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Author: Thierry Montmerle
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031017870
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
Seen from “inside the IAU,” this book tells the in-depth story of a major crisis in which China “divorced” from the International Astronomical Union in 1960 as a protest against the admission of Taiwan. This happened to all the scientific unions at the same time, and to the Olympic Games, which, unexpectedly, would serve as a laboratory for the “reconciliation” which took place following the re-opening of China to the world 20 years later. The so-called “China conflict” is the most important crisis in the post-WWII history of the IAU. Yet, many details about this conflict and its links to broader geopolitical events have long remained unsettled, obscure, or altogether absent. In particular, the book describes for the first time the “separation” period, which covered the Cultural Revolution, and in which the IAU made desperate official efforts to reach out to China, while some groups of Western and Chinese astronomers managed to keep contact at times. On the occasion of the IAU Centenary celebrations in 2019, the book revisits this painful succession of events using unpublished documents from the IAU Archives and the International Council of Scientific Unions. The book also contains supplementary typescripts of selected handwritten correspondences and the full translation of key original Chinese documents unknown to readers outside China. What emerges is a complex and fascinating story of human relations and science diplomacy under the shadow of the Cold War. Readers will learn how the 20-year “China conflict” as lived by astronomers and scientists is important not only for the history of the IAU, but also for the history of contemporary China. “This book is full of so many original documents of the IAU office, very reliable and good to open to the public readers.” Shuhua Ye, Shanghai Observatory (IAU Vice-President, 1988-1994) This book is a companion book to "Astronomers as Diplomats," published at the same time in the same series.
Author: Thierry Montmerle
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031017870
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Get Book Here
Book Description
Seen from “inside the IAU,” this book tells the in-depth story of a major crisis in which China “divorced” from the International Astronomical Union in 1960 as a protest against the admission of Taiwan. This happened to all the scientific unions at the same time, and to the Olympic Games, which, unexpectedly, would serve as a laboratory for the “reconciliation” which took place following the re-opening of China to the world 20 years later. The so-called “China conflict” is the most important crisis in the post-WWII history of the IAU. Yet, many details about this conflict and its links to broader geopolitical events have long remained unsettled, obscure, or altogether absent. In particular, the book describes for the first time the “separation” period, which covered the Cultural Revolution, and in which the IAU made desperate official efforts to reach out to China, while some groups of Western and Chinese astronomers managed to keep contact at times. On the occasion of the IAU Centenary celebrations in 2019, the book revisits this painful succession of events using unpublished documents from the IAU Archives and the International Council of Scientific Unions. The book also contains supplementary typescripts of selected handwritten correspondences and the full translation of key original Chinese documents unknown to readers outside China. What emerges is a complex and fascinating story of human relations and science diplomacy under the shadow of the Cold War. Readers will learn how the 20-year “China conflict” as lived by astronomers and scientists is important not only for the history of the IAU, but also for the history of contemporary China. “This book is full of so many original documents of the IAU office, very reliable and good to open to the public readers.” Shuhua Ye, Shanghai Observatory (IAU Vice-President, 1988-1994) This book is a companion book to "Astronomers as Diplomats," published at the same time in the same series.
Author: Thierry Montmerle
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303098625X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 524
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Book Description
This book illuminates a few highly significant events in history in which astronomers have helped keep contacts between astronomers of different states in moments of international political tensions or even crises. The chapters, written by 20 international authors, focus on four periods where astronomers were particularly active in international relations: 1. The WWI period, the epoch of the creation of the IAU, in the context of the simultaneous creation of other scientific unions. The book also singles out the important role of A.S. Eddington and his network “across forbidden borders”. 2. The Cold war period and its consequences, when several countries were divided between opposite blocs. “The China crisis” is told here from different viewpoints by Chinese astronomers, both from the mainland and from Taiwan, in parallel with the evolution of astronomy in South and North Korea. Germany’s twisted path in its membership of the IAU, from its admission in 1951 to its reunification in 1991 is shown as another example. 3. The book then highlights a third period, when radio astronomers, in particular, were very active in “building bridges” between East and West. It also tells the history of how the apparently innocuous issue of the “lunar nomenclature” became extremely sensitive. The part ends on two chapters on Russian robotic missions and lunar surface features as well on the Russian participation in the “International Virtual Observatory” project. 4. The fourth part reports for the first time on the “hidden story” of the relations between the IAU and the United Nations after the “Moon race” when the United Nations decided to challenge the IAU’s authority on “extraterrestrial names”. The final chapter reviews how twenty years later UNESCO and the IAU had become strong partners in the difficult, but highly successful organization of the International Year of Astronomy (2002-2009), and of the “Astronomy and World Heritage” intitiative (2008).
Author: Jörg Matthias Determann
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031461134
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195
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Book Description
Astronomy is a field concerned with matters very distant from Earth. Most phenomena, whether observed or theorized, transcend human spaces and timescales by orders of magnitude. Yet, many scientists have been interested not just in the events that have occurred millennia before Earth's inception, but also in their very own society here and now. Since the first half of the twentieth century, an increasing number of them have pursued parallel careers as both academics and activists. Besides publishing peer-reviewed papers, they have promoted a great variety of underrepresented groups within their discipline. Through conferences, newsletters and social media, they have sought to advance the interests of women, members of racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, and disabled people. While these activists have differed in the identities they focus on, they have come to share a conviction that diversity and inclusion are crucial for scientific excellence as well as social justice. In this book, you will read of the biographies and institutional contexts of key agents in the diversification of modern astronomy. As most are recent figures whose discoveries have not been commemorated by Nobel Prizes, they are relatively unknown among historians of science. They have, however, been central to discussions about who has privileged access to the tools of astronomical inquiry, including powerful telescopes and extensive databases. As such, they have also significantly shaped views of our universe.
Author:
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Author:
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Author: Scott Alan Johnston
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228009642
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166
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Book Description
Until the nineteenth century all time was local time. On foot or on horseback, it was impossible to travel fast enough to care that noon was a few minutes earlier or later from one town to the next. The invention of railways and telegraphs, however, created a newly interconnected world where suddenly the time differences between cities mattered. The Clocks Are Telling Lies is an exploration of why we tell time the way we do, demonstrating that organizing a new global time system was no simple task. Standard time, envisioned by railway engineers such as Sandford Fleming, clashed with universal time, promoted by astronomers. When both sides met in 1884 at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC, to debate the best way to organize time, disagreement abounded. If scientific and engineering experts could not agree, how would the public? Following some of the key players in the debate, Scott Johnston reveals how people dealt with the contradictions in global timekeeping in surprising ways – from zealots like Charles Piazzi Smyth, who campaigned for the Great Pyramid to serve as the prime meridian, to Maria Belville, who sold the time door to door in Victorian London, to Moraviantown and other Indigenous communities that used timekeeping to fight for autonomy. Drawing from a wide range of primary sources, The Clocks Are Telling Lies offers a thought-provoking narrative that centres people and politics, rather than technology, in the vibrant story of global time telling.
Author: Thierry Montmerle
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030999300
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 124
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Book Description
This book presents the exceptional biography of the 20th century Chinese astronomer Cheng Maolan, who came to France in 1926 on a China-France cooperation program to do his PhD with the idea of returning to China after a few years. Instead, he lived two lives. He first stayed in France and studied astronomy in Lyon, the “Silk city”, where he suffered the hardships of the German occupation, but also witnessed the construction of the Haute-Provence Observatory. After the war, he started a promising career at Lyon Observatory. However, in 1957 he decided to live a second life, by returning to the motherland, which had in the meantime become the People's Republic of China. There, he suffered the hardships of the Cultural Revolution, but he managed to play a pivotal role in establishing the Beijing Observatory as its director. In particular, he prepared the ground for the Xinglong 2-m telescope, which saw its first light in 1989, ten years after his death. Cheng Maolan is now considered a "Chinese hero": an "Astronomy and Technology Museum" was built and named after him in 2018, in his native city of Boye, Hebei Province, China, featuring a tall, white statue in front of the building.
Author: Andrea Wulf
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307744604
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
A “thrilling adventure story" (San Francisco Chronicle) that brings to life the astronomers who in the 1700s embarked upon a quest to calculate the size of the solar system, and paints a vivid portrait of the collaborations, rivalries, and volatile international politics that hindered them at every turn. • From the author of Magnificent Rebels and New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature. On June 6, 1761, the world paused to observe a momentous occasion: the first transit of Venus between the Earth and the Sun in more than a century. Through that observation, astronomers could calculate the size of the solar system—but only if they could compile data from many different points of the globe, all recorded during the short period of the transit. Overcoming incredible odds and political strife, astronomers from Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden, and the American colonies set up observatories in the remotest corners of the world, only to be thwarted by unpredictable weather and warring armies. Fortunately, transits of Venus occur in pairs; eight years later, they would have another opportunity to succeed. Thanks to these scientists, neither our conception of the universe nor the nature of scientific research would ever be the same.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military art and science
Languages : en
Pages : 486
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Book Description
Author: Alex Duthie
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 9781469758251
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158
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Book Description
Its About Time presents an introduction to theoretical physics as well as challenges to some of the concepts put forward by theoretical physicists of our time. These scientists have presented such concepts in countless public lectures, highlights of which are compiled here along with a variety of historical data, such as the history of earth time. Also included are short biographies of physicists who have contributed significantly to our knowledge base. To help foster understanding of the related astronomical matters, Its About Time includes technical information relating to Newton and Keplers laws. Technical discussions are appended to the end of each relevant chapter. Furthermore, it offers a credible and significant challenge to Einsteins theories and to the current thinking on time dilation. Finally, the study outlines some procedural guidelines for young physicists and suggests how academic institutions can become custodians of a central depository of reference data, facilitating future physicists into more efficient and fruitful endeavors. This study offers no challenge to mathematics, which is a pure and exact science. When a physicist is able to have the mathematics represent natural phenomena, then mathematics becomes a necessary tool for our simplified understanding of nature. Eventually all of nature will be reduced to mathematical terms. The challenge presented here is to theoretical mathematics with no proven relationship to natural phenomena.
