Photographs in the Janos Scholz Collection

Abstract

Janos Scholz (1903–1993), who was to become one of the great cellists of the twentieth century, began collecting when he was a child in Sopron, Hungary. After completing his studies at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Music, Scholz was named first cellist with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. In 1932 he joined the Roth Quartet, and the following year he left Hungary to tour with the quartet in the United States. He became an American citizen in 1933 and made his home in New York until his death in 1993. Scholz began to collect prints and drawings in 1935 and over the next three decades he amassed an unrivalled collection ofItalian drawings. In keeping with the nature of his life as a musician, in which he shared his music through public recitals, Scholz announced in 1973 that he had decided to give his drawings to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Soon afterwards he began a new collection, one that focused upon nineteenth-century European photographs on paper.     

Edward Linley Sambourne (1844–1910)

Abstract

Edward Linley Sam bourne worked as a Punch cartoonist from 1867 until his death in 1910.¹ Beginning his 43-year association with the magazine as a freelance contributor he then joined the permanent staff in 1871 as Cartoon Junior (to Tenniel who was Cartoonist-in-Chief). His rise through the Punch ranks meant a commensurate increase in his workload and, because of this, he took up photography in the early 1880s to assist his productivity and to satisfy his demand for accuracy. Sometimes Sam bourne copied the entire photograph, occasionally he even traced it; or else he used elements of a photograph or several photographs to construct the picture for the final drawing. Gradually, Sam bourne the Cartoonist became Sambourne the Photographer as his interest in drawing was supplanted by a fascination with photography; he developed an enthusiasm for the medium in an amateur way, joining the Camera Club in April 1893 and slowly amassing an enormous archive comprising some 30,000 images. To follow Sambourne's development as a photographer involves looking at how and why he used photography, and what his private as well as his public attitude was towards the medium.     

Egypt on Glass

Abstract

In 1883 Willard D. Chamberlain, at the age of 35, became Vice-President of the Beaver Soap Company of Dayton, Ohio^1,2, a fact which has not hitherto featured prominently in treatises on the history of photography. There is at least an indirect connection, nevertheless; Willard Chamberlain was very much a man of his time^3,4, and photography was an important element in his later life. In any event, it is not surprising that a man of his social position and affluence would eventually make the ‘Grand Tour’. Indeed, he did this twice, visiting the Middle East in 1893 and 1898⁵. Besides taking his own photographs, he purchased whatever lantern slides were commercially available. We do not know how he first became interested in photography (he left no diaries or notes), but we do know that he was serious enough about it to have a darkroom in his home⁶. Alas, his work was of indifferent quality, as exemplified by most of the 34 glass lantern-slides which he made and which are now in the Archives and Special Collections of the Wright State University Library⁷. However, the 49 slides by Bonfils and nine by Lekegian, which he purchased and brought back with him, attest to his connoisseurship in the matter.     

Kepler's Road to Damascus

Summary
In Astronomia Nova Kepler established the two laws that govern the motion of an individual planet. I show here that his achievement depended on the Euclidean - geometrical - method he invented to determine a typical point of each of the three curves he successively proposed (corresponding respectively to the three stages of his progress). At the final stage, Kepler's first flash of enlightenment was sparked by his discovery of a general construction-rule for the (medial-grade) curve he required; the second, by his realization that this rule would produce a perfect ellipse, described in accordance with the (Keplerian-style) area law. This exact curve-time correlation is notable for attaining, by modern standards, the status of an orbit.     

Os 30 Valérios

Abstract

Valério Vieira (1862–1941) was born in Angra dos Reis in Rio de Janeiro. As a young man he went to the capital where he enrolled in the Escola de Belas Artes (School of Fine Arts) without his parents' approval. It appears that he began his photographic activities in the 1880s in several cities of the Vale do Paraíba and in Ouro Preto, an old town in the State of Minas Gerais. Around 1888, he married Carmen Augusta Villas-Boas Teixeira, and in 1892 he came to São Paulo, where he installed his studio at No. 19, Rua da Imperatriz, now the XV de Novembro street.     

Ferdinand Braun in Leipzig

Nobelprizewinner Ferdinand Braun worked as a teacher for three years (1874–1977) at the Leipzig Thomas School. In this time, essential for him, he developed his most important discovery: the effect of semiconductivity. Furthermore he demonstrated his pedagogical talent as a teacher and wrote an approval, popularized book for young people. The experiences of that time had a influence upon his future work.     

Ermakov album

Abstract

When I first met Henry Ries in his home in Manhattan in the mid-1980s, I was struck by his generosity in telling me about his career. Born in 1917 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in an assimilated Jewish family, Henry (born Heinz) Ries left for New York on 13 January 1938. Initially, he found employment in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he taught photography at the Jewish community centre and could use their laboratory for his own work. He tried to enlist in the United States Army in December 1941, but this was not possible, since he was an 'enemy alien' and a recent emigrant without American citizenship. In May 1943, he joined the Army Air Corps and received American citizenship. Initially posted to the Pacific theatre, making aerial photographs of China for the 20th Bomber Command, he subsequently transferred to the European theatre, arriving in London in late May 1945. Assigned to the ‘Office Director of Intelligence’, his first job was to evaluate Heinrich Himmler's ‘secret state library’ correspondence with the SS, Hitler, Goebbels, Goring, and others, which was later utilized in the Nuremberg Medical Trial. Three months later, Ries was transferred to Berlin.     

