Harvard University Press Blog

Inside the Perfumed World of Bohemian Paris with Theresa Levitt

In her new book Elixir: A Parisian Perfume House and the Quest for the Secret of Life, Theresa Levitt tells the story of two scientific outcasts whose work rewrote the boundary between life and nonlife—and in so doing, takes us on a sensory journey through nineteenth-century Paris. Here, we asked Levitt a few questions about some of the unexpected things she discovered while writing this fascinating history.

 What first brought you to writing a book about the history and chemistry of perfume?

I had been interested for a while in the question of whether there is anything “special” about life. People often think that once you get the development of modern chemistry, everyone accepts that living and non-living things are made up of the same matter, and there is no difference between them. But I was seeing plenty of people in the nineteenth century who remained convinced there was a fundamental distinction (and who ultimately turned out to be right!). Two of my favorites were a grouchy, reclusive physicist named Jean-Baptiste Biot and a down-trodden, oft-ignored chemist named Auguste Laurent. One day, I noticed that both of them mentioned working with a certain perfumer, Edouard Laugier. I decided to try pulling on that thread to see who he was, and it revealed a whole world where aroma and essential oils were at the center of one of the liveliest scientific debates of the time.

I think when people hear the word “perfume,” they sometimes think of an esoteric, even frivolous, luxury product. But it was really part of one of humankind’s oldest endeavors: to capture and preserve the ephemeral qualities of plants. And its pursuit helped revise our understanding of life itself.

Could you describe what it was like to work in a Parisian distillery in the 18th/19th century?

Distilling was one of the most skilled and delicate operations of the time. For centuries, it had been part of the alchemists’ practice, with recipes written in secret code involving sometimes over a hundred ingredients. By the eighteenth century, it was taught in the apothecaries’ guild. Distillers and perfumers emerged as more specialized offshoots of the apothecaries, but their practices were largely the same. They would have a variety of different stills and alembics in the back room, suited to different purposes. In some they might try to capture the volatile essential oils of a plant directly. In others, they might pass brandy through again and again, adding different botanicals each time, or pausing for stages of maceration or infusion. Everything had to be exactly right—the timing, the sequence, the materials—for the product to turn out.

The distinction between natural and synthetic chemicals continues to be a scientific mystery. How can that be?

It does seem wild that there are big, fundamental questions that science is still trying to figure out. But this is one of them. Organic molecules can come in both right-handed and left-handed varieties, and when chemists make them in a lab, both kinds appear in equal numbers. Chemically speaking, they are identical to one another. But right-handed molecules can’t interact the same way with left-handed molecules. Since our bodies are made up of these asymmetric molecules, this has a huge impact on how food is digested, medicines affect the body, and even how things smell. It was quite a detective story to figure this out, especially coming at a time when chemists thought it was naïve to talk about atoms as physical objects that had a particular spatial arrangement.

This book is not just about perfume—it also tackles revolution, the vibrant culture of bohemian Paris, shifting trends in health and hygiene, scientific breakthroughs, and more. How did all these aspects of your research and writing come together?

The bigger story here is the invention of the modern world. It’s an intensely exciting time period, seeing the end of a social structure that had been in place for centuries and the foundations of an entirely new one. Science and technology were at the center of all this change, kicked off by the magic trick of being able to turn fossil fuels into usable energy. There was hope that this technological bounty could bring about a new era of liberty and equality, and that things that had been hoarded by the elites would be available to everyone. In particular demand were the resources for health and hygiene, which included perfume in this period. And perfume does have a front-seat to all these changes. It’s among the first products to be artificially synthesized from petroleum products—another exploitation of fossil fuels that profoundly shaped the modern world.

Elixir features a wide cast of characters, including Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, and Louis Pasteur. What surprising things did you uncover about some of these figures?

