Johannes Kepler: The Order of Things

Book Review Osterhage, Wolfgang. Johannes Kepler: The Order of Things. Springer Biographies. Springer International Publishing, 2020. 132p. ISBN 978-3-030-46858-3/ e-book. 54,99 USD.

„Skrajny kwadrant gwiazdozbioru” – astronomia w fantastyce naukowej

As the author of the article claims, there exist close and lasting links between astronomy and science fiction genre. First and foremost, both of these phenomena developed in parallel since antiquity, and both have fiction at their centre as a socially established type of imagination. Scientific hypotheses use justified fabrication, and science fiction offers images of fictional cosmologies. Many writers of proto-science fiction brought astronomical concepts into social play. Among them were astronomers and philosophers who extensively used plot devices based on mythology or allegorical transformations: from Lucian of Samosata to Johannes Kepler. Space travel, beginning with Jules Verne’s prose, is an important part of the thematic resource of science fiction. Astronomy played an important role also in the beginnings of Polish science fiction, thanks to works of Michał Dymitr Krajewski and Teodor Tripplin.

Biophysical Reviews’ “Meet the Councilor Series”—a profile of Peter Pohl

It is my pleasure to write a few words to introduce myself to the readers of Biophysical Reviews as part of the “Meet the Councilor Series.” Currently, I am serving the second period as IUPAB councilor after having been elected first in 2017. Initially, I studied Biophysics in Moscow (Russia) and later Medicine in Halle (Germany). My scientific carrier took me from the Medical School of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, via the Leibniz Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (Berlin) and the Institute for Biology at the Humboldt University (Berlin) to the Physics Department of the Johannes Kepler University in Linz (Austria). My key research interests lie in the molecular mechanisms of transport phenomena occurring at the lipid membrane, including (i) spontaneous and facilitated transport of water and other small molecules across membranes in reconstituted systems, (ii) proton migration along the membrane surface, (iii) protein translocation, and (iv) bilayer mechanics. Training of undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral researchers from diverse academic disciplines has been—and shall remain—a consistent part of my work.

Old Dogma, New Tricks

This chapter studies the relationship between traditional Christian beliefs and the structure of modern science. The significance of key doctrines—such as monotheism, creation, the fall, the atonement—to the scientific revolution is analyzed, with the perhaps surprising result being that Christianity provided fertile ground for what we would recognize as “modern” science to develop. The writings of Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, and more are considered through a theological lens and their religious beliefs are shown to be foundational for their scientific work. Several living scientists are also found making the same points, and it is concluded that much of what we now call the “scientific method” owes its underlying philosophy to the core beliefs of the medieval (and even early) Church.

V. László, I. Mátyás és II. Lajos magyar királyok horoszkópjai

In the present article I examine the extant horoscopes of three kings of Hungary, Ladislaus the Posthumous (1440–1457), his successor, Matthias Corvinus (1458–1490), and Louis II (1516–1526). Several of these horoscopes were little used by or completely unknown to modern historians, and a systematic treatment of them was a desiderata in the Hungarian scholarship for a long time. Although when examining sixteenth-century geniture collections the exact source and transmission history of a single horoscope is often difficult to reconstruct, in some cases the source of nativity horoscopes can be traced back from Johannes Kepler through Paul Eber, Georg Joachim Rheticus, Philipp Melanchthon and Johannes Schöner to Johannes Regiomontanus and Georg von Peuerbach.

Johannes Kepler and his making of the Rudolphine Tables

This Article is about the many complicated tasks that one mathematician had to carry out, and the barriers he had to overcome in order to publish one very important book in the history of applied mathematics.

Cell scientist to watch – Verena Ruprecht

ABSTRACT Verena Ruprecht received her PhD in Biophysics from the Johannes Kepler University in 2010 for her work on developing single-molecule super-resolution imaging tools in the lab of Gerhard Schütz. Following a research visit in Didier Marguet's lab at the Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy (CIML) in France, she moved to the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) in Austria for a postdoc, working jointly with Carl-Philipp Heisenberg and Michael Sixt. There, she discovered a unique amoeboid cell migration mode in early zebrafish embryos, termed stable-bleb migration. Verena started her independent laboratory at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, Spain, in September 2016. Her group combines genetic and biophysical methods with multi-scale imaging and mathematical modelling to study cellular dynamics in embryo development. In 2020, Verena was selected as an EMBO Young Investigator and in the same year awarded an HFSP Young Investigator Grant for a collaborative project to study the biophysics of zebrafish fertilization.