Between 1859 and 1863, Danish government official Arthur Earl of Reventlow traveled to North Frisia several times to explore possible ways to develop new agricultural areas in the Wadden Sea. Although expeditions have become a focus in the history of science, little research has addressed the journeys of officials into state peripheries. While these did not travel to “exotic” landscapes like conventional expeditions, their goals were nearly identical: to expand knowledge and increase control over areas where state authority was weak. Reventlow's expeditions into the borderlands were driven by Danish aspirations to transform the Quellerflächen [areas where the saltmarsh plant Salicornia grows], through the application of environmental knowledge, into embanked agricultural land and therefore an internal colonial space that could be controlled and exploited for resource extraction. To do so, Reventlow emphasized the importance of Salicornia for land reclamation. His use of the plant and the Quellerflächen as an argument for extensive internal colonial intervention offers a new perspective on knowledge produced during internal colonial expeditions. Unlike typical botanical specimens, Salicornia was not collected or classified; instead, it was used conceptually as an argument to justify large-scale embankments in a landscape that was made legible through maps produced in the context of the expedition. Therefore, I propose distinguishing the knowledge production in the context of internal colonial expeditions from that of conventional expeditions by closely examining their treatment by historical actors. Through this differentiation, science historians can better understand how different types of knowledge were produced and used during and after these journeys.
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.