Well, they all relied on the restorative powers of perfume! There are letters from Pasteur’s father telling him to put drops of cologne in his hair to keep from getting headaches while he studied. And Napoleon went through nearly a bottle a day, crediting it with giving him superhuman energy. He would empty a bottle of cologne in the bath, and then spend hours there, reading letters and conducting business. Marie Antoinette, meanwhile, was so concerned with being surrounded by fine scents, that she used perfume not only on herself, but also on the sheep and cows she kept at her Petit Trianon retreat.

When we think about the Palace of Versailles and its opulence, we usually aren’t thinking about how it smelled as part of that. What was the role of perfume in the royal residence?

The scents of Versailles were as central to its function as its mirrors and gold paneling. Nearly everything in the palace was perfumed—the people, the wigs, the fabrics, the air itself—and every interaction was informed by the competing aromas. Much of this had to do with status, of course. Members of court could spend a good portion of their budget on signature perfumes. But I’m convinced there was a deeper impulse as well. I was shocked by just how much effort went into supplying the court with perfume. There was an entire industry devoted to growing fragrant plants in the south of France, concentrating them into small vials, and sending them to Versailles. This was motivated not just by vanity, but by an impulse to life itself. Medical theories of the time held that bad smells brought disease and promoted decay, while good ones were associated with growth and vitality. For the residents of Versailles, these little bottles thus held their best bet for preserving their life and youth.

Order your copy of Elixir »

Fall Reading List

Fall is the perfect time to settle in with a good book for our Executive Editor for Science, Janice Audet. Here she suggests some recent and forthcoming books she finds informative and fascinating.

The fall season shepherds in the beginning of a new school season, a time to begin or resume routines and learn new things. The fall season can also be a time to take stock, become introspective, and prepare for the indoor time ahead. For me it often means I tuck into a corner of the couch with a blanket, a cup of tea, and a book. Whatever the fall season means for you, we have a group of compelling science titles to meet your interest. These books guide us through the natural world, human behavior and the mind, and, if you just need a mental escape, an exploration of space. Open up one of these books and find a new connection with the world.

As the days grow shorter and the sunlight wanes, deciduous plants begin preparations for winter. As I’ve learned from Beronda Montgomery’s forthcoming book, Lessons from Plants, dropping leaves in autumn is a seasonal, energy-saving behavior. To prepare for winter days with less sunlight, plants reduce chlorophyll production for a quieter metabolic state. When the temperature drops and the amount of sunlight declines, the plant’s green pigments recede and other pigment colors emerge. The leaves transform into a fiery display of red and gold before drifting to the ground. The changing colors of the leaves is but one example of plants’ incredible ability to sense their environment. There is so much we can learn from plants on how to engage with our environments and adjust our behaviors accordingly. Just as plants thrive after a period of dormancy, we can also be more resilient if we take time to rest.

Without leaves and stems, humans are left to use our five senses to make sense of the world. One of the most crucial tools is as plain as the nose on our face: our sense of smell. But what does the nose tell the mind? How do we recognize certain scents? In other words, how does your mind know that you smell apple, not pumpkin, pie? If you pause and sniff, you’ll notice that everything around you has a smell. The room has the lingering scent of the last meal you ate, your sneakers have an aroma, and your clothes may smell like laundry detergent or something less pleasant! And to that point, why is smell often thought of as a highly subjective sensation, especially in comparison with vision? The same scent can cause a completely opposite reaction and opinion in two different people. In Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind, A. S. Barwich explores what the nose knows and asks us to reconsider our individual and collective ideas about the sense of smell. Consider, Barwich explains, that we don’t perceive smells in cognitive isolation. Our nose and our minds respond to contextual cues, as well as physiological and affective states. Would the aroma of garlic be as pleasing at 7 a.m. when you are drinking your coffee, as it would be at 6 p.m. when your stomach is rumbling with hunger for dinner? There is great complexity that underlies how people experience smells, and A. S. Barwich is an excellent guide for us to better understand our perceptions and consider our assumptions.

