Most recent papers:

• Ethno‐biology during the Cold War: Biocca's Expedition to Amazonia.
  Daniele Cozzoli.
  Centaurus. August 24, 2017
  This article focuses on the ethno‐biological expedition to the Amazon headed by Ettore Biocca between November 1962 and July 1963. Biocca, a parasitologist by training, assembled a multidisciplinary team to carry out an ethno‐biological study of Amazon natives. The expedition work covered the natives' customs, myths, chants, diseases and the hallucinogenic compounds and curare they used, and took into account plants and animals common to the Amazon environment. This article aims to contribute to the understanding of the 20th‐century Western approach to the Amazon people and its cultural importance. It sets out to show how Biocca's encyclopaedic work related to the centrality of Amazonia and its peoples in scientific and cultural debates on modernity and Western culture in the 1960s, and how it connects to Cold War anxieties about the disappearance of ‘uncorrupted’ peoples.

  August 24, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12137   open full text
• Relationships between Academia, State and Industry in the Field of Food and Nutrition: The Norwegian Chemist Sigval Schmidt‐Nielsen (1877–1956) and His Professional Roles, 1900–1950.
  Kari Tove Elvbakken, Annette Lykknes.
  Centaurus. August 24, 2017
  The aim of this article is to shed light on the relationships between science, state and industry in the field of food and nutrition in Norway in the first half of the 20th century with reference to the scientist Sigval Schmidt‐Nielsen (1877–1956). Schmidt‐Nielsen was a health authority employed state chemist at the university in the Norwegian capital and later professor of technical organic chemistry at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim. We explore his roles, his research and his consultancy for state and industry at the university and at the institute. The early 1900s were important for the shaping of food and nutrition science as well as the growth of the food industry. During this period, food control and food regulations were implemented. Norway, the context in which Schmidt‐Nielsen worked had only become an independent nation in 1905, and the state administration, as well as the university and institute were young institutions. We argue that this specific situation paved the way for the roles Schmidt‐Nielsen played in academia, state and industry. By combining a biographical approach and a multi‐institutional perspective, new relations between different fields within food and nutrition became visible.

  August 24, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12138   open full text
• The First American Scoop: The Pedra Furada Controversy in Newspapers (1978–2015).
  Miquel Carandell Baruzzi.
  Centaurus. June 22, 2017
  In July 1986, the cover of Nature featured rock paintings from the Pedra Furada rock shelter in the Serra da Capivara National Park in Brazil. In that issue, Niède Guidon, head of the excavations at Pedra Furada, co‐authored an article that pushed back the arrival of the first humans to South America to 32,000 years ago. This controversial claim was widely reported by newspapers in Brazil and in other countries like the USA. Using this case, this paper aims to shed light on the role of newspapers in prehistory in three different ways. Firstly, it will analyze how Guidon's early outreach effort helped to transform the Serra da Capivara research into a well‐known scientific project in Brazil – a project that tried to protect and economically promote this area, promoting at the same time the disputed claims. Secondly, this paper will highlight how Guidon's research adapted to the logic of the media by using the rock paintings at Pedra Furada as ‘legitimators’ of the idea of an early human presence in the shelter. And thirdly, this paper will emphasize how newspapers became the platform for the scientific debate that took place before, during and after the discussion in more traditional scientific media. All this will help to provide insight into how newspapers became a crucial agent in the construction of late 20th century prehistoric knowledge.

