Esperanto and the Sciences

Some things never
change. That headline
could be current.

Virgil C. Dibble was not a scientist. When he wrote a letter to the magazine The Outlook, he was probably by the a salesman for a map publisher. He was, however, a fervent support of Esperanto, and so when the first Pan-American Scientific Congress took up the question of Esperanto, Dibble was not going to let the editor of The Outlook remain in the dark on this, especially as The Outlook had written about the congress.

The Outlook was, according to Wikipedia one of the leading news and opinion magazines of its day, beaten out (perhaps) only by The Independent and The Nation (of these three, only the Nation is still around). Dibble’s piece was not one of their bits of news and essays, but instead was in a section (at the back of the issue) under the heading of “Public Opinion,” appearing on the fourth and final full page of that section in the June 12, 1909 issue. It’s a letter to the editor. The only letter after that is on how English place and family names retain spellings that are no longer indicative of their pronunciation. After that it’s advertisements, with a charming advertisement for Porosknit summer underwear two pages later (a dollar for a summer-weight union suit). (Lest you think it’s all about forgotten products, the bottom of the page after Dibble’s letter contains advertisement for Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce and Borden’s evaporated milk).

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Esperanto at the International Geographical Congress

Basic journalism, guys:
when, where, and who?

For the first couple decades of the twentieth century there seemed to be an expectation that Esperanto would become the international language of the scientific community, especially as this was promoted by such notable scientists as Wilhelm Ostwald and Sir William Ramsay (each of whom went on to receive Nobel Prizes in Chemistry). Ostwald later favored Ido, and later dropped the whole idea of an international language. I’m not sure about Ramsay, though at one point he moved to table a vote on Esperanto.

A new history of the use of language in the scientific community, Scientific Babel; How Science Was Done Before and after Global English, by Michael D. Gordin, has just been released by the University of Chicago Press. Gordin does look at early adoption of Esperanto by the scientific community, which never went quite so far as many predicted. One of the problems (from the point of view of advocates of Esperanto) is that just as the topic was getting off the ground, it morphed from “should Esperanto be the international language of science?” to “should Esperanto or Ido be the international language of science?” After the late 1907 introduction of Ido, the Ido-schism quickly made itself felt in every aspect of the Esperanto movement.

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The Esperantist Physics Professor at Chicago

I wanted a picture of
Professor Mann. No luck.

In the early twentieth century, one of the major figures of the American Esperanto movement was Benjamin Pickman Mann (who typically went by B. Pickman Mann). He was an entomologist who worked at the Department of Agriculture (along with Karl Kellerman), and formed part of the group of Esperantists at the Department of Agriculture. His father was the prominent American educator, Horace Mann. But neither of them are related to the Professor Mann of the University of Chicago mentioned in the New-York Tribune on April 10, 1907. It’s a common name, and though Professor Mann’s ancestry does go back to New England, the lineages never seem to converge.

Professors in the Esperanto movement at the beginning of the twentieth century seemed to be pretty well divided between professors of language (which seems obvious) and professors of science (whose interest probably derived from having to slough through journals in a variety of languages—that was Wilhelm Ostwald’s claim). And so we’ve seen chemists, biologists, and now it’s time to add a physicist. Professor Mann was not a professor of languages, but was Charles Riborg Mann, who in 1907 was an associate professor of physics at the University of Chicago. As he was promoted to associate professor in that year, in April, he might have still been an assistant professor.

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Women Scientists Start Esperanto Group

Margaret Henderson
Bacteriologist.
Esperantist.

The April 5, 1906 San Francisco Call article on an Esperanto group at the University of California, Berkeley, says more the role of women in science in the early twentieth century than it intends to, and less about the Esperanto group than I’d prefer. The article tells us that the group included “a number of faculty people and others connected with the university,” but doesn’t give any hint as to how large that number is, or who the other people might be. It also gives short shrift to the accomplishments of one of the women involved.

The article also makes a whopper of an error, which I am leaving in place. Once, I’d call it a typographical error, and just quietly replace it, but as it occurs twice, it’s clear that it was the author’s intention, and so I’ll side with the writer for the Call, even though he or she is completely wrong. You’ll see.

