Author: Brian Warner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description

Author: Brian Warner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780909079550
Category : Astronomers
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description

Author: Brian Warner
Publisher: Juta and Company Ltd
ISBN: 9781919713755
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Sir John Herschel, one of the most noted astronomers of his time, arrived at the Cape in 1834 to spend four years observing the southern sky. During this time he produced over 100 exquisite landscape sketches. They are reproduced in this book, together with a narrative text which provides background to Herschel's life and work and sets the illustrations in their historical and geographical context.

Author: Jan Birksted
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0419250700
Category : Gardens
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Introduction - Landscape as Perspective. Chapter 1 - The Pommemorative Anatomy of a Colonial Park. Chapter 2 - A New Monument in a New Land. Chapter 3 - Carlo Scarpa: Built Memories. Chapter 4 - The Rational Point of View: Viollet-le-Duc and the Camera Lucida. Chapter 5 - Cezanne's Party. Chapter 6 - Subject to Circumstance, The Landscape of the French Lighthouse System. Chapter 7 - The Body in the Garden. Chapter 8 - Self, Scene and Action: The Final Chapter of Yuan Ye. Chapter 9 - The House of Light and Entropy: Inhabiting the American Desert. Chapter 10 - Landscape to Inscape: Topography as Ecclesiological Vision. Chapter 11 - Fluid Precision: Giacomo Della Porta and the Acqua Vergine fountains of Rome. Chapter 12 - New Projects for the City of Munster. Chapter 13 - The Villa d'Este Storyboard. Chapter 14 - The Splendid Effects of Architecture, and its Power to Affect the Mind.

Author: Susannah Gibson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192569872
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Cambridge is now world-famous as a centre of science, but it wasn't always so. Before the nineteenth century, the sciences were of little importance in the University of Cambridge. But that began to change in 1819 when two young Cambridge fellows took a geological fieldtrip to the Isle of Wight. Adam Sedgwick and John Stevens Henslow spent their days there exploring, unearthing dazzling fossils, dreaming up elaborate theories about the formation of the earth, and bemoaning the lack of serious science in their ancient university. As they threw themselves into the exciting new science of geology - conjuring millions of years of history from the evidence they found in the island's rocks - they also began to dream of a new scientific society for Cambridge. This society would bring together like-minded young men who wished to learn of the latest science from overseas, and would encourage original research in Cambridge. It would be, they wrote, a society "to keep alive the spirit of inquiry". Their vision was realised when they founded the Cambridge Philosophical Society later that same year. Its founders could not have imagined the impact the Cambridge Philosophical Society would have: it was responsible for the first publication of Charles Darwin's scientific writings, and hosted some of the most heated debates about evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century; it saw the first announcement of x-ray diffraction by a young Lawrence Bragg - a technique that would revolutionise the physical, chemical and life sciences; it published the first paper by C.T.R. Wilson on his cloud chamber - a device that opened up a previously-unimaginable world of sub-atomic particles. 200 years on from the Society's foundation, this book reflects on the achievements of Sedgwick, Henslow, their peers, and their successors. Susannah Gibson explains how Cambridge moved from what Sedgwick saw as a "death-like stagnation" (really little more than a provincial training school for Church of England clergy) to being a world-leader in the sciences. And she shows how science, once a peripheral activity undertaken for interest by a small number of wealthy gentlemen, has transformed into an enormously well-funded activity that can affect every aspect of our lives.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Steven Ruskin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351925156
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
In 1833 John Herschel sailed from London to Cape Town, southern Africa, to undertake (at his own expense) an astronomical exploration of the southern heavens, as well as a terrestrial exploration of the area around Cape Town. After his return to England in 1838, and as a result of his voyage, he was highly esteemed and became Britain's most recognized man of science. In 1847 his southern hemisphere astronomical observations were published as the Cape Results. The main argument of Ruskin's book is that Herschel's voyage and the publication of the Cape Results, in addition to their contemporary scientific importance, were also significant for nineteenth-century culture and politics. In this book it is demonstrated that the reason for Herschel's widespread cultural renown was the popular notion that his voyage to the Cape was a project aligned with the imperial ambitions of the British government. By leaving England for one of its colonies, and pursuing there a significant scientific project, Herschel was seen in the same light as other British men of science (like James Cook and Richard Lander) who had also undertaken voyages of exploration and discovery at the behest of their nation. It is then demonstrated that the production of the Cape Results, in part because of Herschel's status as Britain's scientific figurehead, was a significant political event. Herschel's decision to journey to the Cape for the purpose of surveying the southern heavens was of great significance to almost all of Britain and much of the continent. It is the purpose of this book to make a case for the scientific, cultural, and political significance of Herschel's Cape voyage and astronomical observations, as a means of demonstrating the relationship of scientific practice to broader aspects of imperial culture and politics in the nineteenth century.

Author: Brian J. Huntley
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
ISBN: 1775848965
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 805

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Book Description
Kirstenbosch is a name that resonates around the world as the home of a uniquely rich flora in a setting of unsurpassed beauty. Established soon after the unification of South Africa in 1910, the Garden continues to draw both tourists and locals to its enchanting spaces and botanical riches. This book tells of how the Garden came to be, its setbacks and triumphs, its benefactors and heroes. It outlines the Garden’s scientific eminence as the repository of knowledge on our prized flora and presents its many attractions. In this new edition, the story is brought up to date with details of new developments and attractions, making it a quality memento for visitors and the thousands of locals who flock there annually. Sales points: New edition of a lavishly illustrated book. A fascinating account of the Garden over more than 100 years. Finely crafted text by Brian Huntley, former CEO of SANBI. Excellent all-occasions gift and keepsake.

Author: Stephen Case
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009237691
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
It has been said that being scientific in Victorian England meant to be as much like John Herschel as possible. This volume shows readers what it meant to be John Herschel (1792-1871), one of England's most prominent polymaths. Drawing on his published oeuvre and recent scholarship, as well as an immense amount of surviving archival material and correspondence, these essays present the first ever comprehensive account of Herschel's life, work, and legacy. From mathematics and astronomy, to philosophy and politics, the volume sheds new light on his crucial role in the history of Victorian science and explores a wide array of issues in the history of nineteenth-century culture, philosophy, mathematics, and beyond.

Author: William Sheehan
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0387853472
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Written by William Sheehan, a noted historian of astronomy, and Christopher J. Conselice, a professional astronomer specializing in galaxies in the early universe, this book tells the story of how astronomers have pieced together what is known about the vast and complicated systems of stars and dust known as galaxies. The first galaxies appeared as violently disturbed exotic objects when the Universe was only a few 100 million years old. From that tortured beginning, they have evolved though processes of accretion, merging and star formation into the majestic spirals and massive ellipticals that dominate our local part of the Universe. This of course includes the Milky Way, to which the Sun and Solar System belong; it is our galactic home, and the only galaxy we will ever know from the inside. Sheehan and Conselice show how astronomers’ understanding has grown from the early catalogs of Charles Messier and William Herschel; developed through the pioneering efforts of astronomers like E.E. Barnard, V.M. Slipher, Henrietta Leavitt, Edwin Hubble and W.W. Morgan; and finally is reaching fruition in cutting-edge research with state-of-the-art instruments such as the Hubble Space Telescope that can see back to nearly the beginning of the Universe. By combining archival research that reveals fascinating details about the personalities, rivalries and insights of the astronomers who created extragalactic astronomy with the latest data gleaned from a host of observa tions, the authors provide a view of galaxies – and their place in our understanding of the Universe – as they have never been seen before.