Dr. Weisenberger Reflection

On Tuesday, January 14, Dr. Jan Weisenberger discussed some notable OSU discoveries/people with our class. She started with the very beginning, as in, the first several faculty that worked for the University and how Ohio State came about. Something I found particularly interesting was the conflicting political opinions that turned an agricultural and mechanical school into the diverse spectrum of courses we have available now. It is also interesting to think that back in 1870, there weren’t so many scientific discoveries as there are now, so much of the teaching was trying to learn new things, which was the precedence for our research institution today.

During this talk, I liked how she linked Mendenhall’s gravimeter to the research being conducted today by one of our current faculty members, who is working on the same problem relative to the earth’s rotation. In class, a few others felt this was a very unique way to start and finish the 150 years of discoveries project. I also found the detail of the Antarctica expedition of all women to be rather intriguing – it seemed very ahead of its time! This gave us an idea to focus on the “forgotten women” of Ohio State’s scientific past. I learned a lot during this presentation and I can’t wait to do more research on this topic!

One thought on “Dr. Weisenberger Reflection

  1. That’s great. I think you hit on an interesting point from Dr Weisenbergers talk Had there not been that political fight would OSU had never diversified and remained a more or less agricultural and mechanical school or was it inevitable that it would change to something more like it is today?

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