mathematics

Johannes Kepler: Mathematician and Mystic, Creator of a Contemporary World

Dec 27, 2023

anniversaries, Book Reviews, Science

astronomy, calculus, earth, Germany, Great Comet of 1577, Johannes Kepler, Keplers Laws of Planetary Motion, Leonberg, mathematics, nasa, Nicolaus Copernicus, philosophy, physics, religion, religious wars, Science, sun

In 1577 Leonberg, Katharina Guldenmann took her small son “to a high place” for an advantageous view of a comet passing over what is now southwestern Germany. Three years later, the then eight-year-old boy’s father brought him out on a bitterly cold winter night to witness a lunar eclipse. Though in later years this boy…
Another prominent Talbot

Sep 17, 2019

anniversaries, genealogy, Science

Anne of Exeter, Assyriology, calotype, Earls of Ilchester, Edward IV, integral calculus, inventors, John Earl of Shrewsbury, Louis Daguerre, mathematics, Mesopotamia, patents, photographs, Royal Institution, Royal Society, spectral analysis, Talbots, William Henry Fox Talbot, Y-chromosome

Last year, we brought you the news that the developers of the Stanley knife were descended from Thomas, Baron Stanley, subsequently Earl of Derby. Now we can announce that a great scientist and inventor was a Talbot, authentically descended from John “Old Talbot”, Earl of Shrewsbury and posthumous father-in-law to Edward IV. William Henry Fox…
A strange Reformation relic

Jul 5, 2018

humour, law, religion, Science

Act of Supremacy, Archbishop Cranmer, clerical celibacy, clerical marriage, cold weather, Edward VI, Henry VIII, Lewis Carroll, Mary I, mathematics, metaphors, novelists, Oxford University, priesthood, Reformation, thawing

Think of a cold week in this or your own country, with snow. On the last day, it thaws. You look out during the late afternoon and there remains a small patch of snow, in a seemingly random location. In a way, the English Reformation was like this. It began, arguably, in 1534. By the…

mathematics

Johannes Kepler: Mathematician and Mystic, Creator of a Contemporary World

Another prominent Talbot

A strange Reformation relic