October 2011 archive

Oct 20 2011

Book review: Edmond Halley Charting the Heavens and the Seas by Alan Cook

EdmondHalleyEdmond Halley (1656-1742) was one of the key figures in the early history of the Royal Society. He is best known for predicting the return of his eponymous comet but over-shadowed by contemporaries such as Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren and Samuel Pepys. The biography I review here is “Edmond Halley: Charting the Heavens and the Seas” by Alan Cook.

Cook divides Halley’s life into three phases:

  • His early life including trips to St Helena (1677-78) to compile the first comprehensive star catalogue of the southern hemisphere; a visit to Danzig to establish the accuracy of Johann Hevelius’ star catalogue (1679), along with further travel to visit astronomers in France and Italy. This phase culminates in the publication of Newton’s Principia (1687), which Halley paid for and managed.
  • In a second phase Halley is found making two tours of the Atlantic (1698-1700), venturing to the very far south, with a view to establishing the longitudes (in particular) of various locations and measuring meterological and magnetic properties as he goes. He does this on the request of the king, as a member of the Navy. Subsequently he is sent to the Adriatic Sea (1703) to survey various potential naval bases for the English Navy. He also conducts a survey of tides in the English Channel (1701), following an earlier survey of the approaches to the Thames (1689)  and is involved in diving operations on the wrecked frigate Guiney to salvage its cargo (1691), inventing a diving bell and diving suit for the purpose. He is also Deputy to Newton at the Chester Mint (1696-97), which was created along with four other country mints for the Great Recoinage.
  • Finally he becomes Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University in 1704 where he prepares a translation of Apollonius’s Conics – a classical text on geometry. After John Flamsteed dies (1720), Halley takes his place as Astronomer Royal at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. a post he holds until his death aged 85 in 1742.

The striking thing about the first phase of his life is the degree of responsibility and the quality of his connections at an early stage in his life. He goes to St Helena at the age of 20, breaking his study as an undergraduate at Oxford, with the blessing of both the Royal Society and Charles II; Cook comments that this responsibility at an early age is not exceptional at the time but the degree of high level support is notable. On his return the king directs the university to award him a degree. Following this, at the age of 23, he goes to Danzig to make measurements with Johann Hevelius (1611-1687) at the behest of the Royal Society to check out how Hevelius makes his measurements (he uses so-called open sights, rather than the more recently invented telescopic sights) and the Society wishes to know if his claimed accuracy is reasonable. This is a pretty delicate task for a young man!

On his return from Europe he works with Newton on the publication of Principia. Prior to Principia astronomy is about data collection and classification, after Principia there is a theory that will tie all of these data together (even if the calculations are not trivial)  based on the core idea of universal gravitation attraction following an inverse square law. Halley funds the publication of the book, and is responsible for the printing, along the way learns the contents inside-out which he will later apply to the orbits of comets and the motions of the moon. In a way Halley’s prediction of the return of a comet is the proof of Newton’s theory: at the time comets were rather mysterious it was not clear at the time that they were bodies that orbited the sun but by applying Newton’s theory Halley could predict the return of a comet (everyone knew that the planets were in orbits, even if they didn’t know why).

It’s during this time Halley falls out with John Flamsteed (1646-1719) with whom he had been familiar since the creation of the Royal Observatory and Flamsteed’s appointment as Astronomer Royal. The core of the problem seems to be Halley passing on Flamsteed’s data to Newton for his calculations in Principia. Flamsteed later makes everyone he feels is in the Newton camp his enemy, maybe I need to read a sympathetic biography of Flamsteed!

The creation of the Astronomer Royal and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, along with Halley’s government funded and mandated trips around the Atlantic mark the start of scientific endeavours funded by the government. Prior to this great programmes of observation such as those by Tycho Brahe and Johann Hevelius are essentially the enthusiasms of wealthy amateurs – they die with their masters. For problems such as the determination of longitude there is a need for extended programmes of observation whose results are available to all. In a sense the clash between John Flamsteed and everyone else represents the birthing pains of this switch, he kept “his” measurements close to his chest and was monumentally reluctant to publish them. This is someone who adopts a lifelong program of detailed measurements who, naturally, will collide massively with someone like Halley, who although he undertook such a program late in his life and was a competent observer in his own right, was much more an aggregator of data from other people.

