Category Archives: History of Science

You have seen the button for the Beagle Project on my sidebar – it will stay there forever! But now, I see, they have opened a CafePress store where you can get yourself t-shirts, coffee-mugs and buttons and the proceeds go towards the rebuilding of the ship and its science/education maiden voyage:

James Randerson asks this question, but actually leaving only four slots open as “…If anyone plans not to include Darwin I’m going to have to ask them to step outside.” a sentiment with which Peter McGrath agrees. So – your Top 5?

Darwin did not just sail on the Beagle and then settle down in his armchair and think for the rest of his life. He performed an amazing number of very creative experiments. Afarensis has been writing about them for a while now and I hope you are following his series every week.

As promised, I will gather here (and update a couple of times during the day) some of the most interesting posts from around the blogosphere about the celebrations of the 300th birthday of Carl von Linne aka Carolus Linnaeus, the guy you cussed at when, back in high school, you had to memorize the order of taxonomic categories: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species (and you all know the mnemonic, don’t you?).
So, what’s with the name? Is it Linnaeus or von Linne? Merriam-Webster explains:

But today we come not to praise Linnaeus but to parse his various names. When Linnaeus was born, surnames were not common in Sweden. His father had been known as Nils Ingemarsson (Nils, son of Ingmar) until he attended the University at Lund with the goal of becoming a clergyman. Needing a proper surname, Nils gave himself the Latinized name Linnaeus, after the Linden tree on the family property (which was a warden tree, a very old tree believed to protect the land and people from bad luck).
So when Carl was born, he was given the surname Linnaeus. When he, in turn, enrolled at his father’s alma mater, he registered in full Latin form: Carolus Linnaeus. Then, in 1761, after he had earned some measure of renown for his work Latinizing and simplifying scientific nomenclature, Linnaeus was raised to the rank of nobility and took yet another name: Carl von Linne.

The main webpage for the tricentennial celebration is here. But let’s now move to blogs….
I just have to start with the best essays first! John Wilkins on Linnaeus’ views of classification and species.
A brief biography by Michael Ryan of Paleoblog.
The Dispersal of Darwin looks at the origins of natural history and the associated cultural imperalism. And notes some radio shows.
Bleimanimal of Zooillogix, of course, has to do something different – here is Amphibsaenia
John Lynch tries to rescue old Carl from the threat of Phylocode. And adds a quote.
Annotated Budak at the Biodiversity of Singapore Symposium
After the initial announcement I posted my favourite Linnaeus quote and will post another one later today. OK< here it is, about the sleep in plants and flower clocks.
Listen to the podcast of the NPR story.
Do you know the English names of these species?
Here is the NYTimes article about Linne. If you can’t see NYTimes (or after the article hides behind the subscription wall), the entire birthday article is reprinted here as well as by Matt Dowling.
From a fellow Swede.
Tyra is a fellow gardener.
An article in Wired on Linne, taxonomy and nomenclature.
A Swedish family compares and contrasts Linne and Ken Ham (guess who wins?).
The New Scientist:

He’s more influential than ABBA, more famous than Bjorn Borg and Sweden is celebrating today the 300th birthday of its most illustrious son….

See the wooden statue of Linnaeus in Stockholm (I remember seeing it when I visited in 1990).
Matthew Cob wrote the article for LATimes and kindly reprinted it on his blog.
Bromus tectorum is the Botany Photo of the Day.
An American in Sweden explains it succintly.
A biology teacher uses the opportunity to criticize that awful article in The Economist.
Here is one in Russian, with a nice illustration of Linnaea borealis.
Flatbush Gardener reproduces a portrait of Linne.
A nice biography by Daddicade.
Gardeners love Linne, including Molly Day
A tribute by Leigh Andrew.
Green Chameleon compiled a small linkfest as well.
What is the connection between Linne, apples and Rambo?
A clip from “The Linnaeus Expedition”
Japanese Emperor visits Sweden to celebrate.
Apparently, Linnaeus himself gave an interview yesterday.
This one is bilingual: English and Spanish.
PhiloBiblos
The Independent
A write up on The Writer’s Almanac.
News From The Field on naming plants.
Voltage Gate on sex, God and human origins: Carl Linnaeus, in His Own Words
A photo of a Linnaeus sculpture from the Chicago Botanical Garden taken in 1988.
Skepchick and Linnaeus are obsessed with sex.
Interested in books on taxonomy and systematics?
On ravens and crows, Cheerios and cupcakes for the300th birthday.
So, LINNEAUS NAMED US
For a Swede, he was pretty funny!
Use Linnaeus to learn some Swedish.
And don’t even get me started on the banana.
Linnaeus celebrates his own 300th birthday.
Of course, Carl Brest Van Kempen provides his own original art.
Classification is Art.
Nick Matcke over on Panda’s Thumb compares Carl to Willi Hennig. Yeah, whatever.
Of course the Beagle Project Blog chimes in, with a link to a BBC Frontiers show. And so do the Friends of Darwin.
D. Weinberger links to his article(s) as well.
Cheezy armadillos
ERV has actually built a Linnean flower clock!
Yet Another Unitarian Universalist casually uses binomial nomenclature while going for a walk…
If you have written or seen elsewhere a good contribution, let me know so I can include it here.

