history of science Archives | Professor Joe Cain

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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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 […]

WeAreSTS - A Podcast from UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS), hosted by Professor Joe Cain.

#26 Women in History of Science Through 53 Original Sources | WeAreSTS

Women in the History of Science brings together primary sources that highlight women’s involvement in scientific knowledge production around the world. Drawing on texts, images and objects, each primary source is accompanied by an explanatory […]

#20 Becoming Britain’s Chief Scientific Advisor: Solly Zuckerman | WeAreSTS

Did you know that in March 1967, the British government bombed an oil tanker stranded on rocks off Cornwall? Dan Sharpe certainly didn’t when he began to dig into the life and career of the […]

#19 Decolonise and Decenter STS: Reflections and Expectations | WeAreSTS

Scientific knowledge has evolved over the past few centuries in various political and socio-cultural contexts. There is seen to be a substantially disproportionate legacy of European thought in scientific education. How the fingerprints of colonialism […]

Oxford Museum of Natural History exterior on a bright, sunny day | ProfJoeCain

Oxford Museum of Natural History Meets Gothic Revival | EGP

A guided tour through key architectural and design philosophies underpinning the Oxford Museum of Natural History by Henry Acland, who played a key role in the design of the new university science museum in the […]

Number 88 Gower Street - location for the Eugenics Record Office 1904-1906 | At cover of Gower Street and Torrington Place, Bloomsbury, London, England, United Kingdom

Francis Galton’s Eugenics Record Office on Gower Street (ERO-Galton)

Francis Galton created a Eugenics Record Office (ERO-Galton) at 88 Gower Street, London, England, in 1904, while developing a scheme to create for himself some research capacity in this area. ERO-Galton operated until 1907, when […]

Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) commemorative plaque on UCL Charles Bell Building | ProfJoeCain

Reviewing Commemorations: A Strategy for Executive Action

In a recent blog post on Lessons About Renaming University Buildings, I developed some key concepts to focus discussions about renaming commemorative objects at universities. The aim was to assist in building a strategy for […]

Charles Darwin Blue Plaque on Gower Street London WC1 | ProfJoeCain

Darwinian Heritage on Gower Street at UCL

English Heritage commemorates Charles Darwin with a blue plaque located on Gower Street in Bloomsbury, central London. The “Darwin plaque” is fixed to the Darwin Building, one of the substantial science buildings of University College […]

Buttolph 2008 One Hundred and One Mendelians wordle

One Hundred and One Mendelians – Buttolph (2008)

For many years, we operated in STS UCL a portfolio website, “Made in STS UCL“. Recently, we took the difficult decision to withdraw that site. The concept behind the site was to provide a portfolio […]