During his life Halley was respected as one of the leading European mathematicians, a reputation which hasn’t really maintained. I feel this is a little unfair, Halley’s strength was in compiling data on, for example, cometary orbits from a range of sources including other contemporary observers, his own measurements and historical sources. He then applies the most recent theory of the time to make future predictions – most famously of the return of his eponymous comet. He also devises the program of measurement for the transits of Venus and Mercury, which are conducted on James Cook’s mission after Halley’s death, these are used to determine the size of the solar system. (The key parameter to be measured is simply the length of the transit, rather than the absolute time of its start and end). This process of turning theory, in this case Newton’s theory of gravitation, into practical application is critical but less well recognised than the “original seed”. In contrast to Joseph Banks and Charles Darwin, who were passengers on Royal Navy ships, Halley is master and commander – he has a full Navy commission and salary and is a competent seaman.

Halley’s work on geomagnetism and trade winds is also notable – he publishes the first known examples of “isoclines” to visualise his data – and he makes use of a wide range of measurements from right across the globe. In fact as a classical scholar he also investigates historical data which he incorporates into this work and other independent investigations.

halley_isoline_1701

One longstanding project is the understanding of the motion of the moon, it is relevant because if the location of the moon relative to the fixed stars can be calculated in the future then the moon can be used as a clock to determine the longitude: a grand challenge of the time. As Astronomer Royal Halley sought to record the motion of the moon over the 18 year “saronic” cycle, this is the period over which the moon’s orbit repeats. The results of these observations are not published until after his death.

On subjects such as tides, the magnetic field of the earth, calculations of lunar locations, geomagnetism, the source of the aurora Halley is often producing results that are not bettered for a hundred or so years. 

Halley strikes me as an early version of Joseph Banks, someone with significant scientific reputation but also someone who can be relied on to competently complete difficult tasks – they share a little more in the sense that it is Banks who helps conduct the transit of Venus measurements in Tahiti that Halley described many years before. It also plays to the idea that, at the time, there were no professional scientists such as there are today, the 17th century model is equivalent to a cabinet minister who wins a Nobel prize for physics.

Alan Cook’s book feels very complete in it’s treatment of the source material, in several places he repeats tables of original measurements and covers some of the mathematics in some depth, the appendices contain yet more detail. However, Halley left nothing in the way of a diary or of personal correspondence so Halley as a person does not come through except by his public actions.

Footnotes

If you’re interested these are the notes I made in Evernote as I read (link)

Oct 16 2011

Science is Vital – careers edition

I thought I would provide some comments on the Science Is Vital report “Careering Out of Control: A crisis in the UK science profession?“.

The report focuses on the career structure for academics with particular reference to postdoctoral workers. Postdoctoral workers are usually funded out of grant applications made by principle investigators (PIs) who are typically university lecturers. The postdoc will have a 2-3 year contract which lasts the length of the project proposed in the grant application. Lecturers typically work in groups which will make some attempt to find another temporary position for a good postdoc, however this is a tricky process which requires grant applications to be won to order. Therefore the postdoctoral position is insecure and can go on for many years until the postdoc becomes too expensive to employ.

I write this as someone who did a PhD in Physical Chemistry at Durham University, a postdoc at the Cavendish Laboratory, followed by an assistant director of research position (like a research fellowship, with the ability to make grant applications) and finally, in academia, a lectureship at UMIST in the Department of Physics. Since 2004 I have worked as a scientist for a large home and personal care company in north west England – the opinions here are my own and do not represent the views of any of my employers, past or present. As such it is a different viewpoint from the core Science Is Vital team but it is personal and based on relatively brief experience of one type of non-university employer over a relatively short period of time.

First I’d like to highlight what I think is good about the report, and indeed the Science Is Vital campaign. The report highlights what is a long-standing and serious problem in the university sector, and it does so on the basis of substantial data set. It makes some proposals to address these shortcomings. More widely I believe that “Science Is Vital” to the UK as a nation, for both its economic and social well-being. I see a UK whose citizens and businesses know more of science and engage more with science as a more successful UK.

The report proposes  a couple of mechanisms for easing the way for postdoctoral workers around creating more permanent posts and opening up grant applications. Although neither of these are unreasonable ideas there are downsides with both. Recruiting and managing permanent staff requires a different approach to making short-term appointments: if you get it wrong you are lumbered with someone and when you take them on you have to be prepared to keep them for the duration. This means that in an organisation with limited income (i.e. any organisation) you will regularly undergo recruitment freezes and you will only recruit if you believe the person you are interviewing is absolutely the right person, if they aren’t you don’t recruit. “Permanence” does help provide a career structure but it isn’t everything, people expect to progress in their careers (typically with a focus on cash) but a company will be looking to get more for more pay – more responsibility for line management, more responsibility for budget and so forth.

As an aside, the academic sector seems to support two populations in position longevity: 2-3 years and life. As a guide I believe my career with my current employer has a half-life of 5 years.