Tomorrow is 300th birthday of Carl von Linne (or Carlus Linnaeus) and there will be celebrations in Sweden and around the world. So, tomorrow is a good day for a post about him (and if I find enough time and energy, I may compile the best ones into a mini-carnival).

Oh, no, you are thinking that I was going to write yet another post about my own birthday. Fear not. This is a different kind of voyage that started on this day. On May 11th, 1820, that curiously important litttle ship, HMS ‘Beagle’, was first launched (via Beagle Project blog)

Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, Germany on this day in 1879. It’s unlikely you need much background on the author of today’s quotes, so I’ll keep this short. Given how intelligent the man was, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he had a number of choice comments on the fools around him.

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.
Before God we are equally wise – and equally foolish.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.
– All from Albert Einstein, 1879 – 1955

[From Quotes of the Day]

Go here to get the code to put on your sidebar so your visitors can donate to the Beagle Project:

While Aaron Lerner was not a chronobiologist, his discovery of the hormone melatonin in 1958 was one of the key milestones in the biological rhythm research (just see how much I mention it around here) and the chronobiological community will always regard him as one of its own.
You can learn more about melatonin here (UPI got it wrong – the discovery was not made on human skin but a skin preparation of the frog Rana pipiens).
If you are interested, here are three of the first four Lerner’s papers on the discovery of Melatonin:
ISOLATION OF MELATONIN, THE PINEAL GLAND FACTOR THAT LIGHTENS MELANOCYTES (pdf)
Melatonin in Peripheral Nerve
STRUCTURE OF MELATONIN (pdf)
Aaron Lerner was also immortalized in poetry, in the 1998 collection Verse & Universe: Poems About Science and Mathematics (reviewed here):

“til Aaron Lerner, awash in kilos of bovine pineals, extracted melatonin . . a hormone that did bleach tadpoles” (Roald Hoffman)

From the New York Time obituary:

Dr. Aaron B. Lerner, a Yale dermatologist and the leader of a team of researchers who discovered melatonin, a powerful hormone regulating human sleep-wake cycles, died on Feb. 3 in New Haven. He was 86.
The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his family said.
In 1958, Dr. Lerner, an expert on skin pigmentation disorders who trained in both chemistry and medicine, led a Yale team that isolated a hormone from the pineal gland within the brain.
In laboratory experiments on frogs, the researchers found that the compound could lighten skin color and theorized that it might have applications in treating human skin disorders. Dr. Lerner named the hormone melatonin, and the team’s findings were announced in The Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Subsequent investigations revealed that melatonin did not hold the key to treating disruptions in skin pigmentation like vitiligo. Research by others has since uncovered the hormone’s importance in maintaining the circadian rhythm of rest and wakefulness, and it is now used to treat sleeplessness and jet lag.
Dr. Lerner later developed a transplantation therapy for vitiligo, a disorder that affects about 1 percent of the population and destroys pigment-making cells. The condition may be disfiguring and leaves light-colored patches around body openings like the mouth and eyes, but does not otherwise affect someone’s health. After removing a postage-stamp-size patch of a patient’s normal skin, he grew the cells in culture, then transplanted them to damaged areas. The result was a more uniform complexion covering the abnormal shades of skin, and it was often accompanied by a reduction in social stigma for the patient. The technique was advanced in the 1980s and remains in use, even as vitiligo is more commonly treated by drugs and exposure to light.
In other work, Dr. Lerner isolated another compound — melanocyte-stimulating hormone, or MSH, which he obtained from the pituitary glands of pigs — and studied its skin-darkening effects. Earlier, while still a graduate student, he and another researcher, G. Robert Greenberg, isolated a protein that appears in the blood at low temperature, a monoclonal antibody known as a cryoglobulin.
Aaron Bunsen Lerner was born in 1920 in Minneapolis. In 1945, he received his medical degree and a doctorate in physiological and physical chemistries from the University of Minnesota. After teaching at the University of Michigan and the University of Oregon, he joined Yale as an associate professor of medicine in 1955. Dr. Lerner became the first chairman of Yale’s dermatology department in 1958. He remained chairman until 1985, and was named a professor emeritus of dermatology in 1991.

It is midnight, Day 10, so the contest is officially over. The winner will be announced tomorrow. But that does not mean that you should abandon reading the Beagle Project blog or helping the Beagle Project get advertised and funded.

