Author: mahayri.2

Myah Mahayri – Dr. Alber

| mahayri.2

I was really surprised to learn that Pasteur never won a Nobel prize! In the movie of Pasteur and in Dr. Alber’s talk, we learned that Pasteur made anthrax and rabies vaccines, discovered the role of germs when it comes to diaereses, sterilization, and much more! Pasteur was a very driven man, which helped him in his life and work. His motivation didn’t have to do with money or fame but rather to be a successful scholar. According to Dr. Alber, Pasteur was a microbial physiologist who did most of his work by himself. Pasteur most famous experiment was when he used a straight-necked flask and heat it up; since microbes are in the air , they had an opportunity to get inside the flask and grow in the broth easily. He took a swan-necked flask and also heated up the broth; Since the flask’s neck was curved, microbes from the air couldn’t get in.

Pasteur growed up in Arbois, France. In Arbois, there is a museum that used to be the Pasteur house. Pasteur built a laboratory in his home and would use in the summers. He built fume hoods and Bunsen burners; the lab seemed like a “state of the art” lab at the time. I was interested in learning that Pasteur also tested the incubation of microbes and had an incubation room in his lab. I never knew that Pasteur studied milk, wine, and vinegar and why they ferment. He discovered that they can ferment with the elimination of air or aeration. Robert Koch was another microbial physiologist who worked on Bacillus anthracis, TB, and cholera. Since Koch was German, Pasteur was not a fan of him.

I was really glad to learn and talk about Pasteur because, in previous classes, I was just told about how he did the swan neck vs straight flask experiment. We would never go into detail of his life. I never knew about the sheep vs. anthrax experiment and his work with rabies.

Myah Mahayri- Dr. Dale Gnidovec

| mahayri.2

I really enjoined this talk because of Dr. Gnidovec’s enthusiasm; You could tell that he really cared about his work! Being able to hold fossilized teeth and shells was a fun experience! Also, seeing how Ohio’s fossils and minerals are in overseas museums is cool! The last thing I would expect to see in a London or Paris museum would be a mineral from Ohio! Also, being in a different setting than the usual classroom was nice! I never noticed some of the small details that Dr. Gnidovec pointed out in Orton hall.

Learning about Georges Cuvier was quite interesting in all my biology based classes, we only talk about how he didn’t believe in evolution; Learning about how he named a couple different fossils acutely surprised because I never would have associated Cuvier with fossils. I was also really interested in learning about Thomas Jefferson. It’s quite humoring to think that Jefferson warned Lewis and Clark about Ground Sloths and other already extinct animals. You would assume that since these two scientists found fossils of animals they have never seen before and start processing the idea of extinction.

 

Dr. Otter – Myah Mahayri

| mahayri.2

Dr. Otter talked to us about how some people worshiped the enlightenment period, while some people were worried that science would cause great destruction. For example, the famous novel “Frankenstein” was a way to convince people that science can go wrong.  Dr. Otter talked to us about all these different scientific texts throughout the centuries; this book is what lead up to Kuhn’s book.  One book that stood out was “Genesis and Development of a scientific Fact” by Ludwik Fleck. Fleck wrote this book in  1935, Thomas Kuhn wrote the forward to this book. He worked as a medical doctor and researched Syphilis. Since Ludwig was Jewish, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp. It’s awful to think about how so many Jewish scientists were imprisoned and killed just because of their religion. —-

“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” was explained to us; Dr. Otter told us that this book is cited a lot in modern day science. He asked what we thought was a paradigm shift, and we agreed that it a set of scientific thoughts. Kuhn talks about a number of examples of paradigms such as heliocentric cosmos, plate tectonics, the evolution of natural selection, and much more! I thought it was crazy how some people went extreme measures to prove that their paradigm was correct, such as the guy who thought HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and injected himself with HIV.

Normal Science is the “everyday work” of scientist but according to Kuhn, it was an anomaly. Anomalies are facts that don’t fit into established paradigms. They tend to throw existing paradigms into doubt. Some examples of anomalies are Bigfoot, UFOs, and fossils. When an accumulation of anomalies gather they tend to lead to the abandonment of the old paradigm and replace it with a new one. An example is during the 19th century and the discovery of fossils. The discovery of fossils leads to the paradigm shift that these giants lived long ago. Some people can’t accept the paradigm shift, causing a  never-ending battle between the old paradigm and a new paradigm. Kuhn argued that the paradigm is not perfect. People Scientists don’t just follow paradigms because they believe its true. They are emotional, socially, and financially connected to them. Kuhn also said the paradigms are incommensurable. You cannot believe two at the same time! When a paradigm dies, the world view of it dies too.