  June 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12120   open full text
• ‘Darwin was Wrong.’ The International Media Coverage of the Oreopithecus' Reinterpretation (1956–1959).
  Clara Florensa.
  Centaurus. June 22, 2017
  ‘Darwin was wrong’ was a headline that made news around the world in March 1956. Johannes Hürzeler, a Swiss palaeontologist, had just made public his theory that Oreopithecus bambolii, a fossil thus far classified as an extinct Old World monkey, was in fact a 12‐million‐year old hominid. That was 10 million years (!) older than the oldest hominids accepted at the time. Two years later he unearthed a complete skeleton of Oreopithecus in Italy. The echo of this discovery in the media was enormous yet the newspaper coverage in different western countries followed distinctive patterns. This paper will show these differences and point out possible explanations that go far beyond scientific disagreement. It will be argued that the press is a privileged source for comparing simultaneous reactions to the same scientific fact around the globe and for helping us discover national and supranational patterns of scientific discourse while linking them to their contexts. This paper also highlights the role of the news pieces as ‘supports of knowledge.’ Just like bones or scientific articles, news items circulate prompting in turn the circulation of other ‘supports of knowledge’ such as fossil remains or scientists.

  June 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12123   open full text
• A Mammoth in the Park: Palaeontology, Press and Popular Culture in Barcelona (1870–1910).
  Laura Valls Plana.
  Centaurus. June 22, 2017
  This paper focuses on the role of newspapers and journals in constructing the public images of the mammoth in Catalonia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, paying special attention to the visual power of descriptions, pictures and cartoons of this and other ancient species that increasingly appeared in the press. As palaeontology became a ‘public science,’ the extinct species gained status not least because it could be imbued with multiple meanings that moved between the scientific and public spheres. The visualizations of the animal contributed to metaphorically reinforcing and confronting ideas of political and social scope, like the notions of modernity and national identity, which were of great relevance in Barcelona at the turn of the century.

  June 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12124   open full text
• The Daily Press Fashions a Heroic Intellectual: The Making of Florentino Ameghino in Late Nineteenth‐Century Argentina.
  Irina Podgorny.
  Centaurus. June 22, 2017
  This article considers the emerging career of school preceptor Florentino Ameghino (1854?–1911), a fossil collector from the Argentine countryside who became an international authority in the 1880s and 1890s in the field of prehistory and the paleontology of vertebrates. Reflecting on investigations in the 1870s about the antiquity of humanity in the Argentine Pampas, Ameghino's story allows us to examine how the press circulated news in a context where political and intellectual matters were closely interconnected. This work is based on a collection of newspaper clippings gathered by Ameghino between 1874 and 1897 and found in the Jorge Furt Library, a private collection of books located near Luján, the city where it is said that Ameghino was born.

  June 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12125   open full text
• One Skull and Many Headlines: The Role of the Press in the Steinau Hoax of 1911.
  Oliver Hochadel.
  Centaurus. May 02, 2017
  In May 1911 a seemingly spectacular discovery from the ‘Devil's Cave’ near Steinau, east of Frankfurt caught the attention of German anthropologists. Soon a debate ensued whether the skull was prehistoric or of a rather more recent age. This controversy nearly exclusively unfolded in the newspapers. It was too brief to materialize in scholarly publications because after 2 months it was revealed that the skull had been ‘planted’ by a prankster. This case shows that the press served as a ‘meta‐medium’ for scholarly disputes, but also points to the crucial material dimension of newspaper articles. The actors wrote many articles themselves but they also observed the press systematically, cut out articles, compiled them, cited them in their letters, glued them into their diaries and passed them on. The newspaper articles were the fuel of the debate and the raw material of knowledge in the making. In the Steinau hoax German anthropologists found themselves in a contradictory position: they were quick to dismiss the press as sensationalist, while at the same time they used the newspapers to voice their own interpretation of the discovery.

  May 02, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12121   open full text
• Inventing the Menton Man. Rivière's Discovery as Reflected in the French Media.
  Maddalena Cataldi.
  Centaurus. April 26, 2017
  When the fossil skeleton discovered in Menton was shown in the Natural History Museum in Paris in 1872, it was the first fossil man to be presented to the public in France. Popular representations of a fossil ape‐man had, however, been circulating in the press since the late 1830s. In fact, at the same time as the scientific debate that ultimately led to the recognition of the existence of prehistoric man, the new profession of science journalist emerged in the public sphere. Once exposed, Menton Man embodied and crystallized rival political positions, which played a part in the debate on the origin of man. In addition, the creation by the press of a public scientific object shaped the image of its scientific counterpart, ‘the discoverer.’ Through the press, in the context of bourgeois tourism in the Riviera, the figure of the palaeontologist of the mass society emerged.

