Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte最新文献

{"title":"Die Lücke als Fund: Über eine Fehlstelle zur Familiengeschichte im Nachlass von Walther Gerlach (1889–1979)**","authors":"Johannes-Geert Hagmann","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202300008","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202300008","url":null,"abstract":"<p>„Ich muß schließen. Was wird man in 50 Jahren über uns erzählen?“¹ So beendete Walther Gerlach (1889–1979) einen im Jahr 1963 für die <i>Physikalischen Blätter</i> verfassten Aufsatz, in dem er eine kurze Chronologie der Physik in München von der Zeit Joseph von Fraunhofers (1787–1826) bis zu den Arbeiten Max von Laues (1879–1960) skizzierte. Die Beschäftigung mit der Geschichte seines eigenen Fachs, der Physik, aber auch dem Leben der vor ihm porträtierten Persönlichkeiten, gab dem 73-jährigen Wissenschaftler Anlass zur Selbstreflexion: Wie er zum damaligen Zeitpunkt für seine Studien, würden andere sich in Zukunft in seine Arbeit historisch vertiefen und hierzu Quellen heranziehen. Wenn nun nicht nach fünfzig, sondern nach sechzig Jahren der vorliegende Beitrag eine Lücke in Nachlass von Walther Gerlach diskutiert, so muss hier an erster Stelle das ausgeprägte Verständnis Gerlachs für die Mechanismen biographischer Überlieferungen und die Entstehung von Erinnerung hervorgehoben werden, das im Eingangszitat exemplarisch zu Ausdruck kommt.</p><p>Walther Gerlach gehörte zu den profiliertesten Physikern in Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert. Das nach dem Physiker Otto Stern (1888–1969) und ihm selbst benannte Experiment (Stern-Gerlach-Experiment) zum Nachweis der Richtungsquantelung des Drehimpulses bei Silberatomen von 1922 zählt zu den kanonischen Versuchen der Quantenmechanik² und ist auch heute noch unter diesem Namen ein Fixpunkt in der physikalischen Ausbildung an Universitäten weltweit. Während des Zweiten Weltkriegs gelangte Gerlach in die einflussreiche Position des Bevollmächtigten für Physik des Reichsforschungsrats (RFR) mit Beteiligung am deutschen Uranprojekt,³ nach Ende des Krieges und der Internierung in Farm Hall⁴ führte ihn seine Karriere als Hochschullehrer an der Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München unter anderem in die Ämter des Rektors der LMU (1948–1951), des Gründungspräsidenten der Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (1949–1951) und des Vize-Präsidenten der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (1951–1961).⁵ In der Nachkriegszeit erlangte Gerlach den Status einer öffentlichen Autorität in wissenschaftlichen und wissenschaftspolitischen Fragen, die Ulrich Herbert treffend mit dem Terminus „public intellectual“ charakterisiert hat.⁶ Mit Blick auf seine herausragende Position überrascht es daher nicht, dass es in wissenschaftshistorischen Forschungsprojekten bereits mehrfach Ansätze zur Erarbeitung einer Biographie Gerlachs gegeben hat.⁷ Ungeachtet dieser und weiterer Bemühungen liegt jedoch bis heute keine umfassende Darstellung seines Lebens und Wirkens vor.⁸</p><p>Zu Gerlachs vielseitigen Tätigkeiten gehörte auch die Beschäftigung mit Themen der Geschichte seiner eigenen Disziplin, die er insbesondere nach seiner Emeritierung im Jahr 1957 intensiv verfolgte. Seine Forschungen zu den Arbeiten Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), aus denen mehrere populärw","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202300008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89720657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Operation Epsilon.","authors":"Mark Walker","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202300009","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202300009","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Review of Dieter Hoffmann (ed.), Operation Epsilon: Die Farm-Hall-Protokolle erstmals vollständig, ergänzt um zeitgenössische Briefe und weitere Dokumente der 1945 in England internierten deutschen Atomforscher, 2nd edn. (Diepholz: GNT-Verlag, 2023), 588 pages, 57 figures, notes, bibliography, index, ISBN 978-3-86225-111-7, 44,80 €.</p><p>At the end of the Second World War Allied forces arrested ten German scientists and interned them in a British country house named Farm Hall. Most of these scientists had been connected to the “uranium project,” research into the technical and military applications of nuclear fission. The scientists’ conversations were overheard via hidden microphones, selectively transcribed, translated, and distributed to a few people as secret reports. The original recordings were not saved, and with a few exceptions, the original German conversations were not included.</p><p>The Farm Hall transcripts have a long history. They were first used in print by the physicist Samuel Goudsmit in his popular 1947 book <i>Alsos</i>. Goudsmit, who had been part of the Alsos Mission scientific-intelligence gathering mission sent to Europe to find and neutralize any German atomic bomb, argued that the Nazis had ruined German science, with the wartime German uranium project as his main example. Although Goudsmit clearly read and used the transcripts, he did not explicitly reveal their existence.¹ This became clear in 1962 when the former general in charge of the American Manhattan Project, Leslie Groves, quoted from the transcripts in his memoirs.² Indeed Groves appears to have gone out of his way to select some of the most embarrassing and unflattering quotations in order to discredit the German scientists.</p><p>When in 1989/1990 this author published his book on the uranium project, a revised version of his dissertation,³ it appeared that the Farm Hall transcripts might never appear. In fact, they were released shortly thereafter in 1992. They quickly appeared in two English-language editions: a straight-forward publication of the transcripts by the British physicist Charles Frank and an extensively annotated version by the American physicist Jeremy Bernstein. Both editions have problems.</p><p>In his introduction, Frank argued that “Heisenberg's estimate [at Farm Hall] of the critical mass for a nuclear explosion in ²³⁵U,” which was a “gross overestimate,” was “of crucial importance for determining German nuclear energy policy during the war.” Here Frank subtly misquotes Heisenberg (or at least the transcripts) by writing that “he never worked it out properly,”⁴ when in fact according to the Farm Hall transcripts Heisenberg said: “[…] quite honestly I have never worked it out as I never believed that one could get pure ‘235.’”⁵ Like many other readers of these transcripts, Frank also did not take into account both how shocked and skeptical the scientists initially were","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202300009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136068596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Becoming Natural: The Naturalization of Synthetic Flavors in the Twentieth Century and the Introduction of Konsumstoff","authors":"Paulina S. Gennermann","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202300016","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202300016","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Is it possible that non-natural chemical substances become natural without changing their chemical, physical or physiological characteristics? The history of synthetic flavors with a special emphasis on vanillin suggests that yes, it is possible. This process is called naturalization and means in this case the change of status of a synthetic flavor to something <i>natural</i>. In this article the history of vanillin as a frequently used flavor and its transformation into a natural ingredient in the twentieth century will be presented and analyzed. Studying the particular characteristics of vanillin, it seems that known concepts in the history of science like <i>Ersatzstoff</i> (surrogate) or <i>Wirkstoff</i> (active agent) do not constitute the best fit in describing this flavoring agent. Categorizing vanillin as a <i>Konsumstoff</i> (commodity agent) seems more useful in order to classify its characteristics and its historical development. I suggest using <i>Konsumstoff</i> as a new theoretical and methodological approach to study the history of chemical substances. In this article, the concept of <i>Konsumstoff</i> will be outlined and developed using the vanillin case as a paradigmatic example.