Alliance For Science is starting the First Darwin Day Essay Contest for high school students. Go to Neurotopia for all the details about it. I am assuming that this is going to become an annual event.
On the other hand, the rebuilding of the HMS Beagle is going to happen only once, for the Darwin Bicentennial in two years. Of course, once the ship is built and is done with its maiden voyage with all the media spotlight on it, the ship will continue to be used for scientific exploraiton and education for many years to come. [Day 9]

…by sending a Darwin (or a Lincoln, or more) to the Beagle project. Day six.

Do it for Charles Musters!
Or do it for Charles Darwin.
Or do it for the fun of sailing.
But do it nonetheless:

…send in a Darwin (£10) or a Jackson ($20), spread the word, encourage colleagues to bookmark the site and root through their labcoat pockets for a donation…

Check the website and the blog. Then decide if you think this is a worthy cause.
The donations have started coming in. The biggest so far is $100. If you give more by the end of the tenth day of this drive, you will become a lucky owner of a copy of The Open Laboratory.

Joel is collecting links to all the posts written today in honor of the 10-year anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan.
The phrase “Science as a Candle in the Dark”, the subtitle of Sagan’s magnificient The Demon-Haunted World, evokes such a powerful idea that we are fighting for – the Enlightement.
Coincidentally, today is also another anniversary related to light: on December 20, 1879 Thomas Edison performed the first public demonstration of the electric light. Next year, on the same day – December 20, 1880 – electric street-lights were first swicthed on Broadway. You know I am a Tesla fan, but still, this is a big anniversary of Light, in all the meanings of the word, both literal and metaphorical.
So, here are some quotes about Light, in its various meanings (from Quotes of The Day):
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
– Siddhartha Gautama, 563 – 483 BC
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
– Martin Luther King, Jr, 1929 – 1968
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.
– Og Mandino
The very society of joy redoubles it; so that, while it lights upon my friend it rebounds upon myself, and the brighter his candle burns the more easily will it light mine.
– Robert South
What is to give light must endure burning.
– Viktor Emil Frankl, 1905 – 1997
When in the dark is it better to move or stand still? If still, you won’t bump into anything – but you won’t find the light either.
– Norm Howe

“A Poet Laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events.” What would be the scientific equivalent, a Science Laureate? A scientist officially appointed by a government and often expected to perform experiments (Mentos and DietCoke?) for state occasions and other government events? If so, Bill Nye should get the title.
But, seriously. In the USA, the poet laureate title is supposedly given only for the quality of the poetry irrespective of the poet’s public persona, social activism, political orientation and telegenicity. If we stick to that criterium for a science laureate and award the title only according to the quality of one’s science then… hey, how about all those Nobel Prize winners?
Yet, there is a popular notion that a poet laureate is SUPPOSED to become a public persona, to advocate for causes and to introduce people to poetry on top of being a fantastic poet. If we take that meaning for science, than Razib, John and Josh‘s idea to nominate E.O.Wilson is right on – a good scientist, a well-known and liked one, author or popular books and public persona. Neil deGrasse Tyson is another good choice. But, I’d go for Stephen Hawking – perhaps the best known scientist in the USA today, as well as, as far as I can tell from a biologist’s perspective, a super-duper-top-star scientist himself.

From Quotes of the Day:

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was born at Edinburgh, Scotland on this day in 1892. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, but possibly most important is the fact that he assisted his scientist father in the lab from age eight. His primary work was in genetics, being the first to provide a mathematical basis for Mendelian genetics and for Darwin’s evolution. He taught at Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of London. In 1957 he became disgusted with policies of the British government and moved to India where he spent the rest of his life.
——————————-
If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation it would appear that God has a special fondness for stars and beetles.
This is my prediction for the future – whatever hasn’t happened will happen and no one will be safe from it.
I have never yet met a healthy person who worried very much about his health, or a really good person who worried much about his own soul.
We do not know, in most cases, how far social failure and success are due to heredity, and how far to environment. But environment is the easier of the two to improve.
So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible, though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.
If human beings could be propagated by cutting, like apple trees, aristocracy would be biologically sound.
– All from J. B. S. Haldane, 1892 – 1964

Yup, I know, many of my sciblings have already posted about this, but curiously, I saw this first outside the Seed’s blogging stable, on Majikthise, several hours before anyone here picked up on it.
Yes, the entire works of Charles Darwin will be placed online for you to browse, search and read for free on this website. Not everything is up yet, but they are working on making it as complete as possible as soon as possible.

Roger D. Kornberg got a chemistry Nobel Prize this year for figuring out one of the most basic processes in all of biology, stuff we teach in intro classes – DNA transcription, i.e., how the cell “reads” the DNA code and synthesizes messenger RNA molecules that are used as templates for synthesis of proteins. Excellent choice from my perspective of a biologist. But what do the chemists think?
Also, is this the first instance of a parent and the child both getting a Nobel (his father got one four decades ago for DNA replication)?