  April 26, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12119   open full text
• Playing with Geometrical Tools: Johannes Stabius's Astrolabium imperatorium (1515) and Its Successors.
  Richard L. Kremer.
  Centaurus. December 27, 2016
  This article suggests that 16th‐century sources describing astronomical instruments may be analyzed in terms of ‘geometrical tools’, that is discrete arrangements of lines and curves that solve particular problems. Geometrical tools provided a means for innovation. By playing, literally, with such tools, mathematicians could invent new instruments or add new functions to existing instruments. For a case study of this process, I shall consider the rectangular astrolabe, first proposed in 1515 by Johannes Stabius and reconfigured in several other versions over the course of the 16th century. Geometrical tools, I conclude, are revealed in diagrams found in the sources, not in the accompanying texts.

  December 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12112   open full text
• Sphere Confusion: A Textual Reconstruction of Astronomical Instruments and Observational Practice in First‐millennium CE China.
  Daniel Patrick Morgan.
  Centaurus. December 27, 2016
  This article examines the case of an observational and a demonstrational armillary sphere confused, one for the other, by fifth‐century historians of astronomy He Chengtian and Shen Yue. Seventh‐century historian Li Chunfeng dismisses his predecessors as ignorant, and in so doing he supplies the reader with additional evidence. Using their respective histories and what sources for the history of early imperial armillary instruments survive independent thereof, this article tries to explain the mix‐up by exploring the ambiguities of ‘observation’ (guan) as it was mediated through terminology, text, materiality and mathematics. Reconstructing the material features of the ‘sight’ (yi) and ‘effigy’ (xiang), the article will reflect upon the mathematics necessary for their operation. The ‘effigy’, as Li Chunfeng defines it, is a substitute for observation; the ‘sight’, however, is so mediated by the material and mathematical sphere as to confound Li's distinction between looking through and looking at. In the end, however, the difference is moot, since the observational model appears to have played a negligible role in the history of astronomy in first‐millennium China, leaving us to wonder what instrument(s) were used for observation.

  December 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12115   open full text
• Two Versions of a Description of the Armillary Sphere in Parameśvara's Goladīpikā.
  Sho Hirose.
  Centaurus. December 27, 2016
  Armillary spheres were part of the Sanskrit astronomical tradition, and had been used for understanding the structure of the heavens. Goladīpikā (‘Illumination of the sphere’) is a text in two versions by the same author which deals with structures of the armillary sphere and various related astronomical topics. A close examination of the ways the armillary sphere is described in the two versions of the text will help us understand the main characteristics of the two versions of Parameśvara's Goladīpikā and the reasons why the author duplicated his treatise. This case study thus demonstrates how astral sciences sources from the same author may present mathematical practices surrounding the same instrument in contrasting and complementary ways according to intention.

  December 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12113   open full text
• Exploring the Temporality of Complex Computational Practice: Two Eclipse Notes by John of Murs in the ms Escorial O II 10.
  Matthieu Husson.
  Centaurus. December 27, 2016
  Manuscript Escorial O II 10 is a late 13th‐century document containing a well‐known collection of astronomical texts from the arts faculty context. During the first half of the 14th century, this manuscript belonged to John of Murs, an important master of art of the Paris University, responsible, with others for the establishment of the Parisian Alfonsine Tables. John of Murs used the Escorial manuscript to record a wide range of notes over a 20‐year period. Among those notes I examine here one concerned with two solar eclipses. Although I will review the relevant information concerning eclipse theory and mathematical practices of European astronomers in the 14th century, this essay will not focus directly on such matters. Rather I am interested in a documentary question: looking at a specific astronomical source I seek clues about the temporal dimensions of a computation as it was recorded in the codex. This focus will help assess the computation practices of John of Murs and will allow an understanding of the meanings such a computational record could have both for its author and in the more general context of early Alfonsine astronomy.

