New Posts | Professor Joe Cain

News Ticker

[ 2026-03-25 ] Reading List for MSc History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) Prep Masters-level
[ 2026-02-18 ] Project Pitch Explained for HPSC0044 Undergraduates Undergraduate-level
[ 2025-11-03 ] The Country of the Iguanodon, by Gideon Mantell – Two Versions Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
[ 2025-11-02 ] Gideon Mantell’s 1851 Guide to Fossils at British Museum Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
[ 2025-10-14 ] Society for the Study of Speciation: Bibliographic Analysis Using LLM Featured

Illustration of "ring species" concept, or Rassenkreis

Society for the Study of Speciation: Bibliographic Analysis Using LLM

I provide data for an LLM-based analysis of the short-lived Society for the Study of Speciation (SSS), organised by Alfred Emerson, through three documents.

[…]

Bernissart Iguanodons in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels

The Dinosaur Gallery in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (Brussels Museum of Natural History) includes the famous Bernissart Iguanodons. This consists of thirty complete or nearly complete skeletons excavated from an underground coal […]

150,000,000 B.C. - The Prehistoric Monsters of Crystal Palace - rare 1968 pamphlet features this photograph of the standing Iguanodon in camouflage painting.

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs – Rare 1968 Pamphlet – 150,000,000 B.C.

“150,000,000 B.C.” is a rare pamphlet about the Crystal Palace dinosaurs and other statues by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins created in the 1850s in Crystal Palace Park, Sydenham. It was published by the Greater London Council […]

Featured

#207 Can Generative AI Learn to Love Us? | WeAreSTS

What is love? Can we program machines to be in love or to love us back? Ken Sio (UCL Human Sciences BSc) tackles one of humanity’s greatest questions but adds a modern twist: Can generative […]

Featured

#206 Deaf Sentence We May Be Losing Our Hearing, Darcy Watson

By 2050, nearly 2.5 billion people are projected to have some degree of hearing loss. Darcy Watson (UCL BSc Human Sciences) explores the subject of ‘hearing health’ with audiology expert Charlotte Rogers. How might our […]

Featured

#205 Why Green Activism Must Turn Blue | WeAreSTS

Students come into university with strong visions of activism and improvement. They know the planet needs their help. But how? What can STS (in the form of degrees like “Sociology and Politics of Science BSc” […]

Public Opinion newspaper front page 08 July 1912

Karl Pearson in rare media interview about eugenics in Public Opinion

Professor Karl Pearson rarely took media interviews. It was a point of principle. It also was a point of privilege. He hated criticism, and he had an extremely fragile personality. He deliberately insulated his work […]

Bathysphere for William Beebe's Half Mile Down, New York Zoological Society, 1934

Going the Extra (Half) Mile for STS

One of the tiny bits of my job is to help with publicity and marketing. We’ve a big Open Day event coming up, and we need to replace an old banner for our stand. I […]

George Gaylord Simpson in Paris 1947. APS Library. Colourised.

George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984) bibliography

The American vertebrate paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson (1902–1984) published more than 700 original items. A general sense of Simpson’s career is provided by his autobiography (Simpson, 1978). Authoritative secondary sources are Laporte (2000) and Whittington […]

Autumn flower in garden at Bateman's, home of Rudyard Kipling, East Sussex

History of Botany at University College London (UCL) – First 100 years

When University College London (UCL) launched in 1826, botany was included in its academic range. In part, this was supported by its relationship to medicine and pharmacology. Also in part, it was related to systematics […]

Professor Joe Cain 2026