Who wrote the first abstract in a scientific journal article?
I have often wondered how we came to the modern scientific article. One question that I had that I researched, but was unable to turn up anything on was who started the boldface and italics in the reference format for journal volume number and journal name (varies by discipline and by journal). One question that […]
Review in Progress in Physical Geography
Progress in Physical Geography has just published a review written by Dr. Paul Williams (Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading). In summary, I highly recommend this book. The author is well qualified, being both an expe- rienced leader of communications workshops and an award-winning journal editor. The writ- ing is clear (as you […]
History of the Scientific Article
I just finished reading a fascinating book, if you are interested in the history of how scientific literature came to be. It’s called Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present by Gross, Harmon, and Reidy. As the book describes, previous studies of the literature have focused on specific periods, regions, […]
Leonard Cohen on songwriting
Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about the similarities between being a musical performer and being a scientist. I was listening to Leonard Cohen on my way to work the other day, and I was reminded of an interview where he discussed his songwriting process in more depth than you normally hear from an […]
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? 10,000 Hours
Slate.com has had an interesting series of articles (two of them are here and here) about the creativity originating from working in pairs: think Lennon and McCartney, Joel and Ethan Cohen, Richards and Jagger. In the second installment, Joshua Wolf Shenk said about the two Beatles: The nature of John and Paul’s intimacy evolved over […]