 

 

Myah Mahayri – Dr. Mathur

| mahayri.2

I thought it was really cool that Dr. Mathur got the opportunity to meet Dr. Stephen Hawking and worked with a college of Hawking! Fr. Mathur talked about how gravity affects a different kind of star and that a black hole is a collapsed star.

Hawking wrote a thesis on Hawking radiation in 1974. Hawking radiation is the electromagnetic radiation that is emitted by the black holes. Hawking also wrote a thesis in 1975 about a black hole information paradox; This is what made Hawking famous. Each star has different information in it and hawking questioned about what would happen when the star collapses. He said that the information in this said star is still there, but it eventually disappears in the black hole.

If we were able to back in time to look at the universe, we would see the universe as one point; only space but no time. The Hartle-Hawking wave function says that before the big bang, there was no time. Hawking and Hartle claim that the universe was a singularity before the big bang.

It was asked if the universe will keep expanding and Dr, Mathur explained that eventually, the universe will go through a “Big Crunch”, which will start a new big bang.  Dr. Mathus also talked about how previous big bangs and big crunches might have happened but since the information from the stars disappears with black holes, we could never know if we’re in a cycle.   I was surprised to find out that we know nothing about dark energy and dark matter!

Myah Mahayri- Dr. Goldish

| mahayri.2

I really enjoyed how the speaker started off by reading out of a book; I was surprised how the book and Dr. Goldish talked about religion and science. As Dr. Goldish, said there has always been a disagreement between “the church and science”. Even Today, we have people who are anti-evolution and how they refuse to get vaccines because it’s against God’s will.

Nicolaus Copernicus took the idea that the sun was in the center of our solar system, not the Earth. Dr. Goldish told us that Copernicus and the Church didn’t have a problem because Copernicus was a priest and the Pope asked him to research this subject; The pope wanted to reform the calendar and that’s why Nicolaus Copernicus took the ancient idea that the sun was in the center and applied math and science to it. Epicycles are when the planet stop at a random place, makes a circle and goes back on track. It does this because as the speaker put it, “we don’t know”. Copernicus tries to shed some light on this issue; He tells everyone that the Earth is part of the solar system and the sun is in the center of the system. The pope urges him to publish his theory. The speaker told us this story about Nicolaus Copernicus because he wanted to prove his point that religion and science didn’t go to war.

The true story of Gallio is a somewhat peaceful one, too. there wasn’t a  war between him and the Church as everyone thinks. Gallio takes a military grade spyglass and uses it to look up into the sky. Gallio knew the pope and tells him about his ideas and write his book. In his book, Gallio wrote about the Pope in a bad way, which causes him to get angry. Later in his life, he writes a letter to a duchess, insulting the church. He says that the church should be more open-minded and not to take the bible literally but figuratively. He was put on house arrest and told not to publish his idea. He wasn’t killed by the church, as people think.

Newton is one the great genius of all time, according to Dr. Goldish. When Newton died, only a few people knew that he studied both science and religion. His writing about the church and science didn’t get published but passed on in the family. Nobody wants these paper because he was the “hero of the enlightenment”, with these papers, it shows that Newton was never against the Church. He was supposed to be the “no religion” man but he wasn’t. He worked on religious questions and believed that God was shedding light on him with science and the second coming of Christ was coming soon. In summary, Newton was never against God or the Church.

After this talk, I was reminded not believe everything I read. All the major scientists I learned about while growing up didn’t actually have wars with the Church. They may have been conflicts but nobody was killed over there ideas. Most of the scientists were religious and science was combined. Around the 1700s, a book came out saying that the Abrahamic religion was false. So during this time, radical ideas came out about science and religion

Myah Mahayri – Dr. Caroline Breitenberger

| mahayri.2

Margaret Cavendish was a philosopher and writer that wrote about naturalism. She is noted to be the first women to be invited to attend a royal society meeting; which caused a scandal.

