Historical Corner Research Articles

Foreword by the Associate Editor [Historical Corner

This time, the Historical Corner hosts a very special paper. It is focused on a few documents from the archives of the University of Pavia, never published before. These concern the celebration of one hundred years since Alessandro Volta (Figure 1) become a Professor at Pavia University (see R. Cecchini and G. Pelosi “Alessandro Volta and His Battery,” IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, 34, 2, 1992, pp. 30–37). In the framework of the celebrations, a few degrees honoris causa were awarded to preeminent physicists, among whom was Maxwell, who wrote two letters to the Rector of the University. These letters were incidentally found in the archives only very recently, and are here reported for the first time. A book with rich documentation on the celebration is coming out shortly.

Charles K. Kao: IEEE Life Fellow (1979) and Nobel Prize in Physics (2009): Two Lectures, Given from Galileo Galilei's Podium [Historical Corner

The winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics were three Fellows of the IEEE: Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle, and George Smith. The first was selected because of the development of optical-fiber telecommunications; the latter two people, for their contributions to digital photography. The official motivations for awarding the prizes were "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication" for Kao (one-half of the prize), and "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit: the CCD sensor" for Boyle and Smith (one-quarter of the prize, each). The Nobel Prize site reports a large amount of information, including the three lectures, as well as interviews and additional information. In the following, after a short biographical note, we present two papers. Respectively, these are the official lectio magistralis (Section 3) and a contribution to a subsequent symposium (Section 4), given by C. K. Kao at the University of Padova, Italy, in 1996 (Figure 1). These were given when he was awarded an honorary doctoral degree (Laurea honoris causa) in Telecommunication Engineering. A remarkable coincidence makes it particularly meaningful and attractive to now reproduce these two papers. Indeed, the announcement of the 2009 Nobel Prize arrived while the University of Padova, and the whole scientific community, were ready to celebrate the 400th anniversary of one of the main milestones in modern science: the discovery of Jupiter's moons by Galileo Galilei, in Padova, in January 1610. The Main Hall of the University of Padova (shown in Figure 2) is named after Galileo, who taught there for 18 years (1592-1610), before returning to his native Tuscany. We can indeed say that the pictures included in these papers show Charles Kao on Galileo's podium.

Émile Durand, A Physicist's Route During the 20th Century in France [Historical Corner

This paper presents the life and scientific career of Emile Durand. The following are discussed: education and early scientific life; arrival in Toulouse in 1949; Dean of the Faculty of Sciences, Toulouse, 1953; creation of the "Institut de Calcul Numerique", 1957; and teaching. Emile Durand considered as an outstanding example of those teachers of the last century who, starting from Ecole normale d'Instituteurs, advanced to the Academy of Sciences.

Etienne-Louis Malus: The Polarization of Light by Refraction and Reflection is Discovered [Historical Corner

This paper presents the memoir of Etienne-Louis Malus on a phenomenon linked to light polarization in birefringent materials and in ordinary reflection.

List of biography and history published mostly in Photosynthesis Research, 1988–2008

As an outgoing Editor of the Historical Corner of Photosynthesis Research, I present here the following list of papers of historical interest for the benefit of all. The first paper I published was: Govindjee (1988) The Discovery of Chlorophyll–protein Complex by Emil L. Smith during 1937–1941. Photosynth Res 16:285–289. In order to bring to the readers this List of references on the historical papers published in this journal (and some even elsewhere), I have organized these papers under the following headings (some are arbitrarily assigned to a particular section since they may fit in more than one section): (I) biographies (that include obituaries and tributes, arranged alphabetically, with dates of birth and death); (II) recognitions of scientists (arranged alphabetically) by others; (III) personal perspectives (arranged alphabetically); (IV) historical papers (first chronologically, by the year of publication, and then alphabetically by the names of the editors); (V) special issues of Photosynthesis Research (chronologically by the year of publication and then alphabetically by the names of editors); and lastly (VI) Conferences (available reports in Photosynthesis Research).

A Letter to Prof. Fred Gardiol Concerning the Supposed Experiments of Guglielmo Marconi at Salvan - [Historical corner

This paper presents a letter from Dr. Barbara Valotti to Prof. Fred Gardiol concerning the supposed experiments of Guglielmo Marconi at Salvan

The early history of radio communications through the photos of the Italian Navy archives [Historical Corner

In June 2005, a special selection of images concerning the development of telecommunications, kept in the archives of the Italian Navy, were collected, selected, and organized in a panel exhibition held at the Italian Navy Academy. A selection of the rarest of these images is presented here.

Response to Ledford and Sperber

Over the last decade, historians have made steady inroads into the frequently static social sciences as they are trying to understand the changing post-Cold War order and the even more rapidly changing global and domestic political economies. Such softening of disciplinary boundaries is also observable in the other direction. Jonathan Sperber's work on nineteenth-century electoral politics and Kenneth Ledford's study on German lawyers offer two examples among many of historians borrowing concepts and methods from the social sciences. Yet, these encouraging signs of disciplinary trespassing cannot mask the fact that these two disciplines continue only infrequently to publish in each others' journals, intelligently review each others' works, or jointly reflect on the payoffs of interdisciplinary scholarship. Given this limited dialogue, it is a particular pleasure to reply to two such thoughtful and constructive respondents. In subtly tackling the problems inherent in comparing, Kenneth Ledford ventures into the disciplinary borderlands of history and the social sciences while Jonathan Sperber stays more closely in the historical corner and — to use Ledford's apt characterization of his colleagues — “picks cautionary holes in the applicability” of comparisons.

Historical corner

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Historical corner. The origin of spectra. Who was first?

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Historical corner. Analytical spectroscopy: the beginnings and the Scottish connection

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