Old Edinburgh cistern, Castlehill

 History of Science, Mathematics, Technology  Comments Off on Old Edinburgh cistern, Castlehill
Apr 192016
 

555  Castlehill, Edinburgh EH1 2ND

Old Edinburgh cistern

This ornate drinking fountain marks the site on Castle Hill where the mathematician George Sinclair constructed a cistern to supply water to the city of Edinburgh in around 1675. The original reservoir was demolished to make way for a new, larger one in 1849. Sinclair was professor of Mathematics at the University of Glasgow from 1654 to 1666.  In 1655 he made some very early descents in a diving bell off the Isle of Mull. He was not only a leading mathematician and engineer, but also an expert on demonology and author of Satan’s Invisible Works Discovered (c.1685).

Nineteenth-century drinking fountain on the site of the old Edinburgh cistern.

Nineteenth-century drinking fountain on the site of the old Edinburgh cistern.

 

High Street cistern, 1675

The one surviving wellhead on the High Street, originally connected to Sinclair’s Castlehill cistern. It was designed by Sir William Bruce to provide water to the people of the Old Town and built in around 1675.

House of Fleeming Jenkin

 Biology, History of Science, Natural History  2 Responses »
Apr 192016
 

3 Great Stuart Street, Edinburgh EH3 6AP

Fleeming Jenkin's house

Fleeming Jenkin was appointed by Queen Victoria as the first Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. He is now best known for raising an important objection to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1867 Jenkin argued that any favourable mutation that arose in one individual of a species would  be rapidly swamped by interbreeding with a large population of normal individuals. This argument depended on the belief that characteristics of parents  were simply ‘blended’ in the offspring. The rise of modern genetics, which invalidated the ‘blending’ model of inheritance, eventually resolved this problem, but it presented a serious problem for Darwin’s theory at the time.

No public access.

Fleeming Jenkin (1833–85).

Fleeming Jenkin (1833–85).

 

 

Sir David Brewster’s Edinburgh residence

 History of Science  Comments Off on Sir David Brewster’s Edinburgh residence
Apr 192016
 

10 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh EH3 7AL

David Brewster's house

This house was Sir David Brewster’s Edinburgh residence until his death in 1868. Brewster is today best known as the inventor of the kaleidoscope. His invention could have made him a very wealthy man, but he neglected to patent it soon enough, and so earned very little  from his invention. He was also a pioneer photographer and friend of William Henry Fox Talbot. Brewster made important contributions to the science of optics, but his reputation suffered because he continued to champion the particle theory of light after the wave theory had been accepted by most other physicists.

No public access.

David Brewster (1781–1868).

David Brewster (1781–1868).

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Peter Higgs plaque

 History of Physics, History of Science  Comments Off on Peter Higgs plaque
Apr 192016
 

5 Roxburgh Street, Edinburgh EH8 9TA

Peter Higgs' former house

Peter Higgs is famous for predicting the existence of a new fundamental subatomic particle, now named in his honour the ‘Higgs boson’, while a Lecturer at the Tait Institute of Mathematical Physics in Edinburgh. Its existence solves the problem of why electrons and quarks have mass. He predicted its existence in 1964 in a paper written in a flat at 5 Roxburgh Street. However, was not until 2012 that it was confirmed that it existed by the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest scientific instrument, near Geneva. This discovery earned Higgs the Nobel Prize for Physics.

No public access.

Peter Higgs (1929– ).

Peter Higgs (1929– ).

 

Peter Higgs plaque

Peter Higgs plaque.

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Birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell

 History of Physics, History of Science  1 Response »
Apr 172016
 

14 India Street, Edinburgh EH3 6EZ

Birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell

Now home to a museum of his life and work, this was the childhood home of James Clerk Maxwell, famous for his revolutionary work on electromagnetism and the kinetic theory of gases. Maxwell was born here in 1831. His A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (1865) demonstrated that both electric and magnetic fields and light travel through space as waves at the speed of light. This work laid the foundations for the invention of the radio. Clerk Maxwell’s was perhaps the most important contribution to theoretical physics between Newton and Einstein.

The house is now owned by the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation and my be visited by appointment.

 

Statue to James Clerk Maxwell by Alexander Stoddart, George Street, Edinburgh, unveiled 2008.

Statue to James Clerk Maxwell by Alexander Stoddart, George Street, Edinburgh, unveiled 2008.

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79).

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79).

Plaque at the birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell.

Plaque at the birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell.

