Tag: scientific society
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Henry Oldenburg’s Fear of the Post
Henry Oldenburg (c.1619-1677) had many things to be afraid of. He was perpetually short of money, he was once imprisoned on spurious grounds as a potential spy, and like most seventeenth-century people he lost numerous friends and family to communicable diseases. One other fear, though, recurs in the many letters he sent throughout his life:…
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Shortcuts to scholarly distinction: academic fraud in Dutch prize contests, ca. 1750-1900
Prize contests are not a medium many people would associate with science nowadays. Academic papers and books produced in the context of universities are the norm these days. Yet, this has not always been the case: historically, universities were primarily training grounds for generations of lawyers, theologians and doctors. A lot of interesting research went…