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Monthly Archives: December 2018

space
Apollo 17 – The Last Men on the Moon…so far

Apollo 17 – The Last Men on the Moon…so far

Tabea Tietz
On December 11, 1972, Apollo 17 with Commander Eugene A. Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald E. Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison H. Schmitt landed in the Taurus-Littrow valley on the lunar surface and were (so far) the last men to set foot on the Moon. Apollo 17 was the eleventh and final mission of the United States‘ Apollo program, the sixth mission to land humans on the Moon. Background While earlier Apollo…
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history
Melvil Dewey and the Dewey Decimal System

Melvil Dewey and the Dewey Decimal System

Tabea Tietz
On December 10, 1851, Melvil Dewey, librarian and inventor of the Dewey Decimal classification system for libraries, the DDC, was born. Early Years Melvil Dewey was born as Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey into a rather poor family in the upper New York state. After a school-fire, he was told to live only for one more year and became obsessed with efficiency, wherefore he gained his interest in simplified spelling early. Dewey left…
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literature
John Milton and his great Epic Paradise Lost

John Milton and his great Epic Paradise Lost

Harald Sack
On December 9, 1608, English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant John Milton, was born. He is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. “Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought…
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social science
Niklas Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems

Niklas Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems

Tabea Tietz
On December 8, 1927, German sociologist, philosopher of social science, and a prominent thinker in systems theory Niklas Luhmann was born. As the most important German-speaking representative of sociological systems theory and sociocybernetics, Luhmann is one of the classics of the social sciences in the 20th century. “Does knowledge rest on construction in the sense that it only functions because the knowing system is operatively closed, therefore: because it can maintain no operative…
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architecture
Gian Lorenzo Bernini – Master Architect and Sculptor of the Italian Baroque

Gian Lorenzo Bernini – Master Architect and Sculptor of the Italian Baroque

Harald Sack
On December 7, 1598, Italian architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born. He is considered to be the leading sculptor of the baroque age. In addition he designed buildings, painted, wrote plays, and designed metalwork and stage sets. Whenever you are be in Rome, for sure you will find yourself somewhere in the neighborhood of Bernini’s artwork. “What we have is given by God and to teach it to others is to return…
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archeology
The Discovery of Nefertiti

The Discovery of Nefertiti

Harald Sack
On December 6, 1912, German archeologist Ludwig Borchardt and his team discovered the famous bust of Nefertiti at excavations in Thutmose‘s workshop in Amarna, Egypt. Ever since, the iconic bust of Nefertiti has become one of the most famous relics of the ancient world, and an icon of feminine beauty. Nefertiti The name Nefertiti means nothing less than ‘the beauty has come’. The origins of the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian…
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physics
Werner Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle

Werner Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle

Harald Sack
On December 5, 1901, German theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Werner Heisenberg was born, who along with Max Born and Pascual Jordan laid the foundations of quantum mechanics. He is probably best known for his Uncertainty Principle, asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain physical properties can be known. “The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.” — Werner Heisenberg,…
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philosophy
Man is Man’s Wolf – Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan

Man is Man’s Wolf – Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan

Tabea Tietz
On December 4, 1679, Thomas Hobbes passed away. The philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment and the political theorist of the Absolutism is probably best known for his 1651 book Leviathan that established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory. “I know not how the world will receive it, nor how it may reflect on those that shall seem to favor it. For in a way…
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literature
Joseph Conrad and the Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad and the Heart of Darkness

Harald Sack
On December 3, 1857, Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad was born. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. “A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be…
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physics
The First Self-Sustained Nuclear Chain Reaction

The First Self-Sustained Nuclear Chain Reaction

Tabea Tietz
On December 2, 1942, during the Manhattan Project, a team led by Italian born physicist Enrico Fermi initiated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1), the world‘s first human-made nuclear reactor, and initiated the so-called atomic age. CP-1 was built on a rackets court, under the abandoned west stands of the original Alonzo Stagg Field stadium, at the University of Chicago. Nuclear Chain Reaction and the Atomic Bomb…
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