Abstract
Making Waves: The Story of Ruby Payne-Scott: Australian Pioneer Radio Astronomer. W.M. Goss (Springer, Heidelberg, 2013). Pp. xx + 262. $29.95. ISBN 978-3-642-35751-0 (paper).
An abridged and less technical version of a biography published in 2010 by Springer and reviewed by Virginia Trimble in this journal, xliv (2013), 222-23.
Perfect Mechanics: Instrument Makers at the Royal Society of London in the Eighteenth Century. Richard Sorrenson (Docent Press, Boston, 2013). Pp. ix + 240. $17.99. ISBN (not registered).
A self-published book based on the author’s 1993 PhD dissertation submitted to Princeton University. Well-known makers such as George Graham, John Dollond and Jesse Ramsden, all closely linked to the Royal Society, appear here, as does a content analysis (including astronomy) of the Philosophical Transactions from 1720-79.
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication. Edited by Douglas A. Vakoch (National Aeronautics and Space Administration History Office, Washington, D.C., 2014). Pp. xxx + 302. ISBN 978-1-6283-013-4.
A collection of essays offering a history of NASA’s SETI programs since 1969 and sections on how the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology and evolutionary biology might inform assumptions of what forms “extraterrestrial intelligence” might take.
L’homme au risqué de l’infini: Mélanges d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences offerts à Michel Blay. Edited by Michela Malpangotto, Vincent Jullien, and Efthymios Nicolaïdis (Brepols, Turnhout, 2013). Pp. 444. €55. ISBN 978-2-503-55142-5.
A Festschrift of thirty-three wide-ranging contributions, including in the history of astronomy essays on Galileo by Maurice Clavelin, Kepler by Jean Seidengart, Thomas Harriot by Robert Fox, heliocentrism and alchemy by Bernard Joly, Newton by Niccolò Guicciardini and Suzanne Débarbat, and Euler and Newtonian mechanics by Marco Panza and Sébastien Maronne.
Der Briefwechsel zwischen Carl Friedrich Gauß und Johann Elert Bode. Edited by Friedhelm Schwemin (Acta historica astronomiae, liii; Akademische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig, 2014). Pp. 143. € 14. ISBN 978-3-944913-43-8.
A lightly annotated edition of 102 letters from Johann Bode, director of the Berlin Observatory, to C.F. Gauß, written between 1802 and 1826 (Gauß’s letters to Bode have disappeared). Abridged versions of these letters appeared in the Göttingen edition of Gauß’s Werke; here they are given in full. Topics include the discovery of the first planetoids; Bode’s various observations; the journal Astronomisches Jahrbuch that Bode had founded in 1774; and gossip about academic positions and Gauß’s former students.
Hubble’s legacy: Reflections by Those Who Dreamed It, Built It, and Observed the Universe with It. Edited by Roger D. Launius and David H. DeVorkin (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, Washington, D.C., 2014). Pp. xvi + 220. ISBN 978-1-935623-32-8 (print available from publisher without charge). ISBN 978-1-935623-33-5 (PDF available without charge at http://opensi.si.edu).
A collection of 12 papers, presented in 2009 at a conference at the National Air and Space Museum, dealing with the construction the Hubble Space Telescope, its repair after discovery of the flawed primary mirror, its impact on astronomy and astrophysics, and the decisions and public controversy surrounding how it would end its active life. Many of the contributors were actively involved in the HST program and space science.
Ces Français dans la Lune: Cratéres et Biographie. Jean-Michel Faidit (Les Presses du Midi, Toulon, 2013). Pp. 254 (paperback).
A listing of each of the lunar features to which the name of a French person has been assigned, and a biographical sketch of the person in question.