 

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Challenger Expedition offices

 History of Science, Natural History, Oceanography  Comments Off on Challenger Expedition offices
Apr 172016
 

32 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JX

Challenger Expedition offices

Between the December 1872 and May 1876 the Challenger Expedition circumnavigated the globe and laid the foundations for modern oceanography. It had been organised by the Royal Society of London at the suggestion of Charles Wyville Thomson, Edinburgh University’s professor of natural history, and its offices were here at 32 Queen Street. The expedition took soundings, samples of sea water and collected specimens of marine life while traversing 68,890 nautical miles across the oceans of the world. The  report of the expedition, which was published between 1885 and 1895, came to 50 fat volumes.

No public access.

The HMS Challenger.

The HMS Challenger.

Charles Wyville Thompson (1830–82).

Charles Wyville Thompson (1830–82).

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Charles Darwin’s lodgings

 Biology, History of Science, Natural History  Comments Off on Charles Darwin’s lodgings
Apr 172016
 

11 Lothian Street, Edinburgh EH1 1HE

Charles Darwin's lodgings

It was here that Charles Darwin lodged in the house of Mrs Mackay when a medical student in Edinburgh in 1825-27. He was not an enthusiastic student and left without finishing his degree. In Edinburgh he met Robert Edmond Grant, a lecturer in John Barclay’s anatomy school and an enthusiastic advocate of evolution. On one of their regular zoological collecting trips together Grant apparently ‘burst forth in admiration’ of  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s evolutionary theories. Darwin later claimed, perhaps disingenuously, that he had listened to Grant ‘as far as I can judge, without any effect on my mind’.

No public access. The original building no longer survives.

Charles Darwin (1809–82).

Charles Darwin (1809–82).

Robert Edmond Grant (1793-1874).

Robert Edmond Grant (1793-1874).

Plaque marking the site of Darwin's lodgings.

Plaque marking the site of Darwin’s lodgings.

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Old University Museum of Natural History

 History of Science, Natural History  Comments Off on Old University Museum of Natural History
Apr 172016
 

Talbot Rice Gallery, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL

Former University Natural History Museum

Until 1861 Edinburgh University’s museum was housed in what is now the Talbot Rice Gallery. The collection was founded by Sir Robert Sibbald in 1692 and greatly expanded by Robert Jameson, Edinburgh’s professor of natural history from 1804 to 1854. It contained the most important natural history collection in Britain after London’s British Museum. Jameson was notorious for denying access to scholars to whom he took a dislike, including a number of members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He also famously ‘mislaid’ the geological collection of James Hutton, whose theories he did not agree with.

Admission to the Talbot Rice Gallery is free.

 

The Natural History Museum of the University of Edinburgh in Robert Jameson's day.

The Natural History Museum of the University of Edinburgh in Robert Jameson’s day.

Portrait of Robert Jameson (1774–1854) by one of his students, c.1831.

Portrait of Robert Jameson (1774–1854) by one of his students, c.1831.

 

Sir Godfrey Thomson plaque

 History of Science, Psychology  Comments Off on Sir Godfrey Thomson plaque
Apr 172016
 

Moray House, Holyrood Road, EH8 8AQ
Thompson's Land, University of Edinburgh

On this building you will find a plaque dedicated to Sir Godfrey Thomson, a pioneer of research into human intelligence. Thompson worked on the Scottish Mental Surveys of 1932 and 1947, which measured the intelligence of most of the children born in Scotland in 1921 and 1936 respectively. The data collected was rediscovered in the late 1990s by Ian Deary and Lawrence Whalley. Together with new data from the now elderly participants in the original survey, it has formed the basis of an important research programme exploring the effects of aging on the brain.

No public access.

Sir Godfrey Thomson (1881–1955).

Sir Godfrey Thomson (1881–1955).

Plaque to Sir Godfrey Thomson on Thomson's Land, University of Edinburgh

Plaque to Sir Godfrey Thomson on Thomson’s Land, University of Edinburgh

Plaque to Sir Godfrey Thompson in St John's Street.

Plaque to Sir Godfrey Thompson in St John’s Street.

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House of Dawson Fyers Duckworth Turner

 History of Medicine, History of Science  Comments Off on House of Dawson Fyers Duckworth Turner
Apr 172016
 

57 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JU

Dawson Fyers Duckworth Turner's house

Dawson Fyers Duckworth Turner was a physician who had worked at a number of Edinburgh hospitals. He was a pioneer of the development of x-rays in medicine. Beginning in 1896, only one year after x-rays had been discovered by Roentgen, he set up an experimental x-ray apparatus at his house in George Square. He used this to demonstrate the power of x-rays to show bones and foreign objects through soft tissues. Not realising how dangerous the rays were, his experiments cost him three fingers and an eye.

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