History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

Jennifer van Saders, Carnegie-Princeton Fellow, will discuss how the technique of astroseismology has revolutionized scientists’ view of the internal workings of stars. This talk is part of the Carnegie Astronomy Lecture Series at The Huntington. Recorded May 15, 2017.

Dr. Johanna Teske, Carnegie Origins Postdoctoral Fellow, highlights new discoveries about exoplanets—planets orbiting stars other than our Sun—including how their composition is “inherited” from their host star. This talk is part of the Carnegie Astronomy Lecture Series at The Huntington. Recorded May 1, 2017.

Andrew Wetzel, Caltech-Carnegie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carnegie Observatories, discusses how theoretical astrophysics is now revealing how galaxies are formed, using the world’s most powerful supercomputers to simulate this complex process. This talk is part of the Carnegie Astronomy Lecture Series at The Huntington. Recorded April 17, 2017.

Tony Piro, the George Ellery Hale Distinguished Scholar in Theoretical Astrophysics at the Carnegie Observatories, discusses how scientists are combining observations with theoretical modeling to unravel the mysteries of supernovae. This talk is part of the Carnegie Astronomy Lecture Series at The Huntington. Recorded April 3, 2017.

The Huntington presents a fascinating conversation about the practice of medicine during the U.S. Civil War and its dramatization in the popular PBS series “Mercy Street.” The panel discussion is moderated by Melissa Lo, Dibner Assistant Curator or Science and Technology at The Huntington, and includes curator Olga Tsapina, who oversees The Huntington’s Civil War collections; series executive producers Lisa Wolfinger and David Zabel; and series medical history advisor Shauna Devine. Recorded Jan. 17, 2017.

Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics and History at Yale University, discusses the important ways in which patents have contributed to technological innovation over the course of U.S. history. This talk is part of the Haaga Lecture Series at The Huntington. Recorded Jan. 9, 2017.

The history of the aerospace industry in Southern California and its intersections with contemporary culture are the focus of this panel discussion, presented in conjunction with the exhibition of NASA’s Orbit Pavilion (on view at The Huntington from Oct. 29, 2016, to Feb. 27, 2017). Panelists are Peter Westwick, aerospace historian; William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West; and Daniel Lewis, senior curator of the history of science and technology at The Huntington. Recorded Dec. 13, 2016.

Neal Nathanson M.D., discusses a 1955 incident in which Cutter Laboratories of Berkeley, Calif., inadvertently released batches of polio vaccine that contained the live virus. Nathanson, who headed the unit of the Epidemic Intelligence Service that investigated cases of polio resulting from the Cutter vaccine, also provides an update on efforts toward global eradication of poliomyelitis. This program is presented by the George Dock Society for the History of Medicine. Recorded Nov. 1, 2016.

Jon Mee, professor of 18th-century studies at the University of York and the R. Stanton Avery Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington, discusses the network of literary and philosophical societies that sprang up in response to the transformative experience of the industrial revolution in the north of England between 1780 and 1830. Recorded Sept. 21, 2016.

Astronomer Katherine Alatalo will tour the Hubble sequence, from "young" to "old" galaxies, exploring three avenues to galactic transitions: the quiet, slow fade; the violent merger; and the quietly violent evolution of a galaxy, likely due to a supermassive black hole in its center. This talk is part of the Carnegie Lecture series.

Astronomer Kevin Schlaufman, Carnegie-Princeton Fellow at the Carnegie Observatories, tells the story of exoplanets to date, and outlines the progress being made in the search for life elsewhere in our galaxy. This talk is part of the Carnegie Lecture series.

Asif Siddiqi, professor of history at Fordham University and the Searle Visiting Professor in the History at Caltech and The Huntington, discusses a lost “global” history of space exploration and the reach of space activities at the height of the Cold War.

Join Anat Shahar, staff scientist in the geophysical laboratory at the Carnegie Institution for Science, for an exploration of terrestrial planets and a discussion of what laboratory experiments can reveal about the conditions that formed them.

Amanda E. Herbert, assistant professor of history at Christopher Newport University, describes 17th- and 18th-century medical regimes, exploring why Britons drank and swam in mineral waters in order to heal themselves from disease or injury.

Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at Caltech, describes the ideas underlying general relativity and the amazing discoveries about warped spacetime that have been made in the past 100 years. One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein formulated his general relativity theory, which describes space and time as warped by mass and energy.

