Will Thomas

Portrait of Margaret Rossiter from the Cornell STS homepage. https://sts.cornell.edu/margaret-rossiter

Margaret Rossiter, whose #histsci scholarship revealed structural inequalities affecting #WomenInSTEM, has passed away. Dr. Rossiter was co-founder of @historyscience.bsky.social’s Women’s Caucus & namesake of a prize honoring work on the history of women in science. May her memory be a blessing.

Portraits of Joanna Behrman and Barbara Hof

Also, congratulations to the winners of the 2024 and 2025 IUPAP Early Career Prize in the History of Physics, who will receive their medals at the meeting: my wonderful former AIP colleague Joanna Behrman and Barbara Hof, currently a postdoc at the University of Lausanne www.iuchpp.org/prize

Conference program: Sixth AIP Early-Career Conference for Historians of the Physical Sciences AIP History Weekly Edition for August 1, 2025

We're heading to Salvador, Brazil, for the Sixth AIP Early-Career Conference for Historians of the Physical Sciences. This #histsci meeting gathers young scholars from the world over to exchange work and build a supportive global community.

Check out what folks are working on these days:

The timing - the 350th anniversary of the Royal Observatory and completion of Lord Ree's three decades - but it would have been nice to have done the announcement in March, 350 years after Flamsteed's appointment (though the role has changed... um... a bit) #histSTM

UK gets first female Astronomer Royal in 350 years Prof Michele Dougherty is the first woman to be appointed to the influential post.

About time, you might say!

BBC News - UK gets first female Astronomer Royal in 350 years
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Scientists Ask NSF to Keep Only Antarctic Icebreaker Afloat - Eos On 28 July, more than 170 researchers sent a letter to National Science Foundation leaders and Congress, urging them to reconsider the decision to terminate the lease of the Nathaniel B. Palmer, the U...

Scientists have asked the NSF to reconsider plans to terminate the lease for its only Antarctic research icebreaker, the RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer. eos.org/research-and...

July 25, 2025 Book spotlight: The Board of Longitude

I've long been a fanboy of the Cambridge HPS / National Maritime Museum Board of Longitude project. It recovered a rich institutional history from a heavily mythologized narrative and digitized the board's papers too. Its capstone book is an excellent contribution to #histSTM & #scipol studies.

One of those officials is Steve Volz, longtime head of its satellite division.

Physicists and historians of physics: Help @aip.bsky.social build its world-leading photo collection!

Glad you used your gmail address!

NASA Goddard Center Director Makenzie Lystrup Set to Depart - NASA On Monday, NASA announced Dr. Makenzie Lystrup, director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is set to leave the agency on Friday,

I wonder what precipitated this www.nasa.gov/news-release...

A profile of John Trump, Donald’s oft-mentioned scientist uncle The president’s uncle was an MIT physicist and engineer who made his mark in the development of high-voltage generators, World War II radar, and cancer therapies.

For any curious souls pubs.aip.org/physicstoday...

Fact check: Trump tells fictional story about his uncle and the Unabomber | CNN Politics President Donald Trump likes to boast about the brilliance of his late uncle John Trump, who spent decades as a professor of electrical engineering at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technolog...

Oh hey, I didn't realize there was a new John Trump story afoot www.cnn.com/2025/07/16/p...

July 18, 2025 Oral history: Vera Rubin, astronomer and dark-matter trailblazer

To mark the completion of the Rubin Observatory @vrubinobs.bsky.social and the 97th anniversary of Vera Rubin's birth, we are spotlighting a 1989 interview with her conducted by Alan Lightman. #histsci

The full interview is available in AIP's collections here: repository.aip.org/rubin-vera-1...

Thanks - I mischaracterized what they were saying

I was chatting about this with some folks who would know, and the costs of doing this would be extreme, given that the specialized 747s that used to transport the shuttle no longer exist.

An archival copy of Leo Szilard's "A Petition to the President of the United States," dated July 17, 1945, and stamped "SECRET" in red. It bears 12 signatures on the first page (the only page shown), including Leo Szilard, Ralph E. Lapp, Eugene P. Wigner, and John A. Simpson, Jr.

80 years ago today at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory—one day after the Trinity test—Chief Physicist Leo Szilard signed and circulated a petition to President Truman urging him to weigh all the “moral responsibilities” before deciding whether to use atomic bombs to attack Japan.

Trinity at 70: “Now we are all sons of bitches.” What does the Trinity test signify, in the broad sweep of human history?

I haven't had time to write up anything new for the test anniversary (SUPER busy), but here are some of my previous writings on Trinity that I think I still agree with!

1. Trinity at 70: "Now we're all sons of bitches." blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/07/17/n...

A nice remembrance of my late colleague John Stachel ⚛️

A black and white, high-speed photograph of the Trinity explosion at 0.025 seconds, showing what looks like a very large, slightly irregular bubble with a curtain of dust all around its bottom edge against a pitch dark sky. A scale indicating “100 meters” shows that the fireball was already approximately three times that size.

Another black and white photograph of the Trinity explosion a few milliseconds later, showing an almost ghostly mushroom cloud with glowing tendrils rising from the ground above the very bright fireball.

Another black and white photograph of the Trinity explosion with the same 100-meter scale, this time at 60 seconds post-detonation, showing a very large and billowy mushroom cloud rising into the sky.

Another black and white photograph of the Trinity explosion taken some minutes after the previous photograph and showing the ominous looking mushroom cloud at a distance, its top spreading out and merging with regular clouds.

80 years ago this morning—at 5:29 AM (Mountain War Time)—about 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, the nuclear age began with a big bang. Contrary to widespread assumptions, the area surrounding the remote Trinity test site was not uninhabited, and the fallout did not drift away harmlessly.

We’re hiring! Join AIP’s research team as an Archives Fellow or Intern to help highlight women’s contributions to the physical sciences. Great part time opportunities for grad students.

Apply here:
- Fellow: workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/defau...
- Intern: workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/defau...

July 11, 2025 In memoriam: John Stachel, pathbreaking Einstein scholar

Michel Janssen remembers historian-philosopher-physicist John Stachel, the founding editor of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, who passed away on May 9. #HPS

Another illuminating look at the history of women in the physical sciences from Joanna Behrman, a wonderful former colleague on the AIP history team. #histsci #womeninSTEM

Letters From the Front: The Malcolm Thurgood Collection

By Benjamin Henry from our library & archives team, a look at the ALSOS mission that investigated the Nazi atomic program, from the perspective of its photographer.

Every living NASA science chief unites in opposition to unprecedented… The entire past leadership of NASA’s science activities have released a joint statement condemning the proposed 47% cuts proposed to the agency’s science…

Today, *every* living prior leader of NASA's science directorate have released a joint letter condemning the proposed cuts to NASA science. These individuals every administration from Reagan to Biden, and all believe these cuts are insanely destructive: www.planetary.org/press-releas...

Opinion | The U.S. Deported This Chinese Scientist, in a Decision That Changed World History

Not to mention, we deported a top rocket scientist www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o...

For those who missed it over the 4th, Women in the History of Quantum Physics is a great example of what a multi-author effort can accomplish. Available now from Cambridge UP www.cambridge.org/us/universit...

During the Red Scare...

-There was a 7-year smear campaign against the head of the Nat'l Bureau of Standards
-INS hoped to revoke Einstein's citizenship
-Fisk University let one of Oppenheimer's students go
-Berkeley lost every theorist on its physics faculty

aip.brightspotcdn.com/89/11/30815e...