Gregory Morgan 🇺🇸🇳🇿
@drgregorymorgan.bsky.social
4.5K followers 1.3K following 200 posts
Historian and philosopher of science, especially virology. New Zealand-American. Lover of antiquarian books, and verge pocket watches. Author of Cancer Virus Hunters (JHU Press, 2022) https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RRkkWaYAAAAJ
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Reposted by Gregory Morgan 🇺🇸🇳🇿
allochthonous.bsky.social
🧪 Cool subtext to this cool story on the “little red dots’ - possibly primordial black holes! - dotting the early Universe is that the hopes for the James Webb telescope have been realised. It is pulling back the curtain on puzzling and unexpected things that will help us understand how we got here.
A Single, ‘Naked’ Black Hole Rewrites the History of the Universe | Quanta Magazine
The James Webb Space Telescope has found a lonely black hole in the early universe that’s as heavy as 50 million suns. A major discovery, the object confounds theories of the young cosmos.
www.quantamagazine.org
drgregorymorgan.bsky.social
Hoboken train station is being renovated
drgregorymorgan.bsky.social
The start of the 2025-26 academic year at Stevens Institute of Technology
Reposted by Gregory Morgan 🇺🇸🇳🇿
magdalenaskipper.bsky.social
A technology that played a key part in saving millions of lives during the pandemic should be celebrated. Yet in the US, research into mRNA vaccines is being cut. While sadly not unexpected, it’s irresponsible as we argue in our editorial this week 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Cancelling mRNA studies is the highest irresponsibility
The rest of the world is not following the US government’s dangerous path, and will stick with the technology that helped the world out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
www.nature.com
drgregorymorgan.bsky.social
Right, and there are institutional reasons for that -- getting promoted, published, tenured etc. -- but I guess my question is whether historians of science should also try to be more read by today's scientists.
drgregorymorgan.bsky.social
Why are most books written by historians of science not read by scientists? Is it they focus too much on social context and not enough on the details of past science? #sts #hps #historyofscience #sociologyofscience 🧪
Reposted by Gregory Morgan 🇺🇸🇳🇿
New on H-Sci-Med-Tech:

Check out Amalia Sweet‬ (‪@harvard.edu‬‬‬)’s review of @drgregorymorgan.bsky.social (Stevens Institute of Technology)’s book _Cancer Virus Hunters: A History of Tumor Virology_, pub 2022 @hopkinspress.bsky.social

#HSTM

Review available @hnetreviews.bsky.social
drgregorymorgan.bsky.social
Amazing frequency of lightning strikes in this July storm in South Dakota
Reposted by Gregory Morgan 🇺🇸🇳🇿
geophotographer.org
Archaeologists recovered 22 blocks from the Lighthouse of Alexandria, an ancient wonder. Using 3D scans, researchers aim to digitally reconstruct it, shedding light on its design and collapse. The blocks were found in the harbor off Alexandria.
🧪📜
#AncientEgypt
#Archaeology
#DigitalReconstruction
Massive blocks from the Lighthouse of Alexandria, an ancient wonder, hauled up from the Mediterranean
French and Egyptian researchers are making a "digital twin" of the Lighthouse of Alexandria in Egypt after lifting its ancient submerged blocks out of the Mediterranean Sea.
www.livescience.com
drgregorymorgan.bsky.social
Meeting and talking with Roger Penrose in 1993 was one of the highlights of my undergraduate experience. Here is an excellent review of a recent biography:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n11/steven-shapin/through-the-trapdoor
Steven Shapin · Through the Trapdoor: Roger Penrose’s Puzzles
Stephen Hawking may have been a genius, but ‘Roger Penrose’s insights seem to stem from some superhuman life-form...
www.lrb.co.uk
drgregorymorgan.bsky.social
Stevens Institute of Technology Commencement 2025: Prof Gregory Morgan as faculty marshall and Prof Carlos Alomar, music professor #stevens @FollowStevens @StevensNewsroom
Reposted by Gregory Morgan 🇺🇸🇳🇿
tedpavlic.bsky.social
Reminder: Nobel-prize winning PCR (1983), used in basically all genetic tech today, was only possible because of extremophile bacterium discovered in 1964 in Yellowstone funded by a small ~$80k NSF grant with no obvious application at the time. #science 🧪
www.richmondscientific.com/how-a-discov...
How a discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR - Richmond Scientific
A discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR, the gold-standard COVID-19 tests used to fight the global pandemic.
www.richmondscientific.com
drgregorymorgan.bsky.social
China is catching the US on R&D spending
Reposted by Gregory Morgan 🇺🇸🇳🇿
magdalenaskipper.bsky.social
154 million lives and counting: 5 charts reveal the power of vaccines - a timely news explainer/reminder by @heidiledford.bsky.social

@nature.com
🧪 #MedSky

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
drgregorymorgan.bsky.social
The view from Stevens Institute of Technology today