The article is dwarfed by the picture of Margaret Henderson, which fills in between the headline and the text of the article. I wish they had had an image of Alice Robertson, since I was not able to find any images of her. She is somewhat overshadowed by a woman with nearly the same name, Alice Mary Robertson, who was born somewhat before our Esperantist and managed to outlive her. Alice Mary Robertson was the second woman to hold a seat in Congress (there are plenty of pictures of her). I’ll get to our Esperantist soon.

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A Chemist Promotes Esperanto

Wilhelm Ostwald

The early Esperanto movement had the support of many prominent figures of the scientific world, including the great German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. From 1905 to 1906 Professor Ostwald lectured at Harvard and Columbia. Judging from the statements made in the newspapers of the era, this kind of intentional exchange was rare, which isn’t a huge surprise for an era when traveling between Europe and the United States took a week or two.

Ostwald traveled on the SS. Blucher, which left Cuxhaven on September 21, 1905 and arrived in New York on October 2. Oswald made a series of visits to the United States, making less celebrated visits in 1903 and 1904. The shortest of these trips took a week, which made it impossible that any scientist would dash over to give a seminar on another continent and then dash back after.

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Esperanto at Harvard

The latest fad in Boston

The Congregationalist and Christian World paid scant attention to Esperanto, even though its place of publication, Boston, was something of a hotbed of early Esperanto activity during the time when it was published, during the early days of the twentieth century. However, when Harvard, which had been founded to train Congregationalist minsters, started an Esperanto group, maybe that’s what it took to get the attention of The Congregationalist. And so, on January 20, 1906, The Congregationalist and Christian World reported on Esperanto at Harvard University.

Harvard’s Esperanto group has an impressive forebear. While Wilhelm Ostwald did not found the Harvard Esperanto Society, as Ostwald visited Harvard the year before the group was founded, he did provide prize money for speeches in Esperanto. A March 21, 1906 article in the Harvard Crimson notes that the prizes will be “an Esperanto dictionary and Esperanto literature to the value of $5.” (Which seems strange because in March 1905, it was noted that the Ostwald prizes were worth $50.[1])

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Esperanto and the Advancement of Science

Who are you calling a crank?

Most of the articles I look at do not have bylines, as a result it’s often impossible to tell who wrote the article. The Washington Herald did not include a byline on its January 19, 1922 article on the “present status of international language,” but I was able to identify the writer anyway. The Herald abridged their article from the February 22, 1922 issue of Science (clearly there was no journalism embargo on this piece). The full article was the “Report of the Committee of an International Auxiliary Language Accepted by the Council at Toronto, December 29, 1921,” and the chair of the committee was Samuel W. Stratton.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science spent more than a decade wondering about the issue of an international language. In the 1910s, there were many letters to Science (the AAAS journal) on the inevitability of Esperanto in the sciences. Still, the real proof would have been when the journal was renamed Scienco and started publishing everything in Esperanto. That never happened. I doubt they even accepted a single paper in Esperanto.

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Happy Ether Day!

Happy Ether Day!

If it was Ether Day on this day in 1908, then it must be Ether Day today! I stumbled across one reference, but had a hard time finding any other, though I did find a few. On October 16, 1908, the Palestine Daily Herald, of Palestine, Texas, reported on it, as did Washington Times on October 16, 1913.

What is this happy holiday and how do we celebrate it? It’s the anniversary of the first successful use of anesthesia, first done in 1846. Wikipedia points out the the chemistry challenged that the specific compound in question is dimethyl ether (CH₃OCH₃), and that ethers are a whole class of chemical compounds.[1]

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How Telepathy Works (Or Doesn’t)

I see a picture of two men. One has a beard.

On August 29, 1903, the Deseret Evening News ran a somewhat long piece on (then) current studies on telepathy, viewing it as a controversy between Garret P. Serviss (not a professor, but a journalist, no matter what the Evening News said[1]) and William T. Stead (journalist, publisher, and Esperantist). Mr. Stead announced that there had been a transmission of messages by telepathy from Nottingham to London. Mr. Serviss was skeptical.

The article itself was written by H. Addington Bruce, yet another journalist. Judging from his list of publications, Mr. Bruce did not share Mr. Serviss’s skepticism (or at least saw that books on the subject would sell). For that matter, the article itself seems to assume it most likely that thoughts can be transferred by telepathy. At the time, there was the new experience of “the Marconi system of wireless telegraphy,“ if you could send those messages across the air without wires, why not thought itself?

