Feature Stories

Research Topics

Feature Stories Overview

Deputy Head, Communications Team

Stephanie Hood

+49 30 22667 242/315

shood@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) has published its format “Research Topics” since 2008. Every six to eight weeks, researchers present individual contributions of one relevant aspect of their research or present a new research project. “Research Topics” appear on the home page of the Institute’s website and in a printed version available in the MPIWG’s entrance hall. The online version makes the latest research easily available and offers links to sources, databases, audiovisual material, publications, authors, and partner institutions. Published in German and English, the collection of Research Topics gives a representative picture of the ways in which research is conducted at the Institute. Copies can be ordered in brochure form through the Institute's press contact.

No 46
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Early Modern Adaptation of the Aristotelian Mechanics

In one of her ongoing projects, historian of science Joyce van Leeuwen investigates the history of the Quaestiones Mechanicae.

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No 45
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Refugee Housing

In one of her ongoing projects, historian Emily Brownell investigates the history of refugee housing.

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No 43
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One Hundred Years of Gravitational Waves

The search for gravitational waves has entered a new era. The MPIWG, CalTech and the Hebrew University have studied the long way from Einstein’s prediction to observation.

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No 40
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Do Data Have Politics?

In her project, historian of science Elena Aronova investigates the history and politics of environmental data collection during the Cold War.

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No 37
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Is Bigger Better

A new department directed by Dagmar Schäfer studies the history of artifacts, action, and knowledge and starts with a project on the histories of planning.

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No 36
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Rooting Language Family Trees

Historian of science Judith Kaplan studies the encounters of linguists, anthropologists and biologists in their search for human origins.

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No 34
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Galileo’s Laboratory of Ideas

New studies on Galileo Galilei carried out at the MPIWG reveal the role played by practical knowledge in the seventeenth century’s Scientific Revolution.

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No 30
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How Recipes Created Knowledge in Early Modern Households

In a new project, historian of science Elaine Leong studies hundreds of medical notebooks in order to understand home-based knowledge and practices in the scientific world of early modern Engla...

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No 29
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Metallurgy, Ballistics and Epistemic Instruments

Historian of science Matteo Valleriani has published a new edition of Nova scientia by the mathematician Nicolò Tartaglia that sheds new light on the emergence of ballistics as consequence of t...

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No 28
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Science under Scrutiny

A new project by Etienne Benson explores how endangered species protection reshaped twentieth-century field biology.

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No 27
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The Globalization of Knowledge and its Consequences

A recently published volume, edited by MPIWG director Jürgen Renn and available online, elucidates the processes of the globalization of knowledge in terms of historical-epistemological concept...

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