Our senses also play an important role in our detection of fear. Our ability to smell, see, and hear signs of danger has been carefully honed over time. It all began about 550 million years ago with the evolution of specialized nervous systems in worms. A cocktail of neurochemicals that selectively modulate and coordinate activity led to the worms taking control of responses to life threatening experiences. Whether it’s slithering away or balling up to hide, animals and humans have developed complex behaviors to survive. Dan Blumstein’s The Nature of Fear: Survival Lessons from the Wild shows us how we can learn how to better respond to fearful situations. For example, animal alarm calls offer early warnings about a predator—a cat is coming close. But if those calls become screams, the high-fidelity distortion escalates the warning. Screams may not necessarily be louder in volume, but they sound ‘noisier,’ with rapid amplitude and frequency fluctuations. This is the sound of fear. Through experimental research, Blumstein has found that such nonlinearities, like noise, tap into the human emotion of fear as well. Upon hearing this kind of sound, humans’ eyes widen rapidly and often the heartbeat increases. Horror films and haunted houses have used nonlinear, noisy sounds for years to frighten audiences, and in recent decades, political advertisements have also found them effective when attempting to discredit an opponent. Our biology heeds this noise and then signals the need to make a decision: fight or take flight.

Should we need to flee, we are fortunate that navigation skills are also deeply embedded in our biology. In prehistoric times we learned how to find our way over large distances, to the farthest regions of the planet, and this occurred through recognition of landmarks or from a memory associated with an experience. As Michael Bond writes in From Here to There, “the experience of a place can never be explained in coordinates or in terms of the firing patterns of your spatial neurons; you only really know where you are if you can tell a story about that place or remember how you found your way there.” While lately my navigation has been mostly limited to my local neighborhoods and bike trails, I’ve noticed how freeing it has been to leave the GPS or map apps behind. The spatial representations I carry in mind of these new neighborhoods and trails—the mental maps—are filled with turns in the road, houses with yellow exteriors, and soccer fields. I’ve found some comfort in Bond’s discussion: by navigating without technology’s assistance, I am bolstering my skills and cognitive health. As Bond states, “There is still a world out there to explore, and we need to find a way through it.”

But, if you’re feeling like you want to leave the world behind, I recommend a witty and compelling look at space travel, Christopher Wanjek’s Spacefarers. Most plans for space settlements look good in your imagination, on paper, or in an animated video. But what would it really take to live beyond Earth? On the Moon we would need to solve the problems of no breathable air, no atmospheric pressure, and no protective atmosphere, but it is relatively close to Earth and, as we’ve found, suitable for encampment. The red planet, Mars, is the most earthlike planet in the solar system and has the only other surface suitable for human settlement with our current technologies. But Mars also has no breathable air, little atmospheric pressure, and it would take anywhere from six to nine months to get there. Venus is nearly identical to Earth in air pressure and gravity if one stays above the Venusian clouds, but we may not want to subsist in balloon-lofted cities for the rest of our lives. How about Mercury then? There is unlimited solar energy which could provide for “green” living, but life would need to be subterranean since there are wild temperature fluctuations and a lack of breathable air or atmospheric pressure. Wanjek explores the moons of planets, orbital habitats or islands in the sky, searching among our solar system’s frontier for livable space. While settlements may be currently out of our reach, Wanjek gives us something to marvel at, aspire to, and dream about in the meantime.

Regardless of what this season means for you or where you are this fall, physically and mentally, I wish you rest, resilience, and travels into the far reaches of your mind. The universe is at our fingertips…and between the covers of a book.

New and Noteworthy Science Books for Our Times

Beginning this October 8th, the History of Science Society and the Society for the History of Technology will convene virtually for the first time. This annual meeting, appropriately enough, focuses on science within the context of history and society. In a similar spirit, we at Harvard University Press are highlighting five recent and forthcoming books that offer a valuable perspective on the history of science, but also the current moment. We are offering a discount on these and other books related to the conference.