  December 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12116   open full text
• Template Tables and Computational Practices in Early Modern Chinese Calendric Astronomy.
  Liang Li.
  Centaurus. December 27, 2016
  This article introduces a writing format, the ‘template table’ (suanshi, ) that was designed to guide the process of calendrical astronomical calculations in early modern China. In conjunction with another kind of text, known as ‘detailed procedures’ (xicao, ), users could perform calculations easily by operating the ‘template table’ and extracting data from given numerical tables. This method, that not only normalized the use of numerical tables but also linked instructions with the corresponding tables in computational practices, became widespread from the Ming period (1368–1644) onwards. Wanting to acquire this computational regimen, the Joseon court of Korea (1392–1897) even sent skilled officers to China to learn it secretly. The circulation of the template method beyond China suggests its significance. The article also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using this method.

  December 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12118   open full text
• Learning Medieval Astronomy through Tables: The Case of the Equatorie of the Planetis.
  Seb Falk.
  Centaurus. December 27, 2016
  Medieval tables can be rich sources of evidence about the practices of the mathematicians and astronomers who used them. This paper analyses an important set of tables, revealing their compiler's learning practices and elucidating a valuable document of inexpert science. Peterhouse, Cambridge MS 75.I, ‘The Equatorie of the Planetis’, is a late‐14th‐century compilation. It contains a treatise describing the construction and use of an equatorium (an astronomical instrument that computes the positions of the planets), bound with a collection of related astronomical tables. It was long thought to be written by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, but has recently been shown to be the work of a Benedictine monk, John Westwyk. This paper reassesses the manuscript as a monastic compilation. Westwyk copied a set of astronomical tables that suited his needs; their use supported and complemented the equatorium he describes in his treatise. He experimented with different techniques, cited astronomers whose work he admired (including Chaucer) and refined his tables in order to obtain the greatest possible precision. By reconstructing Westwyk's mathematical practices in compiling, computing and using tables that required and enabled a range of astronomical techniques, this paper paints a vivid picture of inexpert science in medieval Europe.

  December 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12114   open full text
• Ex epistulis Philippinensibus: Georg Joseph Kamel SJ (1661–1706) and His Correspondence Network.
  Sebestian Kroupa.
  Centaurus. July 24, 2016
  When sent as a pharmacist to the Philippines in 1688, the Bohemian Jesuit Georg Joseph Kamel turned to the local nature to identify resources, which he could use in his practice. Remarkably for a Jesuit of his low rank, Kamel soon entered into communication with European scholars and exchanged knowledge and materials with figures both in the Indies and Europe, namely Willem ten Rhijne (1647–1700), a Dutch botanist in Batavia; English surgeons in Madras; and two members of the Royal Society, the apothecary James Petiver (c.1665–1718) and the naturalist John Ray (1627–1705). Based on an analysis of the letters and consignments involved, this article provides an insight into the construction and operation of long‐distance networks of knowledge exchange based on factors other than nationality and spanning geopolitical, social and confessional boundaries. Attention will be drawn to the associations between early modern colonial science and trade and, in particular, the role of local merchants as go‐betweens. It will be shown how commercial routes provided the infrastructure for knowledge circulation; how agents who travelled by way of established networks of trade mediated material exchange on a global scale; and how intellectual and social incentives, as well as the etiquette of correspondence played a pivotal role in the formation and maintenance of Kamel's correspondence network. Furthermore, in tracing knowledge exchange restricted to the colonial periphery and highlighting the agency of actors stationed overseas, this article contributes to the recent efforts to think beyond national and imperial narratives and re‐examine colonial history from the view of the peripheries.

