Biographical

Kenneth Keniston is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Human Development in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and Director of the MIT India Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Perhaps more than any other contemporary American scientist Stephen Jay Gould has presented the modes, implications, benefits, and shortcomings of science to a literate public. As an inventive and productive scholar he has shaped and participated in crucial debates of the biological and geological sciences, particularly with regard to the theory of evolution, the interpretation of fossil evidence, and the meaning of diversity and change in biology. As the readership for his nearly twenty books and hundreds of essays, reviews, and articles has grown he has become one of the most popular and well-known writers and lecturers on scientific topics. He has distinguished himself by elaborating his critique of contemporary evolutionary theory via an eclectic range of discourse, deriving inspiration from his personal reflections across an astonishing array of historical and humanistic disciplines, popular culture, and sports.

In asking who were the greatest physicists, we were deliberately vague about whether we were referring to the past 100 years, the past millennium, or simply all of time. If we had restricted ourselves to the 20th century, we would have overlooked Newton and Galileo, all the great physicists of the 19th century, and the discovery of X-rays, radioactivity and the electron in the late 1890s. And if we had restricted ourselves to the past millennium, we would have ignored Aristotle, Archimedes and others.

Sharon is interested in the dynamics of environmental and technological controversies and has special interest in the social aspects of engineering, environmental politics, the rhetoric of sustainable development, the philosophies behind environmental economics, and trends in environmentalism and corporate activism/public relations. Most recently she has broadened her research interests to include the promotion of the work ethic, market solutions to social problems anda critique of neoliberalism.

John Henry trained as a historian of science at Leeds and the Open Universities, and was a research fellow at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London before moving to Edinburgh University in 1986. He is interested in the interactions of and relations between science, philosophy, medicine, magic and religion in the Renaissance and early modern periods. He has recently published The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science (Macmillian Press and St Martin's Press, 1997

JARED DIAMOND is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Until recently he was Professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the widely acclaimed Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies, which also is the winner of Britain's 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize.

New Harmony was established in 1814 by a group of German extraction led by a man named George Rapp. They had moved from a colony named Harmonie in Pennsylvania, and numerous letters written by them from the new Indiana settlement were datelined Harmonie, Ind. It has been reported that Robert Owen changed the name to New Harmony when he acquired it, but a letter of 1815 from George Rapp to his son Frederick was datelined "Neu Harmony" and used the German spelling "Neu" and ended the word "Harmony" with a "y" instead of "ie" (Arndt, 1975, facing p.7). The Harmonists, during their 10 years, made no geologic contribution, but they built a physical base of operations in a wilderness, which their successors probably could not and surely would not have done. When Robert Owen, who was a successful industrialist and progressive thinker in New Lanark, Scotland, sought a site in America to test his ideas for social reform, the ready made community of New Harmony was for sale and was purchased.

The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) provided reliable real-time control for the Apollo spacecraft that carried US astronauts to the moon, 1969-1972. It was designed by the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc.) and manufactured by Raytheon Corporation.
The AGC was significant for its tight coupling of human and machine, its early use of integrated circuits, and its reliable, mission critical software. The history of the AGC project provides a window into the history of technology in America during the space race and the Cold War. This site is devoted to documenting the machines, people and institutions that made this achievement possible.

Described as one of the 8 true geniuses, Von Kármán's inspiration for aeronautics came about during doctoral study at one of the world's foremost universities in the 1900s, Göttingen. After an all-night party in Paris, a friend suggested that, instead of going to sleep, they watch the French aviation pioneer Henri Farman fly his machine. Farman successfully completed a 2-kilometre (1.25-mile) course as Von Kármán embarked upon a long career in the aeronautical and astronautical sciences.

Fifty years ago, in 1947, it was common knowledge that there was a "Wall of Air" at the speed of sound. As an airplane neared this critical point, shock waves would buffet its wings and tail. The pilot would lose control, a condition then called "compressibility." Often, the airplane would shatter into pieces