Vol. 40, No.3, July 2011
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In Memoriam
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Notes from the Inside
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A National Defense
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The Weisshorn, 1861 – 2011
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Memorial Service for Roger Hahn
A campus memorial service for Roger Hahn, longtime HSS member and friend of the Society, will be held at the Men's Faculty Club on the University of California, Berkeley campus on Sunday, 25 Sept 2011 at 3PM, PDT. A notice of Roger's death will appear in a future Newsletter.
Marjorie K. Webster
(9 June 1915—8 May 2011)
Marjorie (Madge) Kelly Webster, age 95, died on 8 May 2011 in Santa Barbara, California. Her lifetime of intellectual pursuits began during college, when she spent a year at Pueblo Santo Domingo in New Mexico working with Native American schoolchildren and exploring archeological sites of the local tribes. She completed her degree at Sarah Lawrence College and attended the University of California at Berkeley.
During World War II, Mrs. Webster worked for Douglas Aircraft Company. In 1953 she wed high school classmate Roderick Sheldon Webster, to whom she was married for forty-four years until he passed away in 1997. Early in their marriage, with Roderick's engineering background and Marjorie's interest in art and archeology, they discovered and nurtured a mutual lifelong passion for antique astronomical instruments through the Adler Planetarium. From 1962–1969 they served as volunteer caretakers of Adler's antique instrument collection. In 1970 they were named Co-Curators, still as volunteers, retiring from that position in 1991.
A detail of an armillary sphere in the Scientific Instrument Collection of the Adler Planetarium, Chicago, IL. Photo by Jeff Stvan.
In the intervening almost half a century, Roderick and Marjorie helped build the collection and prestige of the Planetarium in a number of ways. They were involved in acquiring more than half of all the current collections. In the words of Kenneth Nebenzahl, an expert and dealer in rare maps and books in Chicago and an Adler Board member, "their enthusiasm has made the crucial difference between this institution being a great, nationally respected sky show venue, and its position as a world-renowned science museum, one of the three most important in the world, along with Oxford and Florence." The Websters developed the Adler's library of astronomy and navigation, now one of the world's greatest collections of historic scientific instruments, rare books, maps, works on paper, and materials documenting our exploration and understanding of the universe. Their research in museums and private collections throughout North America and Europe resulted in a database of more than 15,000 scientific instrument makers over the past five centuries. The database is accessed daily by scholars and citizens around the globe.
In 1998, Marjorie and Roderick published the definitive Western Astrolabes on historical, scientific instruments of the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, Volume I, which inspired the creation of another volume on eastern astrolabes. Adler Vice President for Collections, Marvin Bolt, said that their "passion and vision have touched the lives and shaped the experiences of tens of millions of people who have walked through these doors and tens of millions who will visit the Adler in decades to come." The Websters were responsible for endowing the HSS's Derek J. DeSolla Price Prize, which recognizes the best article in Isis. After Rod's death, the Prize was renamed the Derek Price/Rod Webster Prize. She was a life member of the HSS.
(Adapted from the obituary published in the Evanston Review from May 26 to June 1, 2011)
Hans Wussing (15 October 1927—26 April 2011)
Hans Wussing, a distinguished historian of mathematics, passed away on 26 April 2011, at the age of 83. Wussing was director of the Karl Sudhoff Institute for History of Medicine and Science at the University of Leipzig, and professor of history of science at the University of Leipzig. He was born on October 15 in 1927 in Waldheim, in Saxonia. After studying mathematics and physics at the Leipzig University, he became a teacher there, from 1955 until 1957.
In 1957 he received his doctoral degree in mathematics at the Leipzig University. In 1966 he finished his Habilitation with an investigation on the history of group theory, "Die Genesis des abstrakten Gruppenbegriffes" (The genesis of the abstract group concept. A contribution to the history of the origin of abstract group theory, 1969; engl. transl. 1984 and 2007).
From 1957 onwards he belonged to the famous Karl Sudhoff Institute for the History of Medicine and Science at the University of Leipzig, first as an assistant, from 1977 until 1982 as director. From 1968 until 1992 he also was professor for history of science at the University of Leipzig. Wussing became the teacher and advisor of most historians of mathematics who ever were working in this field from the late 1950s until the end of the GDR. Following in the tradition of Gerhard Harig (1902–1966), Wussing was an important presence in the history of mathematics and history of science in the GDR, serving also as a representative in the international scientific community.
With his publications on the history of mathematics Wussing influenced the history of science and mathematics far beyond the borders of the GDR. He showed how important the reconstruction of ideas and theories could be to get a better understanding of the work of mathematicians from antiquity until the early 20th century. For historians of science, he underlined the importance of primary sources and of the strict analysis of the development of scientific ideas, theories and concepts. And he influenced the history of mathematics as a topic in teaching courses at the universities in the GDR between the 1970s and 1989. His book "Lectures on history of mathematics" became a role model for teaching courses in history of science. Hans Wussing was also active in various fields concerning international relationships and collaboration in history of science and mathematics. In 1993 he was awarded the Kenneth O. May Prize in the history of mathematics.
By Annette B. Vogt (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin)