Seb Falk

@sebfalk.com

10612 Followers 609 Following

Historian of science || Admissions Tutor at Girton College, University of Cambridge || Singer, sailor, runner, father || "Always generous" – The New Yorker

Another photo of the same train station as before, with a white rose motif in the iron arches
Beautiful columns, arches and curved platforms of (can you guess?)
Back to the Future of Wayfinding: Pre-modern astro-navigation in the GPS age New technologies in the 20th century challenged the need for navigators to look to the stars. The rapid development of radio direction-finding, beam and hyperbolic systems, and finally satellite navigation, promised to make old methods redundant. An unfathomable global system of transmitters and receivers would replace skills in taking sightings and computing with brass and paper tools; the signals from atomic clocks would eclipse the long-fixed shapes of the constellations.
Ceilidh lines in the National Museum of Scotland
Beautiful dog Ridley (Lab/German Shepherd/Rottweiler cross) wearing a party hat
Girton College in the morning sun, with slanting light through the trees, a slight mist, and the tower in the background
Big bright yellow y-fronts
Artist's portrait of King Harold II, from a Wills cigarette card, c1898. With blond beard, red cloak and fairytale crown. Used on a Guardian web story with caption "Photograph: incamerastock/Alamy"
Lord Smith in Cambridge PhD gown with scarlet facings and doctoral bonnet, parading outside the Cambridge Senate-House
Headline from the Guardian app: "Countries that do not embrace AI could be left behind, says OpenAI’s George Osborne", accompanied by photo of sidelit Osborne mid-speech.
Headline: " This article is more than 17 years old Plans for 20 new university towns This article is more than 17 years old Campuses are to be set up over the next six years at a cost of £150m, with many located in areas suffering high levels of unemployment"
Sign: "As a Courtesy to the Next Passenger May We Suggest that You Use Your Towel to Wipe Off Water Basin. Thank You!"
Print article in the newspaper: "Only Elon Musk can bring me to Ryanair's defence"
Collage of four photos of a goldfinch perched on various teasels and just taking off
Here's what it looked like on my return to work this morning - beautiful red brick gabled building of Girton's Hall, with a dusting of snow on the grass in front.
Church in the morning sunlight
Reed beds with sun setting behind
Volvelle demonstrating magnetic variation
Page of old book with calendar featuring commentary in Italian on the nativity – Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem
Durham's motte & bailey castle, much embellished up to the 19th century
Brief article in Daily Telegraph - "Chaucer's elvish mystery was 900-year-old typo
Girton Fellows solve a 130-year-old Chaucerian literary mystery
Cricket at Lord's
View of the pitch at Lord's
Photo of printed newspaper. Article can be read online via https://tinyurl.com/falk-TLS-flight
Seb standing in front of a blown up manuscript page with numbers on it
Scene of the Last Judgement painted on oak, in a church
An adult badger!
Moose close up
App screenshot with text of session abstract about Active Galactic Nuclei
View out of aeroplane window – snowy mountains of Greenland
Seb in Heathrow departures, with a British Airways plane visible out the window behind
Book review screenshot: In The Light Ages, Seb Falk weaves a richly textured tapestry of medieval science, and a surprising one to boot, revealing the efforts of John Westwyk (d. before 1401), a Benedictine monk. With narrative brio, the author pulls together diverse threads, covering topics from simple arithmetic to spherical trigonometry; from astronomy and medicine to astrology, magic, and bestiaries; from transcultural knowledge production to the Crusades; from English monastic life to the vibrant university culture of Oxford and the buzzing streets of London. The story starts with a Middle English treatise, the Equatorie of the Planetis, which describes the construction and use of an astronomical instrument called the equatorium. Falk sees in its author, John Westwyk, “the perfect guide to the story of medieval science” (11), and so we first follow this monk from his presumed birthplace of Westwick (also known as Gorham) to the nearby abbey of St. Albans. He took his vows in the 1370s and may have attended the University of Oxford—at least, his advanced astronomical learning suggests as much. The first definitive record of his life is from about 1379, when Westwyk copied and annotated two astronomical treatises by Richard of Wallingford. By 1380, Westwyk had left the abbey for Tynemouth Priory, and he joined Henry Despenser’s crusade in Flanders in 1383. We have no further records until 1393, when he wrote the Equatorie in London. Falk impressively masters the feat of reconstructing a captivating story from very few sources and using it as a vehicle to transport us into the world of medieval science.
Collage image of growing avocado plant, with an astrolabe behind
Article in The Times: "Leonardo da Vinci's DNA may hide the code for genius." Available online here: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/leonardo-da-vinci-dna-tests-explained-8rcm8kwh7
Illustration from Charlie Mackesy, "The Boy, the mole, the fox and the Horse". Cartoon with line drawing of a boy riding a horse and a fox alongside, on the ground. Viewed from behind. Handwritten text: '"What is the bravest thing you've ever said?" asked the boy. "Help," said the horse.'
Seb in a hammock with a book and pencil. Roses growing in the background.
Lots of people running, with pitches in the foreground and trees behind
Manuscript ink painting of an elephant, from London, British Library Cotton MS Nero D.I f. 169v
Web screengrab: Is red sky at night really sailor’s delight? CrowdScience You may have grown up hearing the saying “red sky at night, sailor’s delight, red sky in morning, sailor’s warning” - or maybe a variation of it. CrowdScience listener Alison, who sees many dazzling red skies from her home in the Yukon, Canada, certainly did. And now she wonders if the saying is a sensible prediction of coming weather or just another old wives’ tale. Alison and presenter Anand Jagatia run a little experiment, getting up at the crack of dawn and staying up until dusk for 5 days to record if the sunset and sunrise can predict their local weather. While we wait for the results, we track this weather proverb back to its ancient roots to find out how important it may have been to the people without satellites or even thermometers to guide them. We also tap into the expertise of modern-day weather predictors, meteorologists. What are the atmospheric pressure systems that cause red skies, and how do they influence the weather globally? And what exceptions to the rules might turn a trusty old proverb on its head?
Tweet: JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others
Medieval manuscript painting of an abbot in a black habit with crozier and mitre, pointing at a clock in an elaborate housing, with another dial-like circle below. Some words are visible to the right, including "horologia" (Latin for clocks)
Grey plant pot with a single stem and bud about 4cm long, with a telephone and replica astrolabe in the background
Seb, dressed as the London Gherkin building, standing in front of Kings College Chapel
Abstract From Antiquity onwards, the need to keep mines dry has given rise to the development of water-raising machines. In early modern Europe a series of technological innovations, such as suction-lift pumps, were pioneered underground. Mines were an ideal site for hydraulic experimentation for four reasons: the incentive to dig deeper, the availability of capital, the presence of a skilled workforce, and the cost of labour. The new hydraulic technologies developed in mines were deployed in the water supply systems of many European cities, abbeys, and courts, as illustrated by the example of the Free Imperial City of Augsburg, the career of Pilgram Marpeck, and the Falkenstein mine. Given the significance of this technological transfer and the sheer mass of water raised out of pits, which far exceeded the mass of ore extracted, this article makes the case for the technological and environmental significance of the extraction of water from early modern mines.
Lambeth Palace, gardens, the River Thames and skyscrapers
Multifolding leaflet on a train seat – it's longer than the width of two seats!
15th-century manuscript page (Lambeth Palace Library MS 878, f.183r) with circles and numbers and accompanying explanations in Latin
Medieval/baroque cathedral nave with palms just visible around the chancel
Blackboard with "piatto del giorno / dishes of the day – spaghetti alla Carbonara, €14. 50% surcharge applies for Trump voters"
Two boys holding armfuls of old plastic bottles, standing in front of a sign in Italian about how long things take to decay
Golden baroque cathedral against a blue sky
Floodlit white baroque building
Inside a ruined basilica with Norman rose window
Boy on top of climbing frame with ruined church in the background
Headless winged bronze statue