Month: July 2016
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SSK.O. ?
The recent discovery of gravitational waves has impressed many people and has caused considerable stir in the community of physicists. Surprisingly this commotion has not spread to the community of historians of science. This is surprising because I believe that the claim to have detected gravitational waves constitutes a serious blow to the stronger versions…
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‘There he is, God, the Father’
In the winter of 1980, during the final months of her nearly 32-year reign, Juliana of the Netherlands received multiple distraught letters from subjects deeply disturbed by a news item making waves in national media.[1] In December, the Dutch Telegraaf had reported that a Leiden internist had taken blood samples from foetuses aborted in the…
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History of science in comic books
Fred de Heij (illustraties), Ad Maas (tekst), Ehrenfest! (Museum Boerhaave, Leiden 2015), 50 pagina’s, € 7,95. Als er één natuurkundige een stripverhaal waardig is, dan is het Ehrenfest. Zijn leven is op zich al bijna een stripverhaal. Deze energieke fysicus wist in een tijd van verwarrende ontwikkelingen de natuurkunde te verlevendigen door deze te vatten…