Interesting Links for 16-04-2024

[andrewducker]

1. "10 Things I Didn't Know About Neil Gaiman Before I Wrote a Book About Neil Gaiman"

(tags:neilgaiman )

2. The Great Nazi science purge of 1933

(tags:Jews science Germany mathematics USA history )

3. What Canadian doctors say about the Cass review questioning puberty blockers for transgender youth

(tags:transgender bigotry Canada UK healthcare LGBT )

4. Making a Chinese chess board

(tags:video china chess craftwork impressive )

5. What it was like being married to Tolstoy (or a great many other men throughout history)

(tags:women history patriarchy )

6. Can you decipher the Cosmic Call message?

(tags:mathematics space communication )

Comments

[cmcmck]

2.

Which included this:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/

Does it sound at all familiar?

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. Definitely.

2)

[calimac]

Very interesting, though marred by a lot of typos (1993 for 1933, etc.). Made me look up Planck and Hilbert, who stayed in Germany, for what happened to them. They were both retired and able to live quietly, though they complained bitterly about what was going on. Wikipedia tells a story of how Hilbert was asked by Bernhard Rust, the Nazis' truly insane education minister, 'whether "the Mathematical Institute really suffered so much because of the departure of the Jews." Hilbert replied, "Suffered? It doesn't exist any longer, does it?"'

This led me to discover someone you don't hear about, a villain of the piece: Johannes Stark. Here was a respected physicist - Nobel laureate and the guy who originally encouraged Einstein to write on relativity - who was also an enthusiastic Nazi. (When we think of physicists in Nazi Germany, we usually think of Heisenberg. But Heisenberg was never an enthusiastic Nazi. Stark was.) He signed his letters "Heil Hitler" and wrote an entire book defending the expulsion of Jews from science. He was convicted after the war of major offense but his prison sentence was suspended.

5.

[channelpenguin]

Yup. Every great artist / scientist / business whizz needs a wife to keep life going while they do their thing. Generally a shit deal for the wife. sigh.