  July 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12099   open full text
• Electricity and Homosexuality: from 19th‐century American Sexual Health Literature to D. H. Lawrence.
  Sam Halliday.
  Centaurus. April 21, 2016
  This paper surveys a range of scientific, popular scientific and literary texts from the late‐19th‐ to the early 20th‐centuries in order to demonstrate electricity's importance within theories of sexuality, in general, and homosexuality, in particular.

  April 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12096   open full text
• Electricity and Imagination: Post‐romantic Electrified Experience and the Gendered Body. An Introduction.
  Koen Vermeir.
  Centaurus. April 21, 2016
  In this introduction, I evoke the poetic force and spectacular experiences of electricity in the 19th century. Electricity is taken here as a specific subject for “science and imagination studies”, an inter‐ and multidisciplinary perspective that takes into account the history of science, medicine and technology as well as literature, theatre studies and dance studies, among other disciplines. The envisioned approach is inclusive, and the sciences are not considered to have a privileged perspective on electricity. Indeed, I question common diffusionist models and I plead for more methodological exchange between disciplinary approaches to electricity. In the special issue, electricity is analyzed both as a concept traversing a diversity of contexts and as a phenomenon that was carefully staged. Besides introducing the four contributions that follow on the introduction, I briefly explore relevant related themes, including the reception history of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the electrified dances of Loie Fuller, the electrical fairy. I show that the experience of electricity and the gendered body are common themes of the special issue and that their study is indeed crucial for understanding 19th century electrical imaginaries.

  April 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12097   open full text
• No Mere Dream: Material Culture and Electrical Imagination in Late Victorian Britain.
  Iwan Rhys Morus.
  Centaurus. December 08, 2015
  In 1892 the English natural philosopher and chemist William Crookes speculated about ‘Some Possibilities of Electricity’ in the pages of the Fortnightly Review. Crookes discussed the nature of electricity and its relationship to the ether. He talked about the prospect of wireless communication, of electrical telepathy and controlling the weather. Crookes's article is only one instance of a trend towards constructing imagined electrical futures towards the end of the 19th century. These sorts of speculations played with the boundaries of the real but they were built around a solid material culture. In this paper I want to look at how these sorts of speculative accounts of electrical futures were put together. In particular, I want to look at the ways in which electrical speculation was grounded in material and practical experimental culture and how these sorts of speculations around the boundaries of the real played back into late Victorian electrical experimentation.

  December 08, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12093   open full text
• Enter Electricity: An Allegory's Stage Appearance between Verité and Varieté.
  Ulf Otto.
  Centaurus. December 01, 2015
  At the end of the 19th century, electricity made its entrance on stage, embodied and personified by female dancers. Analysing one such entrance of electricity in a celebratory ballet‐pantomime, shown during the 1891 International Electrotechnical Exhibition in Frankfurt, the paper contextualizes the allegorical appearance within an in‐depth discussion of the exhibition and its aesthetics. Stressing the ideological implications of the gendered embodiment, and its imaginary and dissimulative potentials, the analysis focuses on the necessity of the spectacular arrangement for electricity's entrance at the end of the 19th century and shows that it is not only indebted to traditions of allegorical personifications but also to the vulgarized presentation of the naked female in popular theatrical setups like the café chantants, music halls and Tinteltangel. A mixture of sparsely clad limbs and antique‐style drapery served to naturalize the new electric power and obscure the underlying social tensions. The unseen engineers in the audience who made the dancers appear and shine with the help of the machinery they prided themselves on were faced by women on stage, openly and seducingly returning their gaze. Deviating from the voyeuristic theatre dispositif of the literary bourgeoisie, the industrial intelligentsia was rehearsing an exhibitionist theatricality that reconfigured how power was exercised in spectacles.

