On Science: Million Pound Manuscript Found in Cupboard

This is amazing: Some historians in the UK just found A 520-page handwritten manuscript (see photo, left) written by Robert Hooke, one of the most important scientists of the 17th century. My favorite part of the story: The manuscript was sitting (for who-knows-how-long) it in the bottom of a cupboard in a house in the countryside. The couple who lived there figured it was junk. In fact, it's worth several million dollars.

Hooke was an uber-scientist, right up there with with Newton -- his arch rival. He was a physicist, a chemist, a cosmologist, a biologist, a horologist and a mechanic. He's the Hooke in Hooke's Law, which essentially says the elasticity of anything springy is directly related to how much you strech it -- thankfully, this explains why we can snap rubber bands at people. He also invented the universal joints we use in car driveshafts and created the first artificial respirator. And my favorite, given my obsession with cells: He discovered tiny compartments inside plants and animals and named them "cells."

On top of documenting Hooke's science, this "lost volume," which is now the "found volume," lets his biographers read lots of grumblings about scientists plagerizing his work (rumor has it Hooke went mad because no one appreciated his contributions to science, maybe this will shed light on that too) . I can only imagine how insanely excited his biographers must be ... I'd drop to my knees and cry if I found even a postcard from the woman I'm writing my book about. And they just found a huge tome ... I'm outrageously jealous.

Historically speaking, the whole thing is amazing. As a man named Felix Pryor with the auction house that found the document says:

“Even a non-scientist must be moved to read in Hooke's own handwriting of how he peered at bacteria through a microscope for practically the first time in history, or how he debated with Isaac Newton about the nature of gravity and the movement of the planets. Even though Hooke and Newton were to become bitter rivals, it was to Hooke that Newton addressed the famous words, ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ ... this manuscript encapsulates the revolution in scientific understanding that marks the beginning of the modern world. "

Secretly, my favorite part of the press release about this was the title: "Million pound manuscript charting the birth of modern science found in a cupboard" ... that must have been a really big cupboard to hold such a heavy manuscript. (I'm sorry, couldn't help it.)

Of Note: A Beginning and an End

After reading an article today about how the "bloggsphere" is dominated by white men, I decided it was past time for me to start a blog. And the way I see it, the most appropriate place to begin is by paying tribute to one incredible woman whose death marks the end of an important generation of female scientists: Georgeanna S. Jones, the woman behind the first "test tube baby" in the united states, the woman behind the pregnancy test, died March 26th at the age of 92. Georgeanna Jones was one of the country's first reproductive endocrinologists, and half of an amazing husband-and-wife team behind some of the most important advances in women's reproductive medicine in the twentieth century.

A few days before Georgeanna's death, I spoke with her husband, Howard Jones, who's a character in my book. He's well into his 90s, still going strong in science, and possessed of an incredible memory for the history of 20th century medicine (thankfully, since he's one of the last living scientists of his generation).

Much of what I write focuses on the history of medicine, and I often feel the pressure of time while I'm interviewing my sources. For the last eight years, while working on my book, I've been interviewing people in their 80s and 90s, many in failing health (though fortunately Howard Jones isn't one of them). I'm ever-aware that my work with them could be cut off at any moment, and that history could soon vanish with them. I treasure my time with each of them, and the stories they share with me. I only wish I'd gotten a chance to sit down with Georgeanna before she died ...