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Dinner in the Iguanodon Model, at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham

New Year’s Eve Dinner in the Iguanodon at Crystal Palace 31 December 1853

The “Dinner in the Iguanodon Model” is the best known story involving Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. That dinner took place on New Year’s Eve 31 December 1853. It was immortalised in an [...]

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs | Professor Joe Cain

Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World (Crystal Palace Guide 15) | EGP

Richard Owen’s original guide to the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and displayed in Crystal Palace Park, Sydenham, London since 1854. These life-sized sculptures of prehistoric “monsters” [...]

Sample Medical Card for Croydon Schoolboys 1920s-1930s

Medical Cards for Croydon Schoolchildren 1920s-1930s

Historians must make more – and more creative – use of AI technologies for data analysis as well as for routine task of data sorting and transcription. To create a [...]

Project Pitch Explained for HPSC0044 Undergraduates

In HPSC0044 Science and the Publishing Industry students develop a book proposal. First, they sketch an idea. Second, they deliver a project pitch. Third, they submit a book proposal. To [...]

Proceedings of the Seventh International Genetical Congress held in 1939 and published in 1941.

Using LLMs to query 1939 International Genetical Congress

What work can large-language models (LLMs) do for historical researching? They offer tools for voluminous compilation of data ready for complex human analysis. They can organise and reorganise data. They can extract data from source material. They can be set to search for trends. We’re coming to grips with LLM tools for historical researching, and we’re quickly moving well beyond the LLM-as-author model so distrusted in our community. Historians must push ourselves to be as creative and demanding of LLM resources as those in our sister disciplines.

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HPSC0155 Science Communication Final Project

UCL’s Science Communication MSc degree culminates in a science communication project of the student’s own design. This project is documented by a project proposal in Term 3 and a final product submitted near the end […]

HPSC0097 Research Project

Postgraduate taught students in UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) undertake summer research projects resulting in dissertations or research reports. Professor Joe Cain supervises some students in this work, as do all academic […]

HPSC0028 History of Life Sciences

A historical survey of the biological sciences from the Enlightenment to the present. What are the big names and big ideas? How were they received at the time and appropriated later? Who’s been ignored and […]

Richard the Lionheart statue outside UK Houses of Parliament

Nature of Gothic: A Chapter from The Stones of Venice (John Ruskin) | EGP

The famous essay by John Ruskin, The Nature of Gothic, first appeared as a chapter in his 1853 The Stones of Venice. This chapter proved immensely popular and took on a life of its own. […]

Tiger in UCL Grant Museum of Zoology - cover for Cain - No Ordinary Space

No Ordinary Space: UCL Grant Museum | EGP

UCL’s Grant Museum of Zoology moved to the Thomas Lewis Room in UCL’s Rockefeller Building in 2011. No Ordinary Space is a book designed to answer popular historical questions about the room, the building, and […]

Vernon Kellogg Headquarters Nights 9781906267322 Euston Grove Press | soldiers in the trenches during World War 1

Darwinism or Militarism? Headquarters Nights (Vernon Kellogg) | EGP

Headquarters Nights was the 1917 account by Vernon Kellogg of conversations and experiences at the headquarters of the German Army in France and Belgium during World War 1, following one man’s transformation from an opponent of all wars […]

Professor Joe Cain

UCL Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology

Synthesis Period in Evolutionary Studies

Joseph Henry Woodger (1894-1981) Papers at University College London (UCL)

George Gaylord Simpson’s “Night Thoughts on Leaving the American Museum of Natural History”

Columbia Biological Series, 1894-1974

One Hundred and One Mendelians – Buttolph (2008)

Regular Contact with Anyone Interested: Documents of Society for the Study of Speciation | EGP

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

New Year’s Eve Dinner in the Iguanodon at Crystal Palace 31 December 1853

Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World (Crystal Palace Guide 15) | EGP

LLMs and GenAI in Research

Medical Cards for Croydon Schoolchildren 1920s-1930s

Project Pitch Explained for HPSC0044 Undergraduates

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