What are your favorite papers in Nature's archive?
David Kross
Friday, 17 April 2009 15:58 UTC
I’ve been browsing Nature’s online archive quite a bit lately. The other day, I read about the discovery of the man-ape of South Africa in the February 7, 1925 issue of Nature. The next day I stumbled upon a brief commentary on the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama in the Nov. 4, 1939 issue. It’s like a walk back in time through scientific history with plenty of surprises along the way, and I don’t even have to leave my desk.
What are some of your favorite papers in Nature’s archive?
David
Updated 17 April 2009 16:01 UTC
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Replies
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In my days as a physicist I used to enjoy allowing myself to be distracted by the very old Nature volumes whilst wandering the stacks at the University of Birmingham. I seem to remember letters about ‘interesting’ paranormal-type phenomena that had been observed – which struck me as a amusingly non-scientific by today’s standards. Unfortunately we’ve only purchased the online archive back to 1945 so I don’t have the pleasure of browsing through the really early stuff from my desktop :-(
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Thanks for posting, Terry. Oh, how times have changed.
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I’m always amazed by a brief note in the first issue of Nature – Nov 4, 1869 – that highlights (and thankfullly supports) progress of “The ‘Female Physician’ question… Ladies are to be admitted to study Medicine at Edinburgh University.”
The note is refering to the first group of women medical students at a UK university, who fought to study medicine and to be allowed to graduate, and later became known as the Edinburgh Seven. In 1869 they were allowed to attend specially-arranged classes, but in 1873 they lost a legal challenge against the University after it had decided they could not be awarded degrees. Infact it was also ruled, by a majority, that the women should not have been admitted in the first place!
Incredible to think this was less than 150 years ago.
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On the same page, there’s a piece on “public anxiety about the fate of our great explorer, Dr. Livingstone.” Brilliant to get a snap shot of which news stories and personalities were getting coverage at that time. I haven’t explored the full archive, but there must be an obituary in a later issue, I presume…
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