In the early 1980s, Marvel Comics worked on a series of textbooks in comic book form, including one volume that was to be authored by Stephen Jay Gould. This essay uses new archival documents to prove Gould explored a potential collaboration with Marvel, but this project never came to fruition. It then delves further into the Gould archives to reveal selections from Gould's comic book reading in his youth. For example, two Uncle $crooge comics contain stories of Indigenous Peoples defeating Scrooge's twentieth-century capitalism, mirroring the themes of Gould's well-known work, The Mismeasure of Man. This is further supported by the junior high school projects saved in his archives that include a report on political caricatures, also presaging his arguments in The Mismeasure of Man. The influence of comic books on Gould's science is also apparent in the several references he makes to Walt Disney comics throughout his life. For example, one of his motivational stories for a life in science began with Fantasia, and a later essay looked at the ontogenetic progress of Mickey Mouse. Therefore, this article reveals one of the few documentable occasions where a scientist's archives can be used to identify the influence of comic books on their later scientific work.
This article re-examines the role of glassware in scientific expeditions by introducing the concept of “anticipatory objects.” Traditionally, glass containers like those used on the HMS Challenger expedition served to preserve and transport specimens, extending fieldwork back to the laboratory. However, this study focuses on Mars jars, small environmental simulations of other planets and moons, primarily used in astrobiology, the field searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Unlike traditional specimen jars, Mars jars do not contain samples returned from outer space; instead, they do their work in advance, before an expedition departs. They motivate and shape future missions by making distant locations of interest virtually present ahead of time. The article traces the use of Mars jars from Hubertus Strughold's early experiments for the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s, which framed extraterrestrial life as a potential resource for Cold War outposts, to NASA's civilian-led research in the 1960s, which used them to justify missions of scientific discovery and establish planetary protection protocols. By simulating hoped-for destinations, Mars jars demonstrate how an expedition can begin in vitro influencing real missions that follow.
The tragic story of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and the British Antarctic Expedition (1910-13) is a cornerstone of British cultural memory. While Scott's heroism has been widely studied in historiography and biography, the commercial mobilization of his public image has received comparatively little attention. This paper offers the first systematic analysis of advertisements associated with Scott's final expedition, combining visual social semiotic analysis with archival research to examine the interplay of commercial representations and public perceptions of polar exploration. Building on the work of Nielsen, it identifies three overlapping themes-Heroic Masculinity in Extreme Environments, Domestic Comfort andCivilizedConsumption, and Scientific Authority andRationalizedExpertise-through which advertisers constructed Scott's image and conveyed values associated with the expedition. The analysis shows that scientific labour was consistently marginalized; instead, brands prioritized emotionally imagery of endurance, suffering and-following Scott's death-martyrdom. When invoked, science served primarily to signal technical ingenuity and product reliability, often supported by testimonials. At the same time, references to domestic comfort served to bridge Antarctica and home, enabling consumers to participate imaginatively in the expedition. The paper also examines more recent reinterpretations of Scott's image in advertising, demonstrating how he endures as a flexible cultural symbol and a lasting emblem of British exceptionalism.
Thousands of scholars across Europe faced discrimination for their heritage, especially Jewish heritage, throughout the 1930s. Hundreds of these persecuted academics worked in science and healthcare, often as primary researchers within a medical sub-specialty. In response, in 1933 British professors founded the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL) with two objectives: raising funds to provide maintenance grants for displaced scholars and connecting scholars to academic placements worldwide. In this article, I analyze the stories of nineteen physicians fleeing fascist persecution in Europe through their 712 leaves of correspondence within the archive of the SPSL. I selected two medical subspecialties, to compare whether the well-funded field of oncology would have greater success placing refugees compared to the less academically-elevated field of orthopedic surgery. Through the first analysis of two complete medical subspecialty records from the SPSL archives, I examine how the SPSL faced difficulties deciding which colleagues to help financially and triaged levels of support. I also situate the experiences of the analyzed applicants within the context of British interwar medicine and academia, including British skepticism of foreign research and overlaps between SPSL leadership and the British eugenics movement. When funding ran low, the SPSL still assisted scholars through different channels, whether referring to other aid organizations, sending support letters to potential employers, or simply staying in contact. The surge in applications in 1938, five years after the organization's foundation, hindered scholars' chances as persecution increased and funding tapered. Importantly, the British medical establishment distrusted the overall research quality of many fleeing scholars and felt even less confident admitting medical practitioners who were not also researchers. Ultimately, medical scholars from fascist Germany and Austria who applied to the SPSL had a similar experience to other aspiring refugees seeking British assistance before 1939: they could not rely on Britain to support their immigration and predominantly settled elsewhere.