Another famous woman was Caroline Herschel. Since she contracted typhus, she was only four feet tall, so her parents assumed she wouldn’t marry, giving her the chance to move to England with her brother. She picked up a casual hobby of building telescopes, developed a mathematical approach to astronomy, and discovering new nebulae, stars clusters, and eight comets.

Mary Anning was a fossil hunter who lived in England. While growing up, her family relied upon selling fossils to be able to support themselves. Anning discovered ichthyosaurs.  Her finding was misattributed to men who bought her finding off her. Seeing pictures of where Anning discovered fossils and where she is buried makes me excited to go see it myself!

Elise Widdowson was a dietitian during WWII. She self-experimented where she ate nothing but bread, cabbage, and potatoes for three months to prove that people can survive on that during the war. She was invited to join the royal society.

Dorothy Hodgkin was an X-ray crystallographer. She solved the structure of penicillin, vitamin B12, and insulin. She won a noble prize and was invited into the royal society. I really enjoyed hearing about her she said that its okay to be frustrated with science. Rosalind Franklin was another X-ray crystallographer who worked on DNA with Crick and Waston.

Anne McLaren was interested in learning how an embryo developed. She was one of the scientists that discovered IVF.

Emilie du Chatelet studied math and physics; she translated Newton’s Principia into French. Voltaire published her translation after her death.

Marie-Ann Lavoisier was the wife of Antoine Lavoisier. She helped explain all the details of his laboratory work to other. She also translated scientific documents into French. After the death of her husband, she found all of her husband’s work and saved it before it was burned.

Maire Curie was the first women to receive two Nobel prizes and the first women professor at Sorbonne. Curie is credited with explaining radioactivity. Her daughter, Irene, followed her mother’s footsteps and synthesized new radioisotopes; She also won a Nobel prize.

There are so few women in science because they were working under a man, as a translator or “note-taker”.  This wasn’t seen as science so their work was somewhat ignored.  They were also excluded from labs and professional spaces because they weren’t males.

Myah Mahayri – Dr. Cogan

| mahayri.2

An Englishman, Joseph Priestly, and a Frenchman, Antoine Lavoisier, help strike up ideas during the enlightenment era.  During his presentation. Dr. Cogan asked us to really think about air, which made me think that these were the questions these scientists asked themselves. As a child, we thought that air is was made up “stuff” such as oxygen and that it’s something that is essential to life. At the time of these scientists, the air was thought to a single substance that had no fixed volume, could rise up, and that it kept man and mice alive. Priestly, in 1774, kept mice and had them breath different types of air to see how to would affect them; he was the first one to connect the idea that plants help keep air in a closed compartment. He “discovered” Oxygen.

The start of the enlightenment started with Sir Isaac Newton in 1687 and ended around 1789 when the French revolution started. The point of the enlightenment was to show how God worked with science. The ethos of the Enlightenment was the illumination of “truth”, democracy and science a new path, reclaim misrule of the Church and Crown ( they both used myths to place fear in people about the world), and individual freedom. The reality of the enlightenment put hope, skepticism, and insecurity in people. It also showed the true division between the wealthy and lower class. This caused both to mix their emotions with alcohol, causing “mob” like groups between the two.

England and France were both going through the Enlightenment era but both were doing different things. The English were more liberal and dissenting views were highly encouraged. There was no discrimination on social class ( but you had to pay a membership fee, so there was slight discrimination on the lower class), and people got to work in their own homes and carry out experiments, so literally, anyone could do it. The French, on the other hand, were being paid by their king to carry out experiments. The problem was that it was less subjective, you had to accepted into the French Academy.

Priestly was born in 1733 and raised by an aunt. He was expected to be a minister but his aunt was very supportive of his education, which allowed him to study history, Religion, and Science. When Priestly almost died from TB, he felt abandoned by God and believed that bad air caused his illness. After graduating from college, he becomes a minister. His parishioners didn’t like him because of his stutter and they believed he was crazy. After dealing with his stutter, he becomes a  teacher in 1761. He ends up meeting Ben Franklin in London; He was inspired by Franklin and writes publish a book about electricity, These caught the attention of the royal academy and accepted into the royal academy. The phlogiston theory was accepted around the same time as gravity was. It was believed that all bodies, Earth, and Air contained phlogiston. Priestly did experiments with “fixed Air” which he obtained from the vats of fermenting beer. That air passed through water, creating soda water. One night, lunar men burned and attacked his home. He was chased out of the U.K and moved to America.

