Karl Galle
@karlgalle.bsky.social
5K followers 1.2K following 2.4K posts
Historian of science, mostly medieval to early modern astronomy & mathematical arts. Things German, Polish, Egyptian, or hey that looks interesting. Ex public policy + occasional tuba. Copernicus book in progress. Don't get long covid, it sucks.
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karlgalle.bsky.social
I have likewise joined the exodus from academia-dot-edu in the wake of their new terms of service. For more on my background and work, you can now find me at Knowledge Commons: hcommons.org/members/karl...
hcommons.org
Reposted by Karl Galle
monicamedhist.bsky.social
#histmed #MedievalSky Minji Lee's book, The Medieval Womb: Hildegard of Bingen’s Views on the Female Reproductive Body, has just been released #OpenAccess: library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...
Cover image of Minji Lee, The Medieval Womb: Hildegard of Bingen’s Views on the Female Reproductive Body. On the complex imagery reproduced on the cover, read the book!
karlgalle.bsky.social
That's actually a brilliant idea! 😃 🎨
Reposted by Karl Galle
anisekstrong.bsky.social
Also, @amayor.bsky.social points out that this may be a mythologizing of inventions from Ptolemy II's court being sent as diplomatic gifts to India: theconversation.com/robots-guard... If true, that would make this a wonderful Reverse Mechanical Clock/Abul-Abbas the Elephant to Charlemagne story.
Reposted by Karl Galle
williamthomas.bsky.social
And Martinis? His dad was a refugee from Yugoslavia. repository.aip.org/node/129661
My dad was born in Croatia. As it happened, his father left for the United States shortly
before the war. And the family left behind were kind of by themselves over the war and 
thirteen to seventeen. So, he had a very difficult childhood, and especially the teenage
years, and actually never talked about it much. I think he did quite well for having such a
difficult time growing up. After the war, his family was trying to get to the United States.
Yugoslavia was beginning to close up at the time because of the communist government.
In the end, escaped from Yugoslavia and had security people chasing him to make an
example of him. In the old country his family fished. So, when he went to Washington
state that is what he did with his father and brother. During the off season he came
down to San Pedro in California, where he had relatives, and met my mom.
Reposted by Karl Galle
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
It's the anti-prime sale on @bookshop.org, with free shipping Oct 7 & 8!

If you have a nerd with a conscience on your "need to buy them a gift soon" list, perhaps HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY might be it? Or perhaps this is just the book for you for #spookyseason / #monstertober?

💙📚 🗃 #histsci
Reposted by Karl Galle
jtpmedieval.bsky.social
New in open access #medievalsky: Bede's Medical Books!

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Keepin' it Old School this time
karlgalle.bsky.social
Ironically it was published in 2010, so well before the escalated frenzy of recent years, and yet it's striking how much of the analysis on how different parties handled these debates a century ago is like "yup, looks like it's ripped from this week's headlines." 🙃
karlgalle.bsky.social
Can I recommend a slightly earlier alternative, with some notable lessons, that I just finished reading? 🧐 📗 bsky.app/profile/karl... @cornellupress.bsky.social
karlgalle.bsky.social
This by Annemarie Sammartino on immigration debates in Germany 1914-1922 was excellent, feel like I need a sequel to find out if there were any negative consequences after a country went batshit insane on the subject of 'open borders' & scary foreigners 🤔 www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801...
My copy of Annemarie Sammartino's book, "The Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914-1922," acquired during a recent @cornellupress.bsky.social book sale.
karlgalle.bsky.social
This by Annemarie Sammartino on immigration debates in Germany 1914-1922 was excellent, feel like I need a sequel to find out if there were any negative consequences after a country went batshit insane on the subject of 'open borders' & scary foreigners 🤔 www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801...
My copy of Annemarie Sammartino's book, "The Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914-1922," acquired during a recent @cornellupress.bsky.social book sale.
Reposted by Karl Galle
chicagojournals.bsky.social
Gabriele Marcon has been awarded an honorable mention for the 2025 SIHS Article Prize for the article “The Boundaries of Knowledge: Books, Experts, and Readers in Early Modern Mines.” Read it for FREE in Isis: ow.ly/IVAY50X5NqJ @isisjournal.bsky.social
Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society
Reposted by Karl Galle
dburbach.bsky.social
One of the amazing things about this mission is that we took a piece of rock lost from Mars millions of years ago, found out of place on our Earth, and we BROUGHT IT HOME 🪨😊
pomarede.bsky.social
Today, Percy checks out the calibration target of her SHERLOC instrument, including a slice of a Martian meteorite and five spacesuit materials.

