Although certainly not the first trigonometric table, Ptolemy's On the Size of Chords Inscribed in a Circle (2nd Century AD) is by far the most famous. Based largely on an earlier work by Hipparchus (ca. 140 BC) it was included in Ptolemy's definitive Syntaxis Mathematica, better known by its Arabic name Almagest. In this paper I will describe the geometric theorems used in the construction of this table and attempt to relate them to their contemporary trigonometric counterparts.
rimary Articles (almost all are excerpted)
c. 50 B.C. - Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
An excerpt of De Rerum Natura
15?? - an example of Paracelsus' alchemical writing
1677 - Roemer on the speed of light
1749 - Benjamin Franklin "Experiments and Observations on Electricity"
1763 - Boscovich develops theory of point-like atoms
etc.
How the Shaman Stole the Moon (Bantam 1991) is my archaeoastronomy book, a dozen ways of predicting eclipses -- those paleolithic strategies for winning fame and fortune by convincing people that you're (ahem) on speaking terms with whoever runs the heavens
Yost, Jeffrey R. A bibliographic guide to reference sources in scientific computing, 1945-1975. Westport: Greenwood, 2002.
Reilly, Edwin D. Milestones in computer science and information technology. Westport: Greenwood, 2003.
James, Ioan. Remarkable mathematicians: from Euler to von Neumann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
This is a huge compilation of bibliographical material relating to the history of science
Although the `Great Debate' is important to different people for different reasons, it is a clear example of humanity once again striving to find its place within the cosmic order. In the debate, Shapley and Curtis truly argued over the ``Scale of the Universe," as the debate's title suggests. Curtis argued that the Universe is composed of many galaxies like our own, which had been identified by astronomers of his time as ``spiral nebulae". Shapley argued that these ``spiral nebulae" were just nearby gas clouds, and that the Universe was composed of only one big Galaxy. In Shapley's model, our Sun was far from the center of this Great Universe/Galaxy. In contrast, Curtis placed our Sun near the center of our relatively small Galaxy. Although the fine points of the debate were more numerous and more complicated, each scientist disagreed with the other on these crucial points.
A novel experiment is currently underway in the geophysical sciences. Thanks to funding from the Sloan Foundation, geoscientists who have worked on a number of pathbreaking developments now have an opportunity to document and write their own history. The AGU, the American Meteorological Society, and the American Institute of Physics have established sites on the World Wide Web to which geoscientists may contribute their recollections and other unpublished material for the histories of Solar Variability and Climate Change; Black Smokers; Greenland Ice Drilling Projects; General Atmospheric Circulation Models; and the GARP Atlantic Tropical Experiment.
Thanks to funding from the Sloan Foundation, geoscientists who have worked on a number of path breaking developments are now writing their own history. The AGU, the American Meteorological Society, and the American Institute of Physics have established sites on the World Wide Web to which geoscientists have contributed their recollections and other unpublished material for the histories of geophysics. This site, Solar Variability and Climate Change, is divided into four subtopics: Solar Irradiance Measurements, Global Temperature Reconstructions, Isotope Proxies, Solar Reconstruction and Tree Ring and Other Proxies. The site is particularly devoted to the debate over a solar contribution to climatic change and includes online discussions, and full text documents in the history of geophysics.
The science.ca website combines rich narrative biography with clear graphic explanation to describe Canada's greatest scientists and their achievements. The site is visited by thousands of students from across Canada every day, often as part of their provincial school curriculum.
Every culture on earth has developed some mathematics. In some cases, this mathematics has spread from one culture to another. Now there is one predominant international mathematics, and this mathematics has quite a history. It has roots in ancient Egypt and Babylonia, then grew rapidly in ancient Greece. Mathematics written in ancient Greek was translated into Arabic. About the same time some mathematics of India was translated into Arabic. Later some of this mathematics was translated into Latin and became the mathematics of Western Europe. Over a period of several hundred years, it became the mathematics of the world.
The martyrdom of Hypatia, of course, did insure that her name would live on. For centuries afterwards, Hypatia was the most written about woman scientist in history. Only Marie Curie in the 20th century would rival her fame.
This is site consist of many links to women in science sites. It is organized into six categories; herstory of science, science education, monster resource websites for the sciences, women scientists sites, women science organizations, funky sites and freebies.
The Institute was established in March 1994. Its research is primarily devoted to a theoretically oriented history of science, principally of the natural sciences, but with methodological perspectives drawn from the cognitive sciences and from cultural history. All three departments of the Institute aim at the construction of a 'historical epistemology' of the sciences.
The research conducted by the Planck Institute has led to, often in collaboration with other organizations, a number of online projects on the history of science. Topics of these sites include an open digital library for the history of mechanics, a repository for European cultural heritage, a collection of Albert Einstein papers, an account of scientific voyages to the Canary Islands, and a collection of drawing and optical devices, among others. Abstracts and preprints of papers produced by the Institute are also available.