History will remember 2020 as a year of war. A technoscientific battle against a previously unknown threat. A year when an invisible virus challenged the world. And despite the uniqueness of the current battlefield, it presents familiar uncertainties, rationalities, and emotions, inescapably similar to what Carl von Clausewitz termed the ‘fog of war.’ As M. Susan Lindee writes in Rational Fog: Science and Technology in Modern War, Clausewitz viewed wartime actions as both measurable and shadowy, cost-benefit calculations made during a twilight haze. Choices are often made with gaps in information, with the hope that the unknown consequences will skew favorably toward survival. The similarities to our struggle against COVID-19 are painfully clear. Lindee continues, “scientific ideas and technological innovations can help us understand cultures and systems of power.” Awareness of how science and technology has been applied to past military struggles provides invaluable insight into how it can, and should, be applied to our current fight. The choices leaders make on what to do with the power of human innovation and industry can lead to a future of lifesaving vaccinations just as easily as it has to historical violence.

The current pandemic highlights how arguments over science underlie most of our divisive and consequential policy debates, such as genetic modification, climate change, and immigration. Andrew Jewett’s Science under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America recounts a century of battles over the cultural implications of science in the United States. He traces the history of the widespread indictment that science has been too often compromised by political ideology, with dire consequences for the country. By piecing together its development, varied expressions, and ultimate consequences, Jewett reveals how suspicion of science has been a major force in American politics and culture.

But, as we know, tension between politics and science is not unique to 20th-century America. As Henry Cowles states, “science as a way of thinking had a politics of its own.” The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey explores the intertwined politics and histories of evolution and experiment in an unexpected history of how modern science took shape. Evolution, once viewed as a natural adaptation, itself evolved into the scientific method and soon became a controversial symbol of science’s power over nature. Instead of being a kind of knowledge deduced from observations and principles, “the method” became a way of thinking.

The 19th century soon saw the rise of yet another kind of thinking: visual problem solving. The forthcoming (Spring 2021) A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication by Michael Friendly and Howard Wainer tells the story of the 400-year evolution of an intellectual framework that has become essential to both science and society at large. From its origins in statistical data during the 17th century to the 19th century “golden age” of data display, visual and graphic communication was used for everything from tracking disease outbreaks to understanding social phenomena. Across countless disciplines, people realized that information could be more effectively conveyed through visual display than solely through use of words or tables. This trend continues to accelerate into the 21st century and has become integral to how we understand, retain, and use information.

The increase in utilization of graphics and illustration have also contributed to the evolution of scientific research. In The Black Box of Biology: A History of the Molecular Revolution, Michel Morange writes, “Open a book on molecular biology or glance at an online article, and you will be struck by the quantity and quality of the graphical representations…the pages will teem with illustrations of macromolecules, intracellular pathways, and networks.” Morange further maintains that few areas of science that have seen such an incredible transformation in such a short span of time as molecular biology. From new advancements like CRISPR and genetic engineering to the development of new scientific programs such as synthetic biology and systems biology, the past few decades of biological progress can only be understood within the context of the larger molecular paradigm. As this paradigm fosters new disciplines, the fundamental importance of molecular biology only becomes more pronounced.

Remembering Hiroshima

On this day 75 years ago, the United States dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. James L. Nolan, Jr.’s grandfather was a doctor who participated in the Manhattan Project, and he writes about him in Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, an unflinching examination of the moral and professional dilemmas faced by physicians who took part in the project. Here is the introduction to Nolan’s book.

On the morning of June 17, 1945, Captain James F. Nolan, MD, boarded a plane in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In his briefcase was a highly sensitive report prepared by Nolan, along with other Manhattan Project physicians and two physicists, that expressed concerns about potential radioactive fallout from what would be the first nuclear bomb ever exploded. The plutonium bomb, or Gadget, as it was called, was scheduled for detonation in the Alamogordo bombing range of New Mexico in less than a month. Nolan and his colleagues hoped to persuade General Leslie Groves, military head of the Manhattan Project, to approve safety and evacuation procedures for the so-called Trinity test. After a flight delay, a missed connection, and a long train ride from Cincinnati to Knoxville, Nolan finally arrived at the Oak Ridge Site of the Manhattan District at six thirty the next morning. At Oak Ridge, about twenty-five miles outside Knoxville, Nolan eventually met with the large and imposing Groves, who was not at all pleased to receive the report.

