Susannah Gibson - Four Way Interview

Photo: Seb Faulk

Dr Susannah Gibson is an Affiliated Scholar of the Department of History & Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? How eighteenth-century science disrupted the natural order and was formerly Manager of the Cambridge Literary Festival. Her latest title is The Spirit of Inquiry.

Why history of science?

I took a class on history of science in my third year of a degree in experimental physics at University College Dublin. The class was worth 10% of my grade that year. I probably spent 60% of my time working on it. That was the first clue that maybe I wasn’t pursuing the right degree for me. I had always struggled to choose between science and arts subjects, but when I discovered history of science I realised I could do both. I went on to do a masters and PhD in history of science.

Why this book?

A few years ago the Cambridge Philosophical Society had their archives catalogued in preparation for their 200th anniversary in 2019. When I heard that they were looking for historians to go poke around in that archive I jumped at the chance. The CPS is the oldest scientific society in Cambridge; anyone who was anyone in (Cambridge) science since 1819 has been a member and the archive is filled with incredible documents. There have been a huge number of firsts at their meetings: the first public reading of Darwin’s Beagle letters; Bragg’s announcement of the discovery of x-ray diffraction; the first display of Venn diagrams. Writing this book was a chance to tell some very human stories of scientific discovery, and to look at how science developed in Britain over the last 200 years.

What’s next?

I’m working on two projects right now: one about psychical research in Cambridge in the nineteenth century; and the other about clever women in the eighteenth century who were denied access to education.

What’s exciting you at the moment?

Workwise, every day the archives I work on throw up some incredible surprises and keep everything fresh. Outside work... everything from Extinction Rebellion to learning the ukulele.

Comments

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...

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