In 1872, Austrian collector Friedrich Welwitsch died in London, leaving behind a will which aimed to distribute his widely respected collection of plants. Though the will stated that the study set of his collections be left to the British Museum (Natural History), the expedition had been formally sponsored by the Portuguese government to investigate their colony of Angola. Upon realizing their scientific value, the King of Portugal brought a lawsuit against the British Museum, with Kew Gardens entering in support of the Portuguese. But what was the study set and why was it so valuable that it drew the most powerful botanical institutions in Britain into a prolonged legal battle? This article will investigate the concept of a study set and will argue that it is more than just a collection of plant specimens. Instead, it is a collection ecology: an ecosystem of biological material, correspondence, diaries, labels, scientific instruments, and much more. The value of the study set was not simply in the number of rare and unique plant specimens it contained; those specimens would be rendered valueless without the attendant paper data that botanists found essential to support taxonomic claims. Moreover, it was reasoned that only certain institutional environments could handle the collection's long-term care, intensifying the debate around who should 'own' it. When we look at collections through this lens, we can begin to unravel the social, political, and environmental entanglements that defined collections, collectors, institutions, and even nations in nineteenth-century science.
Between the early sixteenth century and late seventeenth century, learned European men debated the status of giants, both real and imagined. The discovery of fossilized bones and teeth from supposed human giants and their display in churches, city halls, and public squares as well as in private cabinets seemed to prove that very large people had once existed. Humanist histories supported the idea of giant humans dating from pre-classical antiquity. Their display in public places, surrounded by religious and civic symbols - the specific ecologies, natural and factitious, of their display - lent credence to their assigned identities. As interpretations changed in the seventeenth century, so too, reciprocally, did the ecology of their display, revealing the historical instability of interpretive categories.
The Publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published in Endeavour 50 (2026) 101049, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2026.101049. The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/article-withdrawal.
This article examines how electrotherapy circulated between professional medicine and domestic practice in the Czech lands between approximately 1890 and 1940, and how this circulation shaped its scientific legitimacy. Rather than treating electrotherapy simply as a therapeutic technique whose authority depended solely on clinical effectiveness, the study approaches it as a technological and social practice situated at the intersection of medicine, electrical engineering, and commercial culture. The analysis draws on medical journals, clinical reports, technical manuals, regulatory documents of the Czechoslovak Electrotechnical Union (Elektrotechnický svaz československý, ESČ), commercial catalogues, advertising materials, and contemporary press sources. These diverse materials allow reconstruction of the institutional, technical, and commercial environments in which electrotherapy was debated, regulated, and promoted. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of high-frequency electrotherapy and diathermy, the integration of electrical treatment into spa medicine, and the role of ESČ regulations in establishing technical standards for electrotherapeutic equipment. At the same time, electrotherapy expanded beyond hospitals and medical institutions into the consumer market, where portable high-frequency devices were widely marketed for domestic use. The article argues that electrotherapy's scientific legitimacy did not emerge solely from clinical validation but from ongoing negotiations among physicians, electrical engineers, regulatory institutions, manufacturers, advertisers, and consumers within a rapidly electrifying society.
This article argues that the mid-twentieth-century acceptance of continental drift cannot be understood solely as the result of new geophysical evidence. It also reflected changing structures of scientific authority during the era of decolonization. As imperial scientific hierarchies weakened, geologists in the Southern Hemisphere gained greater authority to interpret the fossil and stratigraphic evidence linking the former continents of Gondwanaland. Continental drift therefore emerged not just as a scientific revolution but also as a reorganisation of the geography of geological expertise. The article’s analysis centres on Antarctic research conducted by Southern Hemisphere earth scientists, particularly the work of palaeobotanist Edna Plumstead and geomorphologist Lester King, to show how geological theories could acquire new epistemic authority within shifting geopolitical contexts. In Antarctica, a landscape that assumed particular significance during the Cold War and decolonisation, geological expertise was closely tied to the geopolitical priorities of the period. The decades in which drift was reconsidered were also those in which imperial scientific networks were fragmenting, and new centres of expertise were emerging across the Southern Hemisphere. The argument is not that geopolitical change directly produced geological theory, but that shifts in the institutional and geographical organisation of science shaped which forms of evidence were considered credible, and where authoritative interpretations of Earth history could emerge. In this sense, the growing legitimacy of Gondwanan geological evidence reflected a broader redistribution of scientific authority occurring in a world increasingly defined by post imperial scientific networks. Viewed from this perspective, the acceptance of continental drift appears not only as a scientific breakthrough but as a product of shifting geopolitical and institutional contexts that reshaped the authority of geological knowledge.