Sage of Lacock

Abstract

‘The good is oft interred with their bones.’ Much of what has been written of William Henry Fox Talbot has done him meagre justice: criticism for patenting his inventions, accusations that he patented the ideas of others, denigration of the importance of his discoveries. Though acknowledged as a scientist, his place as an artistic worker in the medium he invented has not been appreciated.     

Aaron Siskind

Abstract

When I met Aaron Siskind in his home in Pawtucket, a short, stocky figure slowly greeted me with an infectious smile. He was open and gracious about the interview—he did not mind the recorder and seemed very pleased by my interest in his life and work. Files, boxes and prints surrounded us in his dining room, all carefully labelled and organized. He was conscious, and proud, of his place in history. In conversation, he proved to be, at once, both prickly and charming, and his deep, rumbling laughter punctuated much of our conversation. He admitted to a faulty memory in 1989, his 86th year. But we talked for two hours and even then I was sorry to leave with so much more to discuss     

Rudolph Clausius – A pioneer of the modern theory of heat

Rudolph Clausius (1822–1888) played an important role in advancing the theory of heat during the 19th century. His contributions concerned the development of the two fundamental principles of heat as well as the microscopic approach of kinetic theory where he introduced the new concept of the mean free path. He always strictly separated these two fields. When Clausius took up his studies the idea that heat belonged to the so-called imponderables which were weightless and invisible had not yet disappeared. Carnot had still used that idea for his well-known cycle. Clausius was able to make the Carnot-cycle compatible with the concept of heat as a kind of motion.His research opened the way for thermodynamics later chiefly advocated by Planck as well as for modern statistical physics mainly connected with the names of Maxwell and Boltzmann. Scientific education and research of Clausius will be discussed here in the context of the development of the theory of heat. As he published most of his important papers on this subject already during the first two decades of his career we confine on this period. Clausius began his studies in Berlin in 1840, habilitated there in 1850 and was appointed at the newly founded Polytechnical School in Zürich in 1855. It will be shown that Clausius remained an outsider in the physics community of his time as he himself did not perform any research experiments.     

The Sign of Stieglitz,the Art of Evans

This essay examines how Walker Evans evolved his documentary style in response to what he saw as Alfred Stieglitz's overbearing aestheticism. It begins with their first meeting and Evans's ‘rejection’ of this father‐figure, a rejection which became generalised in the history of photography on the grounds of a dichotomy between photographic art and social documentary. Evans came to represent this latter tendency despite his own wishes. With the help of friends like Lincoln Kirstein and Bernice Abbott, Evans claimed a different artistic genealogy, via the Civil War work of Mathew Brady and his teams and Eugène Atget, neither of whom were working in the same vein of documentary as Evans might have imagined. He attempted to remain the independent artist, all the while taking advantage of his various photographic employments and the directions in which they pushed him. In the end, history made him famous and influential as the champion of social documentary, a genre which coincided neatly with his own desire for a ‘lyric documentary’ for only a few years. In his desire to be an artist free from a social agenda, in his resistance to branding, he is a maverick bohemian much closer to Stieglitz than has been supposed, and he seemed to recognise the fact in his last comments on his predecessor.     

Zwischen Wärmestoff und kinetischer Gastheorie—Die Behandlung der Physik der Wärme durch Hermann Helmholtz

In spite of the fact that Helmholtz made a decisive contribution to the first principle of thermodynamics by his Erhaltung der Kraft of 1847 he did not participate actively in the following debates about the nature of heat. Probably he was cautious in some way as he did not yet belong to the community of university physicists. His research concentrated on physiology at that time. On the other hand he was rather influential by his public speeches and his comprehensive reviews on problems of heat even without further publications. Insofar the discussion of Helmholtz's activities on heat of the time before he became chairholder of physics in 1871 will help to understand his special relation to physics in this early period.      

ASPECTS OF THE LIFE AND WORKS OF MARTIN FOLKES (1690–1754)

Martin Folkes was an 18 c. scientist and antiquary, a friend of Benjamin Robins and a President of the Royal Society (P.R.S) (1741–1752). Folkes published works in science on a variety of subjects including meteorology and archeology, and he was an expert on antiquities, much preoccupied with coinage. It appears that he was nominated as an executor of the will of engineering-scientist, Benjamin Robins respecting his scientific publications but died, in 1754, having retired from the Presidency of the R.S. in 1752, a year after Robins’ decease in India. Even after describing Folkes’ life and work it is not easy to see what he had in common with his supporter Newton and his colleague Robins; this is a matter which calls for imagination and which we hope to stimulate by broadly describing his life and works. Two major inclusions herein pertain to “Sir” John Hill’s quarrels with Folkes and others, and to Robins’ paper on the “proper charge in guns”, see Appendices A and B, respectively.     