ℹ️ science.nasa.gov/resource/she...
ℹ️ www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/how-nas...

#Mars 0ct. 6, 2025 - Sol 1645
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 🧪🔭
The calibration target with, at left, five swatches of spacesuit materials that scientists are studying as they degrade. The first sample at top is polycarbonate for use in a helmet visor; inscribed with the address of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, it doubles as a geochache for the public. Other materials in the left row, from top: Vectran; Ortho-Fabric; Teflon; coated Teflon.  Right row, from top: aluminum gallium nitride on sapphire; a quartz diffuser; a slice of Martian meteorite; a maze for testing laser intensity; a separate aluminum gallium nitride on sapphire with different properties.
karlgalle.bsky.social
"My phone rang, and I saw a number from Sweden and thought, well that’s just spam of some sort, so I disabled the phone and went back to sleep,” she said in an interview also posted on NobelPrize.org, LOL. 🤣🥳👑
karlgalle.bsky.social
I actually have a few pictures from seeing the crown when I was a student, which I'm sure was only "a few" years ago (never mind that they are film rather than digital pictures! 🙄), but yeah my philosophy on music & video these days is hard copies where possible because online access is temporary.
karlgalle.bsky.social
Thanks! Unfortunately the Germans don't like us either, and to be fair, it's pretty easy to see their point these days...
"Video unavailable: The uploader has not made this video available in your country."
karlgalle.bsky.social
Thanks indeed! If they are ever able to produce something like a geographic provenance map for all the objects on the crown, that would be an amazing teaching resource. Sadly the video doesn't seem to be available to USians, but I'll keep an eye out for when I'm at a different IP address. 😢 🧐
Screenshot from the video link saying (in French) "get lost, American, this video isn't for you" (very loose translation!).
karlgalle.bsky.social
This immediately got me wondering how much effort it would take to identify the provenance of all the stones in the imperial crown in Vienna, and lo and behold, there is an existing research project that seems to be working on that, among other topics: 🧐 👀 www.projekt-reichskrone.at/en/
CROWN. A research project on the materiality, technology and state of preservation of the Imperial Crown in Vienna.
www.projekt-reichskrone.at
karlgalle.bsky.social
Note there are separate sites depending on your country of shipping, so available titles may vary. For Egyptian history and/or history of mathematics types, additional titles of interest include Annette Imhausen on ancient Egyptian math and Buchwald & Josefowicz on the Dendera zodiac. #HistSTM
Book cover for Annette Imhausen, Mathematics in Ancient Egypt: A Contextual History. Book cover for Jed Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz, The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy over an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate between Religion and Science.
karlgalle.bsky.social
Through Oct. 31st, @princetonupress.bsky.social has a 70% off sale on a wide range of titles -- Susan Dackerman on Albrecht Dürer, Judith Herrin on Ravenna, Jed Buchwald & Diane Greco Josefowicz on the Rosetta stone, James Costa on Alfred Russel Wallace, and more: press.princeton.edu/sale/70-off
Book cover for Susan Dackerman, Dürer's Knots: Early European Print and the Islamic East. Book cover for Judith Herrin, Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe. Book cover for Jed Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz, The Riddle of the Rosetta: How an English Polymath and a French Polyglot Discovered the Meaning of Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Book cover for James Costa, Radical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace.
Reposted by Karl Galle
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
A @sciam.bsky.social story on the cognitive benefits of hand-annotating books inspired my latest newsletter on maps, monsters, and making sense of Sir Walter Ralegh's "Brief and True History of Guiana" (1596).

🗃 #earlymodern #histsci #manuscript #maps #cartography

buttondown.com/surekhadavie...
Walter Ralegh's headless monsters and annotation as thinking
On writing and picturing as forms of thinking and knowledge-making, with examples of Renaissance mapmakers and publishers demonstrating exactly this in the...
buttondown.com
Reposted by Karl Galle
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Oh boy, on Oct 16, @leoba.bsky.social is showing Rosenbach Museum & Library MS 1004/29, a mid-14thC physician's belt w/ calendar, tables of solar & lunar eclipses, anatomical phlebotomy diagram, & urine wheel. A 🦇 book, b/c it unfolds like a pair of 🦇 wings. libcal.library.upenn.edu/event/14872116
Coffee with a Codex On The Road: Bat Book at the Rosenbach
An informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each week we'll feature a different...
libcal.library.upenn.edu
Reposted by Karl Galle