Lavoisier was born in 1743 and raised by a wealthy family. He went to college to become a lawyer but concerned with science and the public good. He studies chemistry and elected into the French Academy and joins the General Farm, tax collecting company; during the French revolution, he was not in favor with the common people. Lavoisier and Priestly met at a dinner party. Lavoisier steals Priestly’s ideas and experiments them. In these experiments, he named oxygen, established a chemical nomenclature and talked about how living things used oxygen to breathe. During the French Revolution, Lavoisier took a  supportive role. He was selling un-pure gun powder to other nations. He stayed in Paris and is “trusted” by common Frenchman. Months later, he was beheaded by common Frenchman.

Myah Mahayri – Elisabeth Root

| mahayri.2

Dr. John Snow is the father modern epidemiology and geography of health. During an outbreak of Cholera, Dr. Snow wanted to understand why and how it was spreading.  The speaker talked about the book “The Ghost Map” and how it’s a retelling story on Dr. Snow and his research.

In London, there was a deadly outbreak of Cholera in 1854. People thought that it was caught by the air. Dr. Snow believed that it was spared by microorganisms in water, which we know is true today. People disagreed with Snow because they couldn’t understand that they couldn’t see the germs. The speaker was sure to mention that Dr. Snow wasn’t the one who came up with the Germ theory but helped start it. Snow is known for surveying neighborhoods and tied each point of the map to water wells and deaths caused by Cholera. For example, a workhouse, which had a private well, only had five deaths; Snow said that their water was clean since they didn’t share the well.

I really enjoined when Root talked about breakthroughs in medicine and how culture is in medicine. She also mentioned her work on vaccines.  Root also talked about Landscape genetics and how it brought medicine and geography together. One of her studies dealt with RSV-B over the course 5 years. What she found out is that the outbreak of RSV was caused by people living in the city and once they moved into the rural areas. The RSV would alter itself to be able to survive the rural area, allowing to survive in urban and rural areas; It showed that genes can evolve to survive.

The future of medical Geography has a bright future, thanks to Dr. Snow.

Myah Mahayri-Dr. Carol Anelli

| mahayri.2

Darwin’s theory was and still is very important; it has taken over many fields, not just biology. Before Darwin, Plato thought that every organism had an essence created by God. These essences cannot be changed Yet, Aristotle thought there was a hierarchy where humans were on top and simple cells were on the bottom. During the 18th century, Hutton gave us the rock cycle, explain erosion and deposition; he also said that the earth was old but his statement conflicted with the Bible, which angered people. During the 19th century, Cuvier and Brongniart were able to better understand the layers of the Earth. This helped explain where fossils came from and what life like was life before. John Ray published “Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation”, explaining how species were fixed and constant from creation. He argued that the organisms were created by God so they had to be perfect but they could never go extinct. Paley published ” Natural Theology”; his book was inspired by Ray’s book. Paley believed that God’s creatures were adapted perfectly. All these views had an impact on Darwin and his ideas.

Darwin was raised in a not so religious household; his father was a non-believer but a religious mother. Darwin was brought up from a wealthy family, he was able to complete his degree at Cambridge. He married his first cousin, Emma and had ten children with her. Out of the ten, seven survived. Darwin seemed to care for his family, his autobiography and letter to his family shows this to be true. Emma and Darwin both treated each other with utmost respect; they supported one another greatly. Even in the movie, Darwin was shown to care deeply for Annie and was heartbroken when she passed away. The movie also portrayed that Darwin finally took the time to write about his theory for Emma and his children.

Darwin was described to be observant and asked himself questions. When he was 21 years old, Darwin was able to travel and gain biological knowledge which lasted 5 years. He traveled to South America and Ocean Islands, most famously the Galapagos Island. Not long after his trip, Darwin formulated his theory but he waits twenty years to publish his new theory. Other than the “Origin of Species”, Darwin published over 25 books and papers.

in 1859, Darwin finally published “Origin of Species”. In this book, Darwin talked about Malthusian principles, natural selection, and modification. The book, of course, had some critic. People wondered where  God was in his theory, they were confused about what natural selection was, and the blending of inheritance. Of course, these critics weren’t able to stop Darwin and how was able to change our thoughts on Evolution!