As for the second mechanism: the grant application system is already creaking at the seams with abysmal success rates and controversial measures which block people who have had multiple applications fail from re-applying for a period, so opening it up to a further cohort of potential applicants without increasing the size of the pot would be troublesome.

For me the central problem in the university system is that the numbers of lecturers (teachers), principle investigators, PhD students, postdoctoral workers and available grant funding in the university system are implicitly coupled but I’ve never seen any indication that impacts of changes across these areas are planned i.e. if you decide to increase undergraduate numbers then there is a knock-on effect on applications to funding bodies because you employ more lecturers/principle investigators who will apply for grants. The removal of the distinction between polytechnic and university was another great shift which opened up grants to a wider audience but without necessarily increasing the size of the grant funding pot. I think it’s fair to say that beyond the level of PhD an overwhelming majority of people in the system are looking for a permanent position in the university sector, and there simply aren’t the places to support this.

Perhaps the great unrecognised area is that the key impact of research in the university sector is not the science done but the people that do the science. Scientific papers in the open literature are useful but from a commercial point of view they are less valuable then, for example, a patent or a person who can create proprietary knowledge for a company. PhD students are explicitly being trained to be scientists, they pay fees for that training – the fact they end up producing useful scientific results is in some senses a side-effect. Postdoctoral workers, on the other hand, are being paid to carry out research – they become more valuable as employees by doing this particularly if along with new scientific skills they pick up other skills such as planning a programme of work, organising experiments with intricate dependencies, mentoring and managing other people,  communicating results, writing, procuring equipment and so forth.

As I said at the beginning: I believe in “Science Is Vital” – it is a worthwhile cause that I am pleased to seeing being pushed forward. I want this program to succeed and I’d like to support it from my viewpoint outside the university sector.

Oct 12 2011

It’s probably a boy!

Today we have been for the 20 week “anatomy scan”, once again Mrs SomeBeans was invited to fill her bladder before attending the clinic for an ultrasound scan (pictures to be found at the end of this post), a scheme whereby good timekeeping is important.

Strangely we found the images less easy to interpret than those in the dating scan, much more internal structure of the brain, the heart and so forth is visible but the overview is less clear. I don’t know whether it was simply the bedside manner of the sonographer but this scan seemed much more business-like than the last one.

This time I took care to check out the model number of the ultrasound scanner, it was a GE Voluson E8. Alongside the ordinary scans shown below, we also saw Doppler shift scans: an overlay in blue and red which shows the flow of blood through the heart.

Finally, the sonographer suggested that it’s probably a boy. I feel this places on me a great responsibility to act as a role-model!

Scan1

Scan2

Scan3

Oct 06 2011

Ada Lovelace Day

The 7th October is Ada Lovelace Day, Finding Ada has encouraged me to write a timely post about women in science, technology engineering or mathematics (STEM), specifically it says:

Create content about a woman in STEM that you admire

Ada Lovelace lived 1815-1852, and is sometimes credited as the world’s first programmer for the notes she wrote on Charles Babbages’ analytical engine – a mechanical computing device which was never constructed. She is commemorated in the Ada programming language, developed for the US Department of Defence with reliability in mind.

To be honest I’ve never found scientific inspiration in long dead “heroic” individual scientists. Lately I’ve been reading rather more of the history of science; institutionally the position of women in science until at least the middle of the 20th century was pretty dire: the Royal Society, proud of its internationalism, religious and political intolerance did not admit its first female members until 1945. The first women were admitted to study at Oxford and Cambridge universities in the later half of the 19th century and they did not gain equal formal status with men until the middle of the 20th century. It’s always somewhat bemusing to hear criticisms of other country’s poor record on female education when we weren’t doing so well within living memory.

Merian-Maria-Sibylla-Tolhoren-Sun

Shell illustrations by Merian Maria Sibylla

This is not to say there are no women in the history of science, just that they fitted into the social accepted roles of their times. For example, Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze, the wife of Antoine Lavoisier was clearly heavily and expertly involved in the conduct of his scientific experiments in the late 18th century. William’s sister, Caroline Herschel spent many evenings observing the heavens with him (and by herself), discovering several comets and being formally recognised for her work in her later years with medals from the Royal Astronomical Society (1828) and the king of Prussia (1846). In the late 17th century naturalist and artist Maria Sybilla Merian published several books based around her observations, particularly on the metamorphosis of butterflies, and drawings of flowers and insects both in Europe. Later in her life she spent two years in Surinam where she made a study of South American flora and fauna. I’m rather impressed with Merian, travelling and living in South America in the 17th century was pretty challenging stuff regardless of gender.