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Advances in Medical Science — The Aura

Kilner said he saw this when looking
at a healthy man

The Washington Times reported on August 5, 1911 on the work of a New York physician who was attempting to add a contribution to the then-current theory of auras. This was the subject of a 1911 book by the British physician, Walter J. Kilner. Although auras have now been exiled to the metaphysical precincts, they were seen as a potential new diagnostic tool.

I don't really want to mock Dr. Francis Rebman, the subject of the article in the Times. He was working in the context of the best science of the day, although he might have approached his researches with just a tad more skepticism.

That, as we all know, didn’t happen. The article begins by suggesting that in the future doctors will ask after their patients’ auras. If my doctor asked me about my aura, I’d be finding another doctor.

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A New Source of Power — Eels!

Get your investments in now!

Could the solution to our energy woes in 2014 been solved in a letter to the New-York Tribune, which was published on July 2, 1906? The newspaper published a letter by one “Fitz Nigel,” who told the readers of exciting new developments in the production of energy. He promised that this new source of power could potentially meet the electricity needs of the entire world.

What is this source of power? Was it ever implemented? According to Fitz Nigel, in the near future (for 1906), the world's energy needs were going to be supplied by electric eels.

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Trouble in Esperanto-Land

Get your tickets early!

1910 seemed to have both good and bad for the Esperanto movement. On the one hand, preparations were being made for the 1910 Universala Kongreso, the first outside of Europe. On June 21, 1910, the Washington Times reported that noted Brazilian musician would be giving a concert in D.C. as part of the Esperanto congress.

That was the good news.

Washington lovers of music are looking forward to a visit to the Capital in August of C. Quiririo de Oliveira, of the National Institute of Music, Rio de Janeiro. Senor Oliveira, accompanied by Joas Baptista Mello Souza, an officer in the Brazilian ministry of interior, will come to Washington for the Esperanto congress, and probably remain in the city for a week. 

At the Esperanto headquarters today it was announced that a special concert would be given during Oliveira’s stay and that the famous master of music had consented to take part in it. Both Oliveira and Souza are said to be ardent Esperantists.

Señor Oliveira might have been famous in his day, but I haven’t been able to find anything else about him.

Now the bad news.

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Next Thing You Know, They'll Try to Ban Drinking

Don't drink, smoke, or read!

A short item in the May 23, 1907 Princeton Union tells of the latest activities of the Women's Christian Temperance Union:

The W. C. T. U. now proposes to eliminate from the public libraries of the country all novels wherein the heroes or heroines smoke or drink. The old girls will have even a harder proposition than the fellow who runs for president on the democratic ticket.

Twenty-six years before Prohibition, the WCTU was already trying to get all references to smoking and drinking stamped out.

It's not like cigarette makers will
ever claim their product is good
for you

Above, on the same page of short items, we get:

One of those scientist chaps has now discovered that cigarette smoke is a germicide. He should also have added that the person who applies it to his system in sufficient doses eventually becomes a suicide.

It seems that in 1907 someone was trying to be an apologist for tobacco. I don't know if the research was influenced or supported by the tobacco industry though.

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Gawker Commenters Restore My Faith in Humanity. And Science.

Sulfer? WTF!

A high school senior in Georgia might be kept from attending graduation over her yearbook quote. Gawker picked up the story and it ended up on the Facebook page of one of my friends. The linked news article quotes that Paris Gray as having the text with her yearbook picture as

When the going gets tough just remember to Barium, Carbon, Potassium, Thorium, Astatine, Arsenic, Sulfur, Uranium, Phosphorus.

Except that's not what it said. Instead, Ms. Gray wrote:

When the going gets tough just remember to Barium, Carbon, Potassium, Thorium, Astatine, Arsenic, Sulfer, Utranium, Phosphoros.

Which, as I type this, now have squiggly red lines underneath, reminding me that they're not spelled correctly. Isn't Phosphoros one of those countries in The Game of Thrones? I must get around to reading that. This leapt out at me!

Ms. Gray's mother passes this off as her daughter being a "nerd," but wouldn't a so-called nerd get the names of the elements right?

Happily, many of the comments on Gawker point this out as well. Thank you commenters. And congratulations on graduating high school, Ms. Gray. During the summer, maybe you could learn how to spell the names of the chemical elements.

[I'm tagging this post with #chemistry. I've been waiting to do that.]

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