Groves made Nolan sit outside his office while he read the document and discussed it with his aides. When he finished, Groves called Nolan in and addressed him dismissively: “What are you, some kind of Hearst propagandist?” The comment—with its reference to William Randolph Hearst, known for his sensationalist journalism—was indicative of Groves’s overriding concerns with security and secrecy. He feared that if the proposed plan were implemented, information about the top-secret Manhattan Project might leak out to people living near the Alamogordo bombing range. Such a response from Groves was not unexpected. In Nolan’s view, the military was concerned only with making a bomb for the purposes of warfare; worries about radiation hazards “were entirely secondary.” Groves, in Nolan’s words, “had rifle-barrel vision,” which “made him a great soldier” but limited him to “thinking only of the security aspect.” As it turned out, the Manhattan Project physicians were right to be worried about fallout from the Trinity test. Groves eventually approved some of the safety measures, but concerns about the long-term effects of radiation on the region around the test site persist to this day.

Although the Manhattan Project doctors warned the military about dangerous fallout from the Trinity test, they also participated in downplaying the harmful effects of radiation following the test. The doctors’ complicated role in this instance is emblematic of what happened a number of times at the dawn of the nuclear age. Manhattan Project doctors would offer warnings, particularly with respect to the dangers of radiation exposure. Military leaders would not take the warnings seriously, giving greater weight to military and scientific concerns. Doctors would then be put in a position of helping the military to hide or minimize the negative consequences of radiation exposure, often out of fear of litigation.

 Atomic Doctors focuses on the physicians who were involved in the Manhattan Project, paying particular attention to Nolan, as well as his colleagues Louis Hempelmann and Stafford Warren—all of whom were part of the project from its earliest days and then played important roles in the unfolding drama of the atomic age. All three doctors had training in radiology and thus knew more than most about radiation—the critical and defining, yet mysterious, feature of the new weapon. How they gained and managed their knowledge about radiation, and how they treated (or didn’t treat) those who were affected by it, is a central theme of this book. It’s a theme that intersects with the continuing debate about the necessity and morality of detonating, and then continuing to develop and stockpile, atomic weapons. We will see how the doctors were used, with or without their cooperation, either to support or to refute competing historical narratives about the atom bomb.

James F. Nolan was my grandfather. I first became aware of the nature and scope of his contribution to the Manhattan Project when my mother visited me several months after my dad had passed away. She brought with her a box of materials that no one else in the family even knew existed. When I opened the box and began sorting through its contents, I was astonished by what I found. The box contained a treasure trove of data about my grandfather and his role in the Manhattan Project. I discovered photographs of the Trinity test, the USS Indianapolis, Tinian Island, Bikini Island, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki (taken just weeks after the bombs were dropped on the two cities). Also inside were my grandfather’s military papers, travel itineraries, artifacts, souvenirs, weather maps, newspaper clippings, written accounts of his experience, and correspondence, including with Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific head of the Manhattan Project.

Discovery of this material marked the beginning of my own journey through the early nuclear age, with my grandfather acting as my guide. In a sense, Nolan served as my Virgil, taking me through a divine comedy of sorts. He introduced me to fascinating people, including those who had visions of a technophilic new paradise. He also showed me a horrifying inferno—the image conveyed by the Japanese doctors with whom Nolan interacted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki immediately after the war. The contents of my grandfather’s secret box of materials led me on exploratory trips to a number of archives across the United States, to Los Alamos and Oak Ridge, to the San Ildefonso Pueblo, to a reunion in Indiana with the still-living survivors of the USS Indianapolis, and to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The more I explored, the more interesting and troubling the story became. The Virgil image also works in the sense that the story is not so much about Nolan—though he is clearly a central figure—as it is about the dramatic and utterly transformative historical period he lived through.

