Earth Sciences

Supported by organizations of professional historians such as the American Society for Environmental History and the European Society for Environmental History, H-Environment is the email discussion list on environmental history. This Web site introduces the discussion group and tells you how to join and what is discussed in the group. Discussion threads considered significant have been archived. In addition, there are links to bibliographies, course syllabi, archival sources and other materials (and about 20 other Web sites) on environmental history. The site also has a searchable log of the entire discussion group that visitors can scan by topic, date or author.

This site contains an annotated and well maintained listing of web resources related to science and technology, organized by category. Links are also made to websites for a variety of related publications. Syllabi submitted by professors from different universities are collected. There is also a student division of 4S, and information regarding it is available.

A project of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the site recounts a ten day research trip examining active volcanoes in Costa Rica. In addition to scientific background information concerning the processes of volcanoes and the earth's crust, the site includes a Q&A section, biographies of the researchers, links to a variety of sites with volcanic content, and a daily log of the trip. The log also provides profiles, pictures, and video from the various volcanoes visited. The content ranges from basic cursory explanations of volcanic activity geared toward children to in depth, technical studies for the scientific community.

This site is an online catalogue for one of the most famous science museums in Europe, located in Florence. Its collections are mostly from the early modern period (roughly 1500-1800), with a particular emphasis on Galileo, his inventions and related materials from his lifetime. A room-by-room map of the museum allows visitors to view dozens of drawings, paintings and photographs of early astronomical, medical, mathematical, chemical and engineering instruments. There is also a virtual video tour of the Galileo room and accompanying photographs of his telescopes and other memorabilia. The site is written in non-technical bilingual form (English and Italian). Short biographies of important early modern Italian scientists and a multitude of links to other history of science and technology sites in many languages are included.

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has produced and maintained this site, examining the history of how physicists, meteorologists and other scientists have worked to create models of the Earth's atmosphere in an effort to understand large-scale circulation patterns and predict future weather events. The site's five historical essays trace modeling from the early 1920s through to the present day, and include references to printed material on the subject. There is an innovative "family tree" showing the development and interrelationships between various modeling theories and methods. Physicists and others who participated in the research and use of these models and their associated technologies are asked to email the AIP with their memories of the evolution of this field. It is also possible to send in other archival material, such as photographs and data, relating to the history of atmospheric general circulation models. A Sloan Foundation project.

The Iconographic Archives are a project of the University of Bologna's International Centre for the History of Universities and Science (CIS). The Archives are an online repository for images of people, artifacts, and places with corresponding descriptions and location information. The University, founded in 1088, has a long history as a center for scientific scholarship, and these images reflect this relationship. Though the CIS site is available in English, the archival information is in Italian, requiring some knowledge of the language to utilize the search functions. Searches can be made by year to circumvent this. Unfortunately, there also is no way to browse the images without using the search tool.

This site gives some brief information about the Australian Academy of Science and provides a description of manuscripts housed in the Academy's Basser Library. The site also contains an alphabetical index of the materials in the manuscript collection, which could be an important planning tool for researchers interested in taking a trip to the Library to do research with the papers first-hand. However, the actual manuscripts have not been made available online, so there is no historical information beyond the descriptions and index.

Archive of Australian scientific and corporate material. Contains biographies of over 3,000 Australian scientists as well as listings of documents available for order and a Cabinet of Curiosities-an interpretive creation about Australia's scientific history. Not updated since 1999.

The Institute Archives serves as Caltech's collective memory, preserving the papers, documents, artifacts and pictorial materials that tell the school's history, from 1891 to the present. Holdings include manuscript, photographic, print and audio-visual materials, oral histories, fine art and historic artifacts. Many of the photographs are available in digital format (thumbnail and full size) through the photo archive. The site also includes information about using the physical archive, online versions of archive exhibits and facts about the Cal Tech archive.