Dena Goodman, professor of history at the University of Michigan, discusses a group of young men whose passion for science guided them through the turmoil of the French Revolution and into leadership roles in the decades that followed.

Simon Winchester, author of The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, tells the extraordinary story of British surveyor, William Smith.

Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, co-creators of “The Knick,” have a discussion and Q&A about their Cinemax series. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the show follows Dr. John Thackery (played by Clive Owen) at The Knickerbocker Hospital – aka The Knick – a microcosm of medical progress, racial tension, sexism, addiction, and class conflict in 1900s New York City. The panel focuses on what it takes to bring medical history to life, and the resonance of the past for a 21st-century present. Dock Society members Dr. Richard Ellis and Dr. Claire Panosian Dunavan moderate.

William Rankin, assistant professor of the history of science at Yale University, explores the links between roadside surveying markers, nuclear missile targeting, and new forms of mapping in the twentieth century. His talk will focus on the grid-like alternatives to latitude and longitude that were created during and after the World Wars, especially the global system installed by the US Army. For soldiers, engineers, and homeowners alike, these invisible but now ubiquitous technologies blurred the line between the paper map and the real world and made it possible to treat the spherical earth as perfectly flat. This was part of the Trent Dames Lecture series.

Best-selling author Andrea Wulf (Founding Gardeners; The Brother Gardeners) discusses her new book on the extraordinary life of the visionary German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Humboldt, says Wulf, created the way we understand nature today. Perceiving nature as an interconnected global force, Humboldt discovered similarities between climate zones across the world and predicted human-induced climate change. His eloquent writings inspired naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth, Muir, and Thoreau.

Nancy Tomes, professor of history at Stony Brook University, reflects on the impact of Norman Cousins’ groundbreaking 1976 article and his subsequent efforts to change the definition of the “good” patient. The lecture is sponsored by the George Dock Society for the History of Medicine. This is part of the Walter Jarvis Barlow Lecture series.

William R. Newman, professor of history and philosophy of science at Indiana University, examines why one of the most influential scientists who ever lived believed in alchemical transmutation, which has long been discredited in the modern scientific world.

Rosalind Williams, author of “The Triumph of Human Empire,” discusses how the writer Robert Louis Stevenson understood engineering as a romantic profession, and how his engineering education led him to defend "romance" over "realism" in literature. Her talk was the 2013¬–14 Trent Dames Lecture at The Huntington.

Robert S. Westman describes a late 15th-century crisis about the status of astrology that led to Nicolas Copernicus’ great hypothesis that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Westman is professor of history at the University of California, San Diego, and author of the book “The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order” (2011).

Joe Palca, a science correspondent for NPR, talks about the new book he co-authored with Flora Lichtman, “Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us.” With humor and plenty of hard data, he explains why fingernails on a chalk board make us cringe and why that guy on the cell phone drives us crazy.

Bruce Moran discusses alchemy—a subject that he says is often greatly misunderstood and one that figures significantly in early modern science. Moran is the Dibner Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington for 2010–11 and the author of “Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution.”

Ronald L. Numbers, historian of science and medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, discusses the history of the debate over evolution in America, from William Jennings Bryan’s crusade to eradicate Darwinism from schools to current efforts to promote the teaching of “intelligent design.”

The abundant water in the North European Plain was both a nemesis and an ally to early modern Prussians. Kathryn Olesko, associate professor at Georgetown University and the Dibner Distinguished Fellow for 2009-10, examines how the challenges of water management shaped Prussian attitudes about nature, politics, and technology.

The year 2009 marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, "On the Origin of Species." Daniel Lewis, Dibner Senior Curator of the History of Science & Technology at The Huntington, examines the difficulties Darwin faced in publishing his evolutionary theory. Presented in conjunction with Pasadena’s Art & Ideas Festival 2009.

Donald K. Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program, discusses the importance of comet and asteroid impacts in understanding the origin of the solar system and the evolution of life on Earth. He also addresses NASA’s current activities to prevent future Earth-threatening impact events.

In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy, which concludes in December, The Huntington is presenting a series of four special lectures on the history of this field of science. In the opening lecture, Noel Swerdlow, professor of the history of astronomy at Caltech, discusses Galileo’s pivotal role in the development of modern physics and astronomy.

Lewis discusses the newly acquired Burndy Library,including its scope and future plans for its use and development.