Notices by Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)

This is shocking to hear! The church where James Clerk Maxwell is buried is being sold, and the community needs to raise money to turn it into a visitor center (centre) commemorating his work.

Einstein kept a picture of Maxwell on his office wall and admired him more than any other scientist.

Every fall I teach a whole course about his work.

This is like hearing that Westminster Abbey might be torn down so a new car rental place can be built where Newton was buried.

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/savepartonkirk

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mcnees/110378718619695911

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched this morning! Here’s a short thread about her, and why this new telescope bears her name.

Geneticist Liane Russell was born #OTD in 1923.

She pioneered the study of mutagenesis and teratogenesis due to radiation, and identified the role of the Y chromosome in sex determination. Her work led to diagnostic x-ray safety standards for women of childbearing age.

Science, the joy of wild places, and civic engagement as a response to fascism – this is one of my favorite threads.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mcnees/110963031794719078

One of my favorite #OTD threads: geneticist, conservationist, and civic-minded anti-fascist Liane Russell. 🧪 👩🔬

Besides the famous chalkboard photo, Ralph Morse also captured a close-up of Einstein's desk.

Covered with papers and journals, his pipe laying on its side, a photo set down as if he’d just been looking at it. It is a very relatable desk.

Image: Ralph Morse, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

And here is a better view of the state of the blackboard in Einstein's office when he passed away on April 18, 1955. The image appeared in LIFE magazine.

I can see on the right side where he is comparing the number of independent components of various quantities in two formulations (which he has labeled "new" and "old") of gravity.

Image: Ralph Morse, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

As most physicists will tell you, a clean desk is a sure sign of a sick mind.

This is the ideal academic desk. You may not like it, but this is what peak desk looks like.

Albert Einstein passed away #OTD in 1955 due to complications from a ruptured abdominal aneurysm.

Doctors recommended surgical intervention but Einstein declined. He told them “I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."

Here is his office just as he left it, before anyone came him to collect his things..

Image: R. Morse/LIFE

Winning two-thirds of the vote with 77.8% turnout means that even if it had been 100% turnout and everyone else voted for your opponent, you would still win with about 52% of the vote. Just remarkable how much people hate JD Vance.

We pack a handful of folks into a tin can loaded with explosives. Their computers are running Windows and the ship's toilet is malfunctioning. We hurl them at a distant rock. Everything about where they are is trying to kill them. And it is sublimely beautiful, one of the greatest things we’ve done as a species. #Artemis

Astronaut, author, professional football player, and STEM educator Leland Melvin was born #OTD in 1964.

Here he is in the greatest photo ever produced by the US space program.

Image: NASA

Engineer and inventor Douglas Engelbart was born #OTD in 1925.

His team at SRI developed or contributed to the computer mouse, hypertext, networked computers, and graphical interfaces, all of which were presented in 1968 at what is referred to as the “Mother of All Demos."

Image: ARC Bootstrapper

If you rapidly scroll through the images of different foods on the realfood.gov website, they all turn into a picture of RFK Jr.

The list of services that should not be connected to your medical records is very long, and AI chatbots have to be near the top.

If you can’t see the full headline in the preview card, here it is.

Calling this a recipe for disaster is unfair to disasters.

I cannot stress enough that you should not do this.

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/857640/openai-launches-chatgpt-health-connect-medical-records

This is incredible. An MTV simulator with almost 30,000 videos, organized by decade along with special sections for Headbanger's Ball and Yo! MTV Raps.

https://wantmymtv.vercel.app/

We can’t pay for USAid, scientific research, daycare, school lunches, social security, unemployment benefits, or healthcare, but apparently there’s no problem launching an illegal war that will cost US taxpayers billions of dollars and enrich all the grifters, goons, and ghouls in this administration.

Physicist Freeman Dyson was born #OTD in 1923.

He was known for his work in quantum electrodynamics and – among many other things – his eschatological musings about physics and the prospects for life in the far-flung future.

To the best of my knowledge, Dyson was the most prominent physicist of the modern era who never completed a PhD.

Photo: Heka Davis / AIP

Planck’s quantum hypothesis would revolutionize physics, but he initially thought it wasn’t real.

He suspected that the interaction of matter and radiation was tremendously complicated but still governed by the physics known at the time — what we now call “classical physics.”

Invoking quanta of radiation to derive the blackbody emission spectrum was, it seemed to Planck, just a mathematical trick that somehow encapsulated all that complication.