Update: Thesis Writing 2

I’m so tired.  It’s like 1:23 am and I’m up in the department working on my thesis.  I really want to have a rough draft done before I go home.  I also have a meeting for my internship tomorrow.  I did a couple of hours of work last week, but I really need to be doing more.  I’m hoping they recognize that priority is on the thesis.  I’m sure I can get caught up later (when all I have to do is get married and finish the semester).

Update: thesis writing

The absence of posts lately is mostly due to thesis writing.  Lisa is all but done with her rough draft, and I am within ten pages (I hope).  We have also written papers for the Midwest Junto which will be taking place this weekend in Minnesota.  Started in 1957 to stick it to the East Coasters, the Midwest Junto is a yearly history of science conference hosted by rotating member schools.

Last year, I presented a paper denying the validity of Forman’s thesis, which maintains that the social milieu of Weimar Germany was a trigger cause for the development of arealist quantum mechanics.

This year, I’m presenting on the totally unrelated issue of Richard Kirwan.  Specifically I will be discussing the third chapter of my thesis,  which looks at the Kirwan Collection at the Salem Athenaeum.  I will relate how the Irish chemist’s library wound up in Salem, MA and how that collection became mixed up with the rest of the library’s holdings.

Lisa is also presenting part of her thesis.  She will show that Caroline Herschel was an astronomer.  This seems like a simple idea in that Caroline Herschel discovered 8 comets and 13 nebulae, but Ms. Herschel”s current biographer has denied her status as astronomer repeatedly.  Michael Hoskin says that Caroline was merely the assistant of her more famous astronomer brother, William.  Lisa reanalyzes this distinction based on her archival research and a less anachronistic definition of what it meant to be an astronomer at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

In addition to writing, we have also been watching the NCAA tourney, the new baseball season, the travails of my Mavs,  and playing Wii (Lisa is right now anyway.  I’m trying to help but its not going so great).