Behind the curve: a comparison of historical sources for the Carnegie curve of the global atmospheric electric circuit

The “Carnegie curve” describes the diurnal variation of the global atmospheric electric circuit. It was originally found from atmospheric electric potential gradient (PG) measurements made on the Carnegie, effectively a floating atmospheric electrical observatory, which undertook global cruises between 1915 and 1929. These measurements confirmed that the single diurnal cycle PG variation, previously obtained in both polar regions, was global in extent. The averaged diurnal PG variation, represented by derived harmonic fits, provides a characteristic variation known as the “Carnegie curve”, against which modern measurements are still compared. The ocean air PG measurements were extensively described in reports of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW) but widely used secondary sources of the Carnegie curve contain small differences, arising through approximations and transcription errors. Investigations using the historical CIW data show that the original harmonic fit coefficients are reproducible. Despite the inconsistencies, the secondary sources nevertheless mostly yield diurnal variations which fall within the variability of the original historical data.

Jean Charlot and the Mexican Mural Renaissance

That the Mexican mural renaissance is understudied is clear from the fact than not one of its artists has been the subject of a scholarly biography. Moreover, the movement as a whole has usually been viewed through nationalist prejudices and partisan interpretations. A current reevaluation uses the wedge of several hitherto marginalized artists who figure more prominently in documents and chronology than in popular history. Among them, Jean Charlot can be placed securely at the beginning of several major developments, which were continuations of his work in France. At the open air art school of Coyoacán, he helped the young teachers move from impressionism to a geometry-based postimpressionism more appropriate for mural composition. He introduced woodcut, which he had practiced in France and which became the print medium of choice for generations of Mexican artists. His first mural, The Massacre in the Main Temple, was important for its successful use of fresco—immediately adopted as the preferred medium by other muralists—and its dynamic geometric composition, an alternative to Diego Rivera’s static classicism in Creation. Charlot further broadened the thematic and stylistic options of the movement in a series of small oils and in the first studies of the indigenous nude. He continued to nourish his colleagues with the results of his work as an archeological draughtsman at the Chichen Itza expedition of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC. Charlot also participated in the notable collaboration between artists and writers in 1920s Mexico. Along with Manuel Maples Arce, he was on the two-man Direction Committee of the estridentista movement, illustrating books of poetry and joining group exhibitions. His writings are among the earliest discussions of contemporary Mexican art—publicizing the movement in Europe and the United States—and continue to influence interpretation today. His collections of documents and interviews, as well as his personal experience, became the invaluable basis of books like his The Mexican Mural Renaissance, 1920–1925 and numerous articles in several languages. His latest bibliography is 173 pages long. Charlot fulfilled the unique role of insider-outsider, participant-observer, in the Mexican mural renaissance.

DIVISION F COMMISSION 53: EXTRASOLAR PLANETS

The IAU Working Group on Extrasolar Planets (WGESP) was created by the Executive Council as a Working Group of Division III. This decision took place in June 1999, that is only 7 years after the discovery of planets around the pulsar PSR B1257+12 and 4 years after the discovery of 51 Peg b. This working group was renewed for 3 years at the General Assembly in 2003 in Sydney, Australia. It was chaired by Alan Boss from Carnegie Institution of Washington. The WGESP members were Paul Butler, William Hubbard, Philip Ianna, Martin Kürster, Jack Lissauer, Michel Mayor, Karen Meech, Francois Mignard, Alan Penny, Andreas Quirrenbach, Jill Tarter, and Alfred Vidal-Madjar.

Physics, Emotion, and the Scientific Self: Merle Tuve’s Cold War

This essay brings together and builds upon histories of cold war American science and studies of objectivity, scientific personae, and the self by exploring the physicist Merle A. Tuve‘s career in the late 1940s and 1950s as a history of selfhood and the emotional dimensions of scientific identity. As director of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington after World War II, Tuve followed a convoluted path through the institutions, politics, identities, and sensibilities of science in the cold war, and he struggled to preserve a sense of meaning and identity centered on the humanistic and aesthetic possibilities of scientific inquiry in an era of rapidly growing instrumentalism. His predicament highlights not just the political and institutional shifts within postwar science, but also the intricate entanglements between feeling, selfhood, and the cold war order.

1914: La Carnegie Institution of Washington ingresa al campo maya

El año de 1914 fue testigo del comienzo de la primera guerra mundial. En menor grado tuvo consecuencias en la historia de las investigaciones en el campo maya, y fue seguramente decisivo en la vida de Sylvanus G. Morley. Trivialidades han cambiado el curso de la historia, y en un mucho más humilde campo, se puede decir que una trivialidad inició una corriente de acontecimientos que llevó a la Carnegie Institution of Washington dentro de las caudalosas aguas de la investigación maya. Charles P. Bowditch, un rico bostoniano con un gran interés en el calendario maya, fue uno de los principales suscriptores para un subsidio que costeara el trabajo del Peabody Museurn Harvard University en el área maya, y casi únicamente gracias a su generosa intervención personal, la biblioteca del Museo logró preeminencia en el campo Mesoamericano. Verdadero mecenas de la investigación maya, era además un hombre imperioso. La publicación hecha por el Peabody Museum de los informes de Maler sobre Piedras Negras y Yaxchilán en 1901 y 1903, fue seguida casi inmediatamente de los comentarios de los textos jeroglíficos que los ilustraban, y esta publicación fue costeada por Bowditch.

The Beginning of “Free Money” Ideology in American Universities: Charles W. Eliot at Harvard, 1869–1909

During the period between 1870 and 1920, the gross national product of the United States increased more than sixfold, as revolutions in transportation, communications, and manufacturing sparked growth in the economy. Large industrial corporations emerged, and their growing power presented grave challenges for social policy, while their wealth enriched an unprecedented number of millionaires and multi-millionaires, whose contributions prompted an enormous increase in philanthropy across the nation. In particular, Andrew Carnegie sold his steel companies for $480,000,000 in 1901 and founded the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1902, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1905, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911. Even more prominent, oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, “the most famous American of his day,” devoted $447,000,000 to endowing the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in 1901, the General Education Board in 1903, the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial in 1918.