My grandfather participated in many of the crucial events of this period.

He was involved in some way with the first eight nuclear bombs ever detonated. He was there at Los Alamos—indeed, he was one of the first recruits. He helped plan the safety and evacuation measures for the Trinity test. He was one of two men tasked with escorting Little Boy, the bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, from Los Alamos to the Pacific Islands. He was one of the first Americans to visit Japan and investigate the bomb sites after the war. He was present for the subsequent atomic tests on the Bikini and Enewetak Atolls in the Marshall Islands. And, at the very end of his life, he joined about one hundred others to attend the fortieth reunion of the start of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, an event that provided the scientists who built the bomb an opportunity for tortured reflection on all that had become of their invention. This book follows Nolan through these episodes and considers the ethical and medical issues faced by the doctors working on the project.

My interest in my grandfather’s journey is more than personal and more than historical. As a sociologist with a long-standing interest in the role of technology in modern society, I find that Nolan’s story provides insights into our fraught relations with technology. Discovery of the bomb generated a host of nuclear technologies—in the military, in energy, and in medicine—along with a variety of related technologies that continue to shape our lives. Lessons from the early atomic age help us deepen our understanding of how humans engage not only with nuclear and nuclear-engendered technologies but also with such emerging technologies as genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology. The forceful impact of technology, nuclear and otherwise, on human life is one of the multiple meanings of “delivering little boy” that will be explored as we follow Nolan’s passage through the early atomic age.

Celebrating Women in Science

On International Women in Science Day, the world celebrates the countless women who dedicated their skills, talents, and lives to the sciences. In this spirit, today we share books by some exceptional female authors. Executive Editor for Life Sciences Janice Audet pays tribute to each individual’s work and her efforts to advancing science.

Jo Dunkley, Professor of Physics & Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, studies the origins and evolution of the universe. She shares her passion for discovery with her students and the public, in particular with young women interested in scientific research. In recognition of her efforts to encourage and raise the profile of women in science she was awarded the 2017 Rosalind Franklin Award from the Royal Society. In Our Universe: An Astronomer’s Guide, we see Professor Dunkley at her best, tackling big questions in an approachable way that conveys her commitment to advancing our knowledge of the universe.

Cecilia Heyes authored Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking to challenge established ideas and stimulate new conclusions. Trained as an experimental psychologist, Dr. Heyes studies evolutionary biology, philosophy of mind, animal cognition, and cognitive neuroscience. With her incredible breadth of knowledge, Heyes questions entrenched views, examining different ways to understand how the world works. It is this curiosity that led her to examine how evolution, learning, and developmental and cultural processes shape human cognition. Heyes posits that humans learn what and how to think through cultural, rather than genetic, evolution. This thought-provoking publication was chosen as one of the Best Non-Fiction Books of 2018 by Marginal Revolution.

Scientist, researcher, and admitted “fly pusher” Stephanie E. Mohr loves the common fruit fly. In her highly accessible book, First in Fly: Drosophila Research and Biological Discovery, Mohr reminds us the enormous impact tiny Drosophila has made. No other animal model has contributed as much, nor provided more answers to many of the most important and challenging questions in biology and medicine. First in Fly was chosen as a Forbes Best Book about Biology, 2018, and a Smithsonian Best Science Book of the Year, 2018. Through her unmatched skill as a science communicator, Mohr inspires us to re-appreciate the contribution of Drosophila and highlights the lasting value of research investment.