Creation science, a religious belief denying evolutionary theory in favor of scriptural literalism, came to South Korea, whose evangelical Protestants practiced it in other countries as well as their own after the Cold War. Focusing on what they called “science” and its ramifications in the United States of America, China, Mongolia, and Canada, this paper illustrates the significance of cultural practices of this “science” in Koreans’ international missionary projects, which surprisingly enjoyed a long survival and involved many people, including Korean nationals, diasporas, and foreigners. “Science” was important for Korean creationists who stressed their academic credentials, “geological evidence” for a young earth, and purportedly apolitical and non-religious nature of technical education in countries emerging from communism. Their activities assisted by this “science” accompanied its varied unanticipated ramifications, such as benefits of cost-effective leisure, yearnings for lucrative international career, desires for placing children in top universities, and hopes for immigrating to richer society. Rather than its propositional or epistemic dimensions, these cultural implications and practices of “science” in each mission field’s context account for Korean creationists’ overseas resilience despite their geographic, demographic, and chronological limitations.
The authors posit that exploring complex questions with students about how the social constructions of gender, race, and class shape our relations with the natural world fosters a holistic understanding and a more inclusive learning environment in higher education settings. In an online course taught in fall 2020, a social scientist and a botanist reimagined the study of plant and human relations through the interdisciplinary lenses of economic botany, cultural plant studies, political economy, and feminist theory. Insights from a linked online course taught in winter 2021 that centered a research project are also shared. A similar in-person course was taught solo in fall 2024 and is discussed as well. All three courses offered upper division credit and were not open to first-year students. The fall courses had no prerequisites and drew natural science and political economy students. The winter course with a research component had a signature requirement to assess students’ expository writing and critical thinking skills. Interdisciplinary pedagogy provides strategies that can be applied to institutions committed to doing the hard but important work of reckoning with the legacy of slavery, colonialism, and plantation economies.
The extraction of germanium (Ge) was pivotal during China's early semiconductor technology era. From the 1950s to the 1960s, the Huize Lead-Zinc Deposit (or Mine) in the Yunnan Province developed a comprehensive technological system for large-scale germanium extraction through integrated innovation. This deposit exhibited three distinctive characteristics: inherent resource strength, assimilated Soviet technology, and nationwide integration of specialized equipment and technical personnel. Furthermore, although China rapidly aligned with global semiconductor technology trends during the 1960s, its status as a latecomer in the field led to the recognition that the substantial resource demands of germanium-based semiconductor production constrained the advancement of integrated circuit technology within the country.
This study focuses on the historical construction of the system of Chinese physics terminology against the backdrop of the globalization of Western scientific knowledge, and analyzes its role in shaping cultural identity and fostering domestic academic independent practice capabilities within the scientific discourse. In the early stage, the terminology unification efforts led by missionaries laid the foundation for the establishment of China's physics terminology system. However, due to loose organization and lack of official promotion and support, most terms failed to achieve effective unification and widespread application. The Republican period marked a critical turning point: the Scientific Terminology Review Committee integrated local academic forces with government support, launching the first large-scale and systematic terminology unification initiative. By supplementing and revising terminology entries, formulating unification norms, and thoroughly exploring and practicing semantic translation methods, this effort provided a reference for other concurrent terminology unification work. In adapting to local needs, and adopting a localized transliteration strategy, original Chinese translations for scientific units were developed. The effort also calibrated scientific connotations of terms by ensuring that the terminology not only aligned with the essence of physics but also conformed to local cognitive logic. The ultimate system broke free from passive reliance on Western missionary-developed terminology translations; while it fully absorbed their reasonable components, it also realized the integration of "traditional" culture and "modern" science, providing exclusive terminological support for the development of Chinese physics. Having transcended mere language conversion, the effort was anchored in Chinese cultural contexts, integrating unique cultural expressions into translations, offering terminology for scientific communication that retained cultural identity, thus unifying functional and cultural values. In the practical process of constructing a system of terminology, the translators integrated the traditional thought of (gé wù zhì zhī, investigating things to acquire knowledge) with Western empirical scientific rigor. This made the construction of terminology system a collaborative process of introducing Western knowledge while transmitting and promoting local cultural spirit. This endeavor ultimately resulted in a physics terminology system that suits the characteristics of the Chinese language and the needs of Chinese science. The process demonstrated that Chinese scholars did not passively accept Western terminology but instead exercised mature, independent practices characterized by the strategic integration of foreign concepts with local resources, contributing a culturally distinctive Chinese solution to an international system of scientific discourse.