Thomas Fincke and trigonometry

Thomas Fincke (January 6th, 1561 - April 24th, 1650), born in Flensburg (Germany), was one of the very most important and significant scientists in Denmark during the seventeenth century, a mathematician and astrologer and physician in the beginning of modern science, a representative of humanism and an influentual academic organizer. He studied in Strasbourg (since 1577) and Padua (since 1583) and received his M.D. in Basel (1587), he practised as a physician throughtout his life (since 1587 or 1590) and became a professor at Copenhagen (1591). But he was best known because of his Geometriae rotundi libri XIIII (1583), a famous book on plane and spherical trigonometry, based not on Euclid but on Petrus Ramus. In this influentual work, in which Fincke introduced the terms tangent and secant and probable first noticed the Law of Tangents and the so-called Newton-Oppel-Mauduit-Simpson-Mollweide-Gauss-formula, he showed himself to be ,,abreast of the mathematics of his time".     

James Clerk Maxwell's Scottish chair

This account of Maxwell as professor of natural philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen, fills in many details that have been left out of Maxwell's biographies. It discusses the degree programme that Maxwell taught on, the nature of his colleagues, the type of student he had in his classes and the range of activities involved in his teaching. Evidence is cited that Maxwell was an enthusiastic and effective teacher, contrary to the often repeated but thinly supported view to the contrary. Following a brief summary of Maxwell's research interests while at Aberdeen, the myth that Maxwell was sacked from the University of Aberdeen is exploded and the detail of why he moved on is spelt out.     

Charles Townes, the maser, and the relationship between engineeringand science

Charles Townes is renowned as the inventor of the maser and for his work on molecular spectroscopy and astronomy. Engineering has been an important element of his career, which illustrates how fruitful a combination of scientific and engineering knowledge can be. The author describes the life and work of Townes and how he developed microwave spectroscopy and the maser, and his interest in astronomy     

HOW EVOLUTIONARY IS SCHUMPETER'S THEORY OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?

The generic features of an evolutionary theory which are identified in the conceptional discussion of the present paper can be shown to be present already in Schumpeter's 1912 work, The Theory of Economic Development . None the less, it is argued that Schumpeter fell short of a level of generality by which he would have succeeded in providing a true foundation for evolutionary economics. The reason is his eagerness--very clearly visible in the "lost" seventh chapter--to align his theory with the economic reasoning of contemporary "pure" economic theory that was moulded in an equilibrium-oriented heuristic and the methodology of comparative statics. Schumpeter's conception--which, in opposing the idea of borrowing from Darwinian thought, he called "development"--is rather a special theory of the unsteady capitalist growth process passing through booms and crises. Throughout all of Schumpeter's writings the notion of development is therefore closely related to the business cycle phenomenon. The paper argues that this special framing implies not only some arbitrary hypotheses which are difficult to accept in an evolutionary interpretation, but also some limitations in his understanding of (what he refused to call) economic evolution, particularly with respect to its driving forces.     

On Supramolecular Polymerization: Interview with Takuzo Aida

Prof. Takuzo Aida is one of the most visible materials chemists thanks to his many creative contributions to the broad field of supramolecular chemistry. Over the past two decades he has ingeniously utilized self-assembly across scales and between various components to access a breathtaking variety of complex materials with fascinating properties. For example, the Aida Lab has pioneered conducting “bucky gel” by dispersing carbon nanotubes in ionic liquids as well as “aqua materials”, in which a tiny amount of additive renders water mechanically robust. From his personal insight he shares in this Interview, we can learn how his research evolved since his undergraduate studies. Moreover, he shares his vision on the importance of supramolecular polymers (Supra-Plastics) to realize a sustainable society.     

希斯克历夫：被放逐到世界的人

文章以维多利亚时代为背景，从“人被抛到世界上”的角度切入，阐释小说《呼啸山庄》的外围结构（叙事结构）所反射的被放逐者的悲剧性生存境遇：在现实社会中，中心对边缘有一种本能的拒斥，边缘人受到中心权威的无尽压制，边缘人不得不面对这种现实，在反抗中，他们既颠覆中心又分裂自身。     

Die Welt als ein unendlicher Organismus

400 years after Bruno's death by fire in Rome the question arises whether Bruno did in fact die as martyr of truth. If we consider his philosophical arguments we can understand his cosmological concept of the infinite universe as essentially contradictory to some of Aristotle's ideas of philosophy of nature. Alongside his belief in the omnipresence of divinity in nature he takes the view of the universe as a living organism, an area where he was influenced by the hermetic tradition. Above all Bruno's cosmology also includes ethical elements. So if we ask for the actual reason of Bruno's conviction, some theological consequences of his cosmological ideas did presumably influence the judgement of the inquisition. In contrast to Galileo Bruno's condemnation has not so far been withdrawn. However such reconsideration is possible and counting on the church's spirit of reconciliation should come to pass.