Pardis Sabeti and her laboratory members were already collaborating with colleagues when, in 2014, Sierra Leone suffered the largest Ebola Outbreak in decades. This opportune partnership would eventually lead to the sequence of 99 samples from 78 different patients during the first three weeks of the outbreak—invaluable research into the origins of Ebola and transmission of the virus. Sabeti, along with journalist Lara Salahi, coauthored the resultant Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Crisis and the Next Epidemic. Salahi’s critical interviews and investigative reporting highlighted scientific, medical, and social issues associated with an Ebola breakout. Sabeti and Salahi, together, tell a story of what went wrong during the Ebola outbreak. Through their timely work, they hope to increase the understanding of the contours of outbreak culture and what new approaches are necessary to ensure superior outcomes in the future.

Anna Marie Skalka began her career in science at a time, the 1960s, when female postdoctoral researchers were a rarity. After decades of determination and dedication Skalka was internationally recognized with the 2018 Sigma Xi William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement for her seminal research on the biochemical mechanisms of retroviruses. Long known as a pioneer researcher in virology and a trailblazing woman in science, Dr. Skalka’s engaging Discovering Retroviruses: Beacons in the Biosphere takes us on a journey into the world of retroviruses, from evolution to present day. Her unique exploration of humanity’s longstanding interconnection with viruses leaves the reader with the promise of retrovirus therapeutics in our not-so-distant future.

In each of these publications we honor women scientists. In their work, we see personal inspiration, long-term dedication, and the profound and unyielding search for answers. Each, in her own way, has had the courage to follow her own ideas, the patience to assist countless others, and the generosity to share her knowledge and passion. In appreciation, we honor these women in science who continue to make important contributions in the scientific community and across in the world.

Build a Better Flytrap

The tiny, innocuous fruit fly has been a subject of research for more than a century, and is discussed in upwards of 100,000 scientific publications. Its surprising parallels with humans—the fruit fly has a beating heart, a brain, and other organs comparable to our own; exhibits complex behaviors including sleep and aggression; and slows down with age—have made it an ideal subject for research that’s furthered our understanding of biology, health, and disease. In First in Fly: Drosophila Research and Biological Discovery, Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr celebrates the power and importance of curiosity-driven pure research conducted with fruit flies, providing historic and contemporary examples of the profound knowledge such work has afforded. After First in Fly, readers will have a new appreciation for the beauty of the fruit fly, and the common genetic threads that connect us to other creatures. And yet, for many of us, that recognition won’t likely dislodge the lived experience of the fruit fly as a miraculously multiplying kitchen nuisance. For that, Mohr offers up the flytrap described below.

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Although researchers take great care to contain fruit flies in a lab setting, some inevitably get free, and once free, the flies will follow enticing scents to places they are unwelcome, such as a lunchroom or a yeast research lab. Drosophila researchers are not likely to bring insecticides into the lab—we are for the most part trying very hard to keep fruit flies alive, after all, so that we can perform genetic crosses and do other types of studies. But even the most dedicated fly researchers recognize that rogue flies can be a nuisance. We have developed an effective strategy for capturing flies that have escaped from their culture vials: we place simple flytraps in strategic locations around the lab. The same approach can be used in a home to get rid of an unwanted infestation or to collect wild flies for study. In the 2014 BioSCAN project, volunteers in Los Angeles, California, placed flytraps in their backyards as part of a species survey. These backyard collections led to identification of several new species of phorid flies, as well as the observation that Drosophila flavohirta, a species not previously found in the Americas, has taken up residence in Los Angeles.

To make a trap, first gather the following: an empty bottle, a rubber band or tape, and a tablespoon of something attractive to the flies, such as fruit juice, cider, champagne, wine, red wine vinegar, mushy banana, tired grapes, or overripe mango. The materials should be assembled as shown, then placed in areas frequented by the flies. The paper cone or a similar cover with a single small opening is essential: an open jar constitutes a fly feeder rather than a flytrap. The opening in the paper cone or cover should be just large enough for the small flies to fit through. Flies will be attracted by the bait and enter the chamber. Once inside, they are unlikely to try to escape, