100 YEARS AGO

The Science Section of the Women's Congress was held at the Small Hall in the Westminster Town Hall on Thursday, June 29 ⃛. The subject of research work was discussed, and stress was laid upon the fact that, inasmuch as the majority of students who take up science do so either as an avenue to a degree or with the idea of earning a livelihood by teaching later on, their training was as a rule insufficient and quite inadequate to permit them to undertake independent original work; whilst on the other hand the demands upon their time made by teaching was so great as to leave practically no leisure for higher work, even when they were qualified to do it. ⃛ It was highly satisfactory to find that, in the open discussion which followed, an attempt on the part of two speakers to introduce the question of vivisection from the anti-vivisectionist point of view was not tolerated by the audience, these speakers being refused a hearing. It is not too much to say that the papers contributed were worthy both of their subjects and their authors, and that there was a refreshing absence of the hackneyed comparison of the relative position and intellectual powers of men and women, which has been such a favourite theme with so many speakers at this Congress.

From Nature 6 July 1899.

50 YEARS AGO

Dr. E. Rosen has written a remarkably lively little book, the conclusion of which is that the term ‘telescope’ was originally devised by John Demisiani of Cephalonia, and made public by Frederick Cesi at the banquet given in honour of Galileo on April 14, 1611. The circumstances may seem to the man of science of to-day to be too minute to warrant the publication of a book; but we must welcome here what the history of science so notably lacks, namely, a painstaking and detailed inquiry into a doubtful point concerning which both contemporaries and historians are at variance. The book scarcely needs to justify itself by its subject-matter, for such is the gusto of its author that the reader is infected by that strange passion that keeps sensible men out of bed after midnight to read detective stories.

From Nature 9 July 1949.