  December 01, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12091   open full text
• John Neal's Lightning Imagination: Electricity against Romantic Organicism.
  Paul Gilmore.
  Centaurus. December 01, 2015
  In this essay, I examine the work of the little‐studied 19th‐century American novelist John Neal as a way of investigating how electricity was used to contest romantic ideas of organic wholeness. Neal draws on electrical science and imagery repeatedly in his romantic novels and criticism of the early 1820s. In describing Neal's use of electricity, I place his work in conversation with Hans Christian Ørsted's development of the romantic organicism of naturphilosophie in his experiments and his demonstration of electromagnetism. Like Ørsted's science and the theories of romantics like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley, electricity, for Neal, comes to suggest the limits of a mechanistic Newtonian worldview. But unlike the romantic organicism of Coleridge and Ørsted, Neal's romantic use of electricity views it as a disruptive force that instead of revealing the harmonizing potential of oppositional forces governed by some universal law suggests the indeterminacy and limits of scientific experiment and law.

  December 01, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12092   open full text
• Honorary Doctoral Degrees as Expressions of Political and Cultural Relationships at Nordic University Jubilees (1840–1911).
  Pieter Dhondt.
  Centaurus. April 07, 2014
  The traditional conferment of honorary doctorates on the occasion of university celebrations goes back to the beginning of the 19th century. However, particularly in Northern Europe, on the occasion of university jubilees, the solemn promotion of honorary doctors was still combined with the traditional and ceremonious interpretation of the normal doctor's promotion. Both ceremonies had its own function: the latter was conceived in the first place as a national celebration; the former was intended to radiate the international character and especially the (more or less) Scandinavianist attitude of the university. In this way the conferment of honorary degrees can be considered an ideal measure of the jubilee's general message. This thesis will be developed by means of seven university celebrations, which together offer an excellent overview of the development of the academic relationship between the Nordic countries: Helsinki's bicentenary in 1840, Dorpat's 50th anniversary in 1852, Lund's bicentenary in 1868, Uppsala's quartercentenary in 1877, Copenhagen's quartercentenary in 1879 and finally Kristiania's centenary and the foundation of the University of Iceland, both in 1911. In all these cases honorary degrees functioned as expressions of political and cultural relationships, rather than as academic degrees to honour a specific person.

  April 07, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12051   open full text
• ‘s Gravesande's Appropriation of Newton's Natural Philosophy, Part II: Methodological Issues.
  Steffen Ducheyne.
  Centaurus. January 14, 2014
  It has been suggested in the literature that, although Willem Jacob ‘s Gravesande occasionally treated Newton's doctrines in a selective manner, he was nevertheless an unremitting follower of Newton's methodology. As part of a reassessment of ‘s Gravesande's Newtonianism, I argue that, although ‘s Gravesande took over key terms of Newton's methodological canon, his methodological ideas are upon close scrutiny quite different from and occasionally even incongruent with Newton's views on the matter.

  January 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12050   open full text
• The European Society For The History Of Science.
  
  Centaurus. August 11, 2013
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  August 11, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12025   open full text
• Introduction: Perspectives on Cold War Science in Small European States.
  Matthias Heymann, Janet Martin‐Nielsen.
  Centaurus. August 11, 2013
  With this introduction we aim to illuminate Western Europe's place on the map of Cold War science and, specifically, to draw attention to the differences in and the diversity of Western European Cold War science in comparison to the United States. By discussing narratives of Cold War science in small states and asking how they fit into the European condition, we suggest that the fact of being a small state affects the conditions for and the scope of Cold War science. As a whole, this special issue also emphasizes the importance of the spatial dimension; that is, the significant dependence of Cold War science on geographical relations and geopolitical interests.

