto unpublished account of a magical séance conducted by the virtuoso Thomas Henshaw (1618–1700), later Fellow of the Royal Society, while travelling in Venice ca 1648. The episode had previously been known through an account of it given by Robert Boyle, but in Boyle's version its protagonist was unclear. It is now for the first time revealed as Henshaw on the basis of

In 1758, Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) published the tenth edition of Systema Naturae, in which he formally described the most unique group of primates: lemurs. The story of the early human-mediated dispersal of lemurs from Madagascar, prior to their formalized descriptions, is a complex one. It touches on the birth of the standardization of modern zoology, empire building, and the growth of international

For almost 40 years, the British jurist and Fellow of the Royal Society Taylor White (1701–1772) actively engaged in commissioning artists to paint plants and animals for his ‘paper museum’. White amassed a collection of almost 1000 drawings of birds, mammals, fish, amphibians and reptiles, acquired by McGill University in 1927. His first recorded purchase was a watercolour by George Edwards (1694–1773)

This paper discusses heightened interest in the potential audibility of the aurora borealis during the First and Second International Polar Years (IPYs) of 1882–3 and 1932–3. Galvanized by a growing volume of local accounts expressing belief in the elusive noises, written by the inhabitants of the Shetland Islands, northern Canada, and Norway, auroral researchers of each era were determined to establish

Taylor White (1701–1772) was by profession a barrister and judge, active in public life in London. His life as a jurist and as the long-serving treasurer of the Foundling Hospital is documented in the records of his public appointments and in his own official correspondence. This article reveals the other Taylor White, a Fellow of the Royal Society (1725), and an active participant in the practice

As part of a themed print issue of Notes and Records dedicated to a research project surrounding the eighteenth-century Taylor White collection of animal paintings, this article provides context by describing the initial acquisition of the collection, and by situating it within the larger Blacker Wood Natural History Collection held at McGill University Library. Highlights of the Blacker Wood Collection

David Gregory's manuscript ‘Isaaci Neutoni methodus fluxionum’ is the first systematic presentation of the method of fluxions written by somebody other than Newton. It was penned in 1694, when Gregory was the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. I provide information about its content, sources and circulation. This short treatise reveals what Newton allowed to be known about his method in the

Between the 1750s and 1770s Taylor White compiled over 750 manuscript notes to accompany his collection of animal portraits. These notes are written on individual unbound sheets of paper, and offer descriptions of the birds, mammals and fish that he commissioned to be painted. Examination of the structure and content of White's notes reveals that he chose and edited information from published sources

In April 2020, the Bronx Zoo made a headline-grabbing announcement: one of their tigers tested positive for COVID-19, a striking example of zoos as microcosms of human health and medicine. Indeed, many diseases and health problems experienced by zoo animals are found in, and frequently linked to, humans. Furthermore, the veterinary care they receive often incorporates knowledge, tools and treatments