Science Technology Society

SHOTnews.net A web log of the Society for the History of Technology

mathscinet

history of science, technology, and medicine

on faculty at University of Virginia

John Carson

The International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB) brings together scholars from diverse disciplines, including the life sciences as well as history, philosophy, and social studies of science. ISHPSSB summer meetings are known for innovative, transdisciplinary sessions, and for fostering informal, co-operative exchanges and on-going collaborations.

Harvard's new "open collection" contributes to the understanding of the global, social-history, and public-policy implications of diseases and offers important historical perspectives on the science and the public policy of epidemiology today.

Historians, sociologists, philosophers and sometimes scientists themselves have begun to ask fundamental questions about how the institution of science is structured and how it knows what it knows. David Cayley talks to some of the leading lights of this

One in a series of eleven Memoranda detailing the Distributed Adaptive Message Block Network, a proposed digital data communications system based on a distributed network concept. It introduces the system concept and outlines the requirements for and design considerations of such a system, especially in regard to implications for its use in the 1970s. In particular, the Memorandum is directed toward examining the use of redundancy as one means of building communications systems to withstand heavy enemy attacks.

The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a Digital Library portal for researchers in Astronomy and Physics, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. The ADS maintains three bibliographic databases containing more than 6.9 million records: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and arXiv e-prints. The main body of data in the ADS consists of bibliographic records, which are searchable through highly customizable query forms, and full-text scans of much of the astronomical literature which can be browsed or searched via our full-text search interface. Integrated in its databases, the ADS provides access and pointers to a wealth of external resources, including electronic articles, data catalogs and archives. We currently have links to over 7.6 million records maintained by our collaborators.

...Historians of science have always had a soft spot for the history of theoretical physics. The great theoretical advances of this century -- relativity and quantum mechanics -- have been documented in fascinating historical accounts that have captivated the mind of the cultivated public. There are no comparable studies of the relations between science and engineering. Breaking with the tradition of the Fachidiot, theoretical physicists have bestowed their romantic autobiographies on the world, portraying themselves as the high priests of the reigning cult.

ECHO (Exploring and Collecting History Online) is a directory to 5,000+ websites concerning the history of science, technology, and industry.

In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation in Hartford to correct a seizure disorder, only to emerge from it fundamentally and irreparably changed. He developed a syndrome neurologists call profound amnesia. He had lost the ability to form new memories. For the next 55 years, each time he met a friend, each time he ate a meal, each time he walked in the woods, it was as if for the first time. And for those five decades, he was recognized as the most important patient in the history of brain science.