  August 11, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12026   open full text
• Between the Local and the Global: History of Science in the European Periphery Meets Post‐Colonial Studies.
  Manolis Patiniotis.
  Centaurus. July 15, 2013
  The aim of this paper is to discuss two historiographical issues pertaining to the history of science in the European periphery. The first issue concerns the wide use of the centre‐periphery dichotomy in historical accounts discussing the diffusion and institutionalization of science across the world. The second issue concerns the use of appropriation (instead of transfer, or adaptation) as a means to overcome the diffusionist model in history of science. Recent work at the intersection of history of science with post‐colonial studies will provide the framework for reassessing these matters. As it will be shown, theoretical discussions about the history of science in post‐colonial context can help historians overcome the centre‐periphery dichotomy and turn European periphery into a privileged standpoint for showing the actual diversity of ‘European science.’ At the same time, the experience of post‐colonial studies can also help sharpen the historiographical tool of appropriation. The assumption that will be made is that by focusing on appropriation rather than on discovery and innovation (the favourite categories of much of mainstream historiography), or on transfer and adaptation (the favourite categories of the diffusionist model), historians of science can not only set aside the artificial distinctions of the diffusionist model, but also bring forward the re‐inventions, the conceptual shifts and the cultural adjustments, which are responsible for the emergence of science as a global phenomenon in the periphery. Especially concerning European periphery, the use of appropriation may bring forward the particular historical circumstances under which certain knowledge patterns gained universal epistemic authority as constitutive elements of an imagined European intellectual identity.

  July 15, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12027   open full text
• The Politics of US Military Research in Greenland in the Early Cold War.
  Nikolaj Petersen.
  Centaurus. July 12, 2013
  The focus of this article is US military research in Greenland and its role in Danish‐American political relations in the early Cold War period 1945–1968. This was a period of intense US research activity that aimed to overcome the hostile Greenlandic environment and harness it for military purposes. In the US‐Danish defense agreement on Greenland of 1951 the USA got a free hand to develop three so‐called defense areas for military purposes, while it had to seek Danish permission for research and other activities outside these areas. The two partners had differing, but mainly compatible, interests in this process. The US interest was freedom to do research on the gigantic Greenland Icecap, while the Danish authorities emphasized the protection of its sovereignty over Greenland. The article follows the US research programs in the 1950s and 1960s and Danish responses in some detail, including the intriguing and still mysterious Camp Century project and its relationship with the US Army's Iceworm plan to deploy strategic missiles beneath the surface of the Greenland Icecap.

  July 12, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12023   open full text
• Out of a Clear Blue Sky? FOM, The Bomb, and The Boost in Dutch Physics Funding after World War II.
  Friso Hoeneveld, Jeroen van Dongen.
  Centaurus. July 10, 2013
  Soon after the end of World War II, Dutch science was reconstituted by novel funding agencies with well‐filled coffers. The currently received view is that in a vulnerable and war‐torn society the new institutions were created on the basis of technocratic ideals that date back to pre‐war years. One of these agencies, the Foundation for Fundamental Research of Matter (or ‘FOM’), was founded by the Schermerhorn administration to coordinate nuclear research and it attracted by far the most funds. This imbalance in funding, however, is hard to understand from the perspective of the received view alone. We wish to emphasize instead that particularly relevant for understanding FOM's early history, and, by implication, the early history of Dutch post‐war science, is a change in attitudes regarding ‘fundamental’ physics that followed closely on the heels of the dropping of the atomic bombs in August of 1945. A new and substantial effort in basic physics was suddenly deemed necessary as a precondition for technological development, to keep pace with developments in and discussions about nuclear science abroad, and to remain within the purview of the new hegemon in the sciences, the United States.

  July 10, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12024   open full text
• Intelligence and Internationalism: The Cold War Career of Anton Bruun.
  Peder Roberts.
  Centaurus. July 10, 2013
  The Danish marine biologist Anton Frederik Bruun (1901–1961) is chiefly remembered as an explorer of the deep‐sea fauna and a key figure in international scientific organizations during the 1950s. As the Cold War increasingly permeated the marine sciences and it became too expensive for small states to operate deep‐sea research vessels, he became an asset to the USA's oceanographic establishment as it sought to first assess Soviet strength (in terms of research, technology and logistical capacity) and then to build up American oceanography in response. Bruun's contacts with the USSR – including a visit in 1957 – strengthened his contacts to the American military as well as American oceanographers. His enthusiasm for raising interest in the marine sciences in developing countries could also be matched to American geopolitical goals. Bruun's participation in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Naga expedition to the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand captured the mutually beneficial nature of his American connections. Bruun was able to use the USA to reach distant oceans, while the USA in turn gained from Bruun's prestige as it forged connections with friendly states through science, an increasingly important arena for Cold War competition.

