Richard Noakes - Böcker

For the Victorian reading public, periodicals played a far greater role than books in shaping their understanding of new discoveries and theories in science, technology and medicine. Such understandings were formed not merely by serious scientific articles, but also by glancing asides in political reports, fictional representations, or humorous attacks in comic magazines. Ranging across diverse forms of periodicals, from top-selling religious and juvenile magazines through to popular fiction-based periodicals, and from the campaigning 'new journalism' of the late century to the comic satire of Punch, this book explores the ways in which scientific ideas and developments were presented to a variety of Victorian audiences. In addition, it offers three case studies of the representation of particular areas of science: 'baby science', scientific biography, and electricity. This intriguing collaborative volume sheds light on issues relating to history and history of science, literature, book history, and cultural and media studies.

Cambridge University's Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics is one of the most celebrated academic positions in the world. Since its foundation in 1663, the chair has been held by seventeen men who represent some of the best and most influential minds in science and technology. Principally a social history of mathematics and physics, the story of these great natural philosophers and mathematical physicists is told here by some of the finest historians of science. The journey begins with the search for a benefactor able to establish a 'mathematicus professor honorarius', and travels through the life and work of the professors, exploring aspects from the heroic to the absurd. Covering both the great similarities and the extreme differences in mathematical physics over the last four centuries, this informative work offers interesting perspectives on world-famous scientists including Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, G. G. Stokes, Paul Dirac and Stephen Hawking.

Cambridge University's Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics is one of the most celebrated academic positions in the world. Since its foundation in 1663, the chair has been held by seventeen men who represent some of the best and most influential minds in science and technology. Principally a social history of mathematics and physics, the story of these great natural philosophers and mathematical physicists is told here by some of the finest historians of science. The journey begins with the search for a benefactor able to establish a 'mathematicus professor honorarius', and travels through the life and work of the professors, exploring aspects from the heroic to the absurd. Covering both the great similarities and the extreme differences in mathematical physics over the last four centuries, this informative work offers interesting perspectives on world-famous scientists including Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, G. G. Stokes, Paul Dirac and Stephen Hawking.

For the Victorian reading public, periodicals played a far greater role than books in shaping their understanding of new discoveries and theories in science, technology and medicine. Such understandings were formed not merely by serious scientific articles, but also by glancing asides in political reports, fictional representations, or humorous attacks in comic magazines. Ranging across diverse forms of periodicals, from top-selling religious and juvenile magazines through to popular fiction-based periodicals, and from the campaigning 'new journalism' of the late century to the comic satire of Punch, this book explores the ways in which scientific ideas and developments were presented to a variety of Victorian audiences. In addition, it offers three case studies of the representation of particular areas of science: 'baby science', scientific biography, and electricity. This intriguing collaborative volume sheds light on issues relating to history and history of science, literature, book history, and cultural and media studies.

Written by literary scholars, historians of science, and cultural historians, the twenty-two original essays in this collection explore the intriguing and multifaceted interrelationships between science and culture through the periodical press in nineteenth-century Britain. Ranging across the spectrum of periodical titles, the six sections comprise: 'Women, Children, and Gender', 'Religious Audiences', 'Naturalizing the Supernatural', 'Contesting New Technologies', 'Professionalization and Journalism', and 'Evolution, Psychology, and Culture'. The essays offer some of the first 'samplings and soundings' from the emergent and richly interdisciplinary field of scholarship on the relations between science and the nineteenth-century media.

This is the first systematic exploration of the intriguing connections between Victorian physical sciences and the study of the controversial phenomena broadly classified as psychic, occult and paranormal. These phenomena included animal magnetism, spirit-rapping, telekinesis and telepathy. Richard Noakes shows that psychic phenomena interested far more Victorian scientists than we have previously assumed, challenging the view of these scientists as individuals clinging rigidly to a materialistic worldview. Physicists, chemists and other physical scientists studied psychic phenomena for a host of scientific, philosophical, religious and emotional reasons, and many saw such investigations as exciting new extensions to their theoretical and experimental researches. While these attempted extensions were largely unsuccessful, they laid the foundations of modern day explorations of the connections between physics and psychic phenomena. This revelatory study challenges our view of the history of physics, and deepens our understanding of the relationships between science and the occult, and science and religion.

Written by literary scholars, historians of science, and cultural historians, the twenty-two original essays in this collection explore the intriguing and multifaceted interrelationships between science and culture through the periodical press in nineteenth-century Britain. Ranging across the spectrum of periodical titles, the six sections comprise: 'Women, Children, and Gender', 'Religious Audiences', 'Naturalizing the Supernatural', 'Contesting New Technologies', 'Professionalization and Journalism', and 'Evolution, Psychology, and Culture'. The essays offer some of the first 'samplings and soundings' from the emergent and richly interdisciplinary field of scholarship on the relations between science and the nineteenth-century media.