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202300016","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41241157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Inhaltsverzeichnis: Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 2-3/2023","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202380211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202380211","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202380211","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50139844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Titelbild: (Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 2-3/2023)","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202380201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202380201","url":null,"abstract":"<p>\u0000 <figure>\u0000 <div><picture>\u0000 <source></source></picture><p></p>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </figure>\u0000 </p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202380201","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50139843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Circulation of Coronavirus Images: Helping Social Distancing?","authors":"Bettina Bock von Wülfingen","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202200052","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202200052","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As soon as the SARS-Cov2 disease was recognized by experts to potentially cause a serious pandemic, a three dimensional diagrammatic image of the virus, colored in strong red, conquered public media globally.</p><p>This study confronts this iconic virus image with a historic image analysis of 33,000 biomedical articles on coronaviruses published between 1968–2020 and interviews with some of their authors.</p><p>Only a small fraction of scientific virus publications entail images of the complete virus. Red as an alarm color is not used at all by scientists who don't aim for a non-scientific public.</p><p>Circulation in this case concerns the movement of iconic images from a scientific context into a general public. On the basis of hps-studies on scientific diagrams and especially on color use in scientific diagrams to convey specific messages in public, the paper discusses the role of the claim of public corona-virus diagram as “scientific.”</p><p>It points at relevant differences between most frequent scientific corona-virus images and the diagrammatic image used in public. Both author- and readerships (in science and public) follow contrasting aims and values. Thus, the images meet non-expert readers for whom the images entail very different – and potentially unintended – meanings then to virus experts.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202200052","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10231728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Circulation as a Visual Practice**","authors":"Katharina Steiner,&nbsp;Lukas Engelmann","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202300023","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202300023","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This special issue looks at some of the ways that images are adopted, co-opted, and adapted in the life sciences and beyond. It brings together papers that investigate the role of visualization in scientific knowledge-production with contributions that focus on the distribution and dissemination of knowledge to a broader audience. A commentary provides a critical perspective. In this editorial we introduce circulation as a practice to better understand scientific images. Along two themes, we highlight connections across the papers. First, the social life of scientific representation follows the contexts, settings, and spaces through which images circulate. Second, authorship, expertise, and trust inform the capacity and the failure of images to circulate. Altogether, this volume raises a set of new questions about circulation as practice in the historiography of images in the life sciences.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202300023","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10228259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Commentary: Visual Cultures, Publication Technologies, and Legitimation in the Life Sciences**","authors":"Lynn K. Nyhart","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202300025","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202300025","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper comments on five articles in the special issue “Circulating Images in the Life Sciences.” It sees the papers as unified by two themes. The first is their attention to the processes of legitimation. The second is the embedding of the images in textual cultures, which changed over time from the mid-nineteenth century to the very recent past, most notably with the recent advent of digital culture.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202300025","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10228260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Measuring and Manipulating the Rhine River Branches: Interactions of Theory and Embodied Understanding in Eighteenth Century River Hydraulics","authors":"Maarten G. Kleinhans","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202300004","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202300004","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Eighteenth century river hydraulics used both theory and measurement to address problems of flood safety, navigation and defense related to the rivers. In the late eighteenth century the Dutch overseer of the rivers, Christiaan Brunings, integrated hydraulic theory and meteorological practices, which enabled him to design a unique instrument for measuring river flow. The question is whether the unprecedented detail of measurements fits the putative empirical stance in the eighteenth century. The interactions between theory, instrument, measurement, and other knowledge practices are here assessed using experiences in similar measurement practices. I argue that Brunings had theoretical and embodied understanding of hydrodynamics, as he knew how to design an instrument for flow measurement of sufficient accuracy for his purpose in the sociopolitical context of river management.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202300004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9951668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Epistêmê or Technê? A Relationship That Shaped the History of Science. Essay Review of Wolfgang Lefèvre, Minerva Meets Vulcan: Scientific and Technological Literature—1450–1750 (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2021), ix+198 pp. EUR 108.99 (hard cover). ISBN: 9783030730840.","authors":"Doina-Cristina Rusu","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202300007","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202300007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45047977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}