Justin, Maura, and Allison reflect on the creation of Initial Conditions and speak to some of the other staff at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives and the Center for History of Physics. They share their favorite episodes, the episodes they wish they had made, and the difficulties of making a podcast from scratch. With guests Joanna, Corinne, Audrey, and Jae, they emphasize the collaborative nature of the project, reminisce, and chat about science history, archival work, and lots of icebergs.
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1:17:58
Bonus: Live from PhysCon!
In this episode, Justin and Maura interview speakers and students who attended the 2022 Society for Physics Students Physics Congress. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell shares the story of her 1967 discovery of radio pulsars and her omission from the Nobel Prize awarded for that discovery. Nobel Laureate, Dr. John Mather explained the importance of learning about the early universe and the potential of the James Webb Space Telescope. Other guests include Dr. Julianne Pollard-Larkin of MD Anderson Cancer Center, a medical physicist who uses physics to study cancer cures; K Renee Horton, former president of the National Society of Black Physicists and airworthiness deputy at NASA; Dr. Sarah Horst, a planetary scientist who models properties of exoplanets and moon and works with educators to make planetary science accessible to students; and former congressman, Rush Holt Jr. who applies skills acquired from his physics training to inform public policy-making. We also hear from students about what they study, their favorite parts of physics, and the joy of being a member of SPS!
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1:05:33
Hawai'i and the Thirty Meter Telescope
Featuring a discussion with experts Samantha Thompson and Kalewa Correa from the Smithsonian Institution, this episode is about the history of Hawai’i and the controversy surrounding the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). The TMT Corporation’s Board of Directors selected Maunakea as its preferred site in 2009. The 2014 groundbreaking for the TMT site was met with fierce, but peaceful, opposition by Native Hawaiians and environmentalists for whom the mountain is both a sacred religious and cultural site, as well as home to rare species. Disagreements manifested at the mountain where protectors of Maunakea assembled to block the road and in the courts where they halted the project through legal proceedings. The Supreme Court of Hawai’i halted the project until 2018, at which point protectors once again assembled and delayed construction. In the media, the battle over Maunakea and the Thirty Meter Telescope was often portrayed as a conflict between science and religion, but as our guests point out, that is not the case. This episode contextualizes the battle as part of a larger history of science, colonization, and the sovereignty of Native Hawaiians.
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1:10:53
The Legacy of Ptolemy’s Almagest
This episode dives into the story of the oldest book in NBLA’s Wenner Collection: a 1528 Latin translation of the Almagest. Claudius Ptolemy wrote the Almagest, originally titled Mathēmatikē Syntaxis, in the 2nd century CE. In the Almagest, Ptolemy proposed a mathematical model to explain and predict the motions of celestial objects. Though his geocentric model was debunked by the 16th century, the text facilitated the great observations and models produced by medieval Arabic astronomers. This episode follows the Almagest throughout its 1500 years of influence, focusing on its importance during the rise and spread of Islam in the 7th century and the text’s eventual fall from popularity in sixteenth century Europe. This episode features interviews with prominent scholars, George Saliba (Director of the Farouk Jabre Center for Arabic & Islamic Science and Philosophy at the American University of Beirut) and John Hessler (Curator at the Library of Congress and author of A Renaissance Globemaker's Toolbox: Johannes Schöner and the Revolution of Modern Science 1475-1550).
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49:03
The Newton You Didn't Know
Apart from his publications on gravity and optics, Newton was also a biblical scholar, religious mystic, and alchemist. In fact, a great deal of his work focuses on subjects that modern audiences might not consider to be scientific. You might be surprised to know how important the study of alchemy was to Newton. More than a pet interest, alchemy was an important part of Newton’s attempt to understand the nature of the divine. This episode uses the story of Newton’s alchemy to ask basic questions about the Scientific Revolution and the history of science in the seventeenth century. How scientific was the Scientific Revolution? If Newton was motivated by religious inclinations can we still call him a scientist? How does knowledge about the beginning of the Scientific Revolution shape how we understand the practice of science today?
Acerca de Initial Conditions: A Physics History Podcast
Initial conditions provide the context in which physics happens. Likewise, in Initial Conditions: a Physics History Podcast, we provide the context in which physical discoveries happened. We dive into the collections of the Niels Bohr Library & Archives at the American Institute of Physics to uncover the unexpected stories behind the physics we know. Through these stories, we hope to challenge the conventional history of what it means to be a physicist.
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