  July 10, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12021   open full text
• Cultivating the Herb Garden of Scandinavian Mathematics: The Congresses of Scandinavian Mathematicians, 1909–1925.
  Laura E. Turner, Henrik Kragh Sørensen.
  Centaurus. June 27, 2013
  As a reaction to the changed political landscape in Scandinavia following the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, the prominent Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag‐Leffler extended ‘a brotherly hand,’ calling for Scandinavian colleagues to meet for a congress of mathematicians in Stockholm in 1909. This event became the first in a series of biannual meetings which proved to be an important institution for Scandinavian mathematics. During the first decades after 1909, the congresses would form and consolidate themselves through the construction of a new Scandinavian identity for mathematicians which developed alongside and in relation to both international and national contexts and developments. In this paper, we shall demonstrate that these meetings served a complex set of agendas at the individual, national, and international level. In particular, they reflect a changing conception of cooperation in science for mutual cultural gain combined with a flexible institutionalisation that allowed the Scandinavian mathematicians to use the congresses for various diplomatic ambitions. We base our analyses of the Scandinavian Congresses of Mathematics on the notion of a shared ‘conational’ identity developed adjacent to national identities. We then analyse the formation, consolidation, delineation, and reflections of this institution in order to demonstrate how the efforts to unite Scandinavian mathematicians were contingent on and influenced by simultaneous currents of internationalisation and shared history, culture, and language in the Scandinavian region.

  June 27, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12011   open full text
• Selling Greenland: The Big Picture Television Series and the Army's Bid for Relevance during the Early Cold War.
  D. J. Kinney.
  Centaurus. June 21, 2013
  With an increased emphasis on air defense and missile technology at the outset of the Cold War, the role of the US Army's conventional ground forces seemed in doubt. The US Air Force achieved a position of primacy among the armed forces as it expanded its reach into outer space with a new ballistic missile force, while the US Navy set about a project of seafaring exploration and militarization with the submerged trans‐polar crossings. To counter this perception, the US Army mounted a campaign to prove its relevance in matters of technology and national defense. The key technical vehicle in this endeavor would prove to be mass media, and the staging area for the effort would be Greenland. Greenland would be the venue for the Army's most audacious appeals to the American people and the Congress to recognize its relevance to Cold War science and technology. Greenland would be called a ‘forward defense system,’ and a ‘cordon against aggression,’ and while the Air Force's bombers would be stationed on the coast at Thule, the Greenland icecap would be the realm of the US Army alone.

  June 21, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12022   open full text
• Too Hot to Handle: The Controversial Hunt for Uranium in Greenland in the Early Cold War.
  Henry Nielsen, Henrik Knudsen.
  Centaurus. June 21, 2013
  Before WW2 Danish geologists had found traces of uranium in Greenland. But being squeezed from both sides in the escalating Cold War between East and West, in the first decade after WW2 the Danish government did not support expeditions to explore Greenland's potential uranium deposits. The situation changed abruptly after President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace address in December 1953, as a result of which a Danish Atomic Energy Commission (AEK) was set up in early 1955. Besides building a large atomic energy research facility (Risø) one of AEK's first initiatives was to support big scale uranium expeditions to South‐West Greenland. The ultimate goal for the leaders of AEK was to liberate Denmark from its dependence on imported fossil fuels by developing Danish nuclear reactors, fuelled by natural uranium from Greenland. In the late 1960s, after more than a decade of uranium explorations, this was still a goal, albeit much more long term. For many reasons the hunt for uranium in Greenland after WW2 was unsuccessful, but the main ones were Danish sovereignty concerns, techno‐scientific nationalism and devastating institutional clashes of interests. The present paper will explore these problems.

  June 21, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1600-0498.12020   open full text