Sadly I had not got into the habit of posting on my book reading when I read a biography of Marie Curie: with Nobel Prizes in both physics and chemistry, she is outstanding even ignoring the challenges of doing science as a woman at the beginning of the 20th century.

Practically speaking I have been taught science along with many other subjects by women; Ms Pitman who taught me physics (and was sarcastic about the PE teachers), and Mrs Haas who taught me biology. This is not to ignore those whose names I can’t recall, my recall of anything dating back 25 years or so is vague these days! Looking back it seems women made their first impact in science in communication and teaching, see for example Mary Somerville and Émilie du Châtelet.

For me my education, my wonder, was as much to do with my family as my teachers.

Ultimately the woman in STEM who has most influenced me is my mum. She learnt to program on an Elliot 503 in the early sixties: 400 square feet of computer with substantially less processor power than the most lowly of today’s devices. She was later to work for the UK Atomic Energy Authority where she worked on PACE analogue computers, and mechanical calculators. All this is somewhat vague on my part because it is only now I have started to pay an interest in the day to day work she did before I was born.

Forty-one years ago my mum gave up her career when she became pregnant with me and even a few years later, when my brother and I had both started at school, a local employer refused to give her a job application form on the grounds that she was a mother.

As The Inelegant Gardener and I await our first child things are very different.

Oct 01 2011

British Wars–presented in fancy Javascript timeline format

Working my way through various bits of scientific history it becomes clear that what is going on outside the lab can have a profound impact on the protagonists. For the early years of the Royal Society the English Civil War and the Restoration had a big impact on the Fellows; the general feeling was “never again” and there was a search for stability and order. Later, in the 18th century, the American War of Independence and the subsequent wars arising from the French Revolution had an impact on The Lunar Men, impacting as it did on trade and their own radical politics. Lavoisier was to find the French Revolution terminal. In the 20th century, scientists were to play a large role in the Second World War; in codebreaking, radar and in building the atomic bomb. This followed a lesser role in the First World War, developing chemical weapons.

As someone whose formal education in history ended at the age of fourteen I thought I should get a feel for the wars going on around the people closer to my interests; this also seemed to be a good opportunity to play with whizzy Javascript timeline technology courtesy of Simile. It turns out the tricky bit is getting Javascript to run inside WordPress, I cheated a little by simply installing the Simile timeline plugin which fixed things in a way I don’t pretend to understand.

The timeline below is derived from a page in wikipedia entitled British Wars, I wanted to go back to the beginning of the 17th century so I supplemented that list with the linked “List of wars involving England”; Great Britain did not exist prior to the Acts of Union in 1707. You can slide the timeline backwards and forth by dragging it with the mouse.

 

 

 

 

Javascript timeline broken on upgrade to WordPress 3.5, you can see it here now.

I’ve colour coded the wars geographically as follows civil war: blue, Africa: brown, European:green, Americas:red, India:olive, SE Asia:black, New Zealand:purple and Middle East:orange, I have done this slightly erratically. During the 19th century we appear to have engaged in an awful lot of colonial conflicts around the world.

Developing this timeline I have experienced some of the shortcomings of the timeline presentation, I started off with the Cast of Characters in Lisa Jardine’s “Ingenious Pursuits”, entering their birth and death dates, but quickly found I had a rather ugly pile of people whose lives centred around 1680 with outliers before and after that time. Once I started on “British Wars” a second drawback becomes apparent: what is important and what isn’t? In a sense I gave up this decision to the compilers of the Wikipedia page, blindly adding all they had put in. This means the Cod Wars appears alongside the First World War implying some sort of equivalence. They also rate “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland as a war which I struggle to admit.

As a second exercise I tried working out how “important” a war was through numbers of military casualties, for this exercise the full list of British Wars is a bit long so again I left the deciding what was important to someone else, in this case a BBC History timeline, this finds a more manageable 10 major wars over the last 400 years or so. In fact it turns out that the Crimean and Boer Wars had relatively few military causalities, so I have omitted them. Below you can see the number of causalities for each war, expressed as a fraction of the population at that time. The casualty figures come from a combination of Wikipedia and Necrometrics, the population figures from the Historical Atlas.

WarCasualties

This plot lumps together a whole sequence of conflicts from the first plot into “Napoleonic Wars”. I’ve always known that World War I was known as the war to end all wars, that the casualty figures were horrific, but hadn’t appreciated that the Napoleonic Wars were similar in scale compared to the size of the population. Similarly the English Civil War scores highly for casualties but even so is under-represented in this plot since I decided to use the military casualty figures rather than total deaths relating to the war i.e. including civilians and those who died of disease or famine.

This is a rather parochial view but it has got the sequence of wars Britain has undertaken into some sort of chronology for me.