Display at the Whipple Library showcases a significant donation of material from the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and has been curated by Dr Edwin Rose.
Photo: Geological map of Anglesey from J.S. Henslow's 1822 article Geological Description of Anglesea. Article from the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society Volume 1 pp 359-452.
In the early nineteenth century no scientific society was complete without its own journal. Established on 15 November 1819 the Cambridge Philosophical Society (CPS) was founded to promote scientific inquiry and facilitate the communication of facts associated with the advancement of philosophy and natural history. Its membership included many of the greatest scholars of the age. The Society was founded as a space for university graduates to discuss and present new research. Within a year of its foundation the CPS was holding fortnightly meetings and had founded the most extensive scientific library and first museum of natural history in Cambridge.
The current exhibition examines the Society’s publishing programme over the last two centuries starting with the first issue of the new journal the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, the first part of which was printed in 1821. The Transactions was a product of the wealth of material presented at society meetings. The Cambridge Quarterly Review ranked it ‘among the most scientific [journals] of the day; dreading no comparisons with the Transactions of National Societies themselves.’ .
This exhibition has been generated through the CPS’s generous donation of a number of journals from its stores in 2023 and enthusiasm to loan items from its archives. Many of the early issues remain in large printed sheets, compiled and folded over once to facilitate storage. Later on, Cambridge University Press placed the journals in glued paper or card covers, a legacy of the onset of machine printing and mechanised binding techniques in the late nineteenth century. The unused nature of this archive casts a unique perspective onto the processes of compiling, printing and distributing scientific journals in Cambridge from 1821.
Further information:
https://www.whipplelib.hps.cam.ac.uk/
Photo: Display at the Whipple Library: 200 Years of Scientific Publishing at the Cambridge Philosophical Society
Photo: CPS Vice-President Dr Claire Barlow with Dr Edwin Rose discussing exhibits from the new Whipple Library exhibition '200 Years of Scientific Publishing at the Cambridge Philosophical Society' which opened on Monday 22nd January, 2024.
From Darwin’s paper on evolution to the development of stem cell research, publications from the Society continue to shape the scientific landscape.
Mathematical Proceedings is one of the few high-quality journals publishing original research papers that cover the whole range of pure and applied mathematics, theoretical physics and statistics.
Biological Reviews covers the entire range of the biological sciences, presenting several review articles per issue. Although scholarly and with extensive bibliographies, the articles are aimed at non-specialist biologists as well as researchers in the field.
The Spirit of Inquiry celebrates the 200th anniversary of the remarkable Cambridge Philosophical Society and brings to life the many remarkable episodes and illustrious figures associated with the Society, including Adam Sedgwick, Mary Somerville, Charles Darwin, and Lawrence Bragg.
Become a Fellow of the Society and enjoy the benefits that membership brings. Membership costs £20 per year.
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Dementia is a topic of considerable public interest. How empirical evidence has contributed to this societal awareness and indeed fear will be covered in this talk. It will span research from the 1980s when not much was understood about dementia up to contemporary perspectives. The focus will be on the epidemiological and public health evidence base, and how this relates to the results published from clinical and lab based research. The findings from UK and other high income countries of reduced age specific prevalence (%) will be explored, and the implications of results from brain based studies that dementia is not inevitable in the presence of ‘alzheimer’ type changes. The role of inequalities, risk varying across countries and time and our knowledge about protective factors have strengthened during recent years, and the balance of high risk with whole population approaches to reducing risk for society will be considered.
The structural mechanics of shape-changing structures: from bending armadillos, self-deploying satellites, to roll-up displays.
Most structures, e.g. buildings & bridges, are designed to be near rigid when loaded: in view of high winds or heavy traffic, their movements are barely noticeable. Formally, they are stiff, strong and stable, in terms of their “structural mechanics” – the study of their loaded deformation. Large movements from material weakness, overloading, or bad design, typically portend failure & eventual collapse. Embracing large movements, i.e. deliberate changes in shape, can admit new behaviour if safe and reversible, to yield transformer-like technologies and simple explanations of biological morphology, for example. In this talk, I will describe several structural mechanics principles for making shape-changing structures, out of ordinary materials, complete with physical demonstrations.
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