The histories of Antarctica and outer space share relational trajectories. In our modern era of increasing commercialisation of space and discussion of space resource utilization, humanity's future in space can be informed by the history of human activity in Antarctica. This paper begins with a critical discussion of why space and Antarctica are compared, then introduces areas of comparison through a relational trajectories lens, including their physical environments, human psychosocial experiences, governance, and science fiction portrayals. It contributes to the discussion of the value the humanities can provide for science, in this case the science of human spaceflight and space travel, particularly by providing an ethical check and asking critical questions regarding rights and sustainability.
An interdisciplinary team at Rice University and the Texas Medical Center Library collaborated in the development of an atlas-of-anatomy-atlases centered around Andreas Vesalius' 1543 Fabrica. As an installation piece, the finished product bridged the divides between physical and digital image-texts and disciplinary methods; but in the process of its development as a year-long project, it suggested that problems in one siloed field can be solutions in another, when viewed in a collaborative context. In this paper we lay out the materials, the contexts, the content, the collaborators, and the technologies that provisionally reorganized a portion of the visual history of anatomy in 2016, and suggest how this might be used to inspire future projects in the affordable reanimation of archival image-texts as museum interactives, as well as interdisciplinary collaborations more broadly.
Chinese graduate education is unique in that national scientific research institutions have autonomous degree-granting and training authority, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) playing a leading role. As the cornerstone of China's national science and technology system, the CAS has been both the pioneering and driving force behind the system's graduate programs. This study explores how the CAS has shaped this educational model. In the 1950 s, facing a lack of research-focused roles in universities and misaligned training objectives, the CAS adopted a model resembling the Soviet Academy of Sciences, integrating graduate training into collaborative research. Yet this approach created tensions between research priorities and educational goals. By the 1980s, the growing research capabilities of universities further challenged the CAS's position. To reconcile these internal and external conflicts-and to cultivate high-level scientific talent aligned with national strategic needs-the CAS drew lessons from the American graduate school system. Through external collaboration and internal integration, it reformed its training model to better serve national objectives. Drawing on extensive archival and historical research, this paper traces the evolution of the CAS's graduate training model and its enduring role in both graduate education and national research. It analyzes how the autonomous training model of China's national research institutions emerged and persisted, as well as how the CAS's reforms have influenced the trajectory of graduate education in China. Ultimately, it offers fresh perspectives on the distinctive features of Chinese graduate education and the contributions of national research institutions.
In 2011, conservator Lisa Ellis and curator Sasha Suda of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), started a small-scale research project focused on the manufacturing secrets of a group of sixteenth century, northern European miniature boxwood carvings. The venture slowly grew with the addition of specialists from other museums and scientists in research institutions as well as experts in computational imaging, database conception and construction, and a senior digital artist, designer, and technologist. It was only with the combined skillset and knowledge of this interdisciplinary ensemble that the virtuosic construction of these objects was uncovered. There were two concurrent and foundational phases of digital data gathering and production in the project. The first centred on micro-CT scanning to investigate the structure of these diminutive artworks, a venture carried out initially by the AGO and at Western University, London, Canada. Simultaneously, an ambitious, AGO-driven but privately funded, high resolution digital photography campaign set out to capture each known example of miniature Gothic boxwood objects in the world. These were used to populate a publicly accessible database. The following describes the development of the Boxwood Project (2011-2016) in detail and reveals how the community of interdisciplinary researchers was built. The co-operative spirit of the boxwood community outlived the exhibition project and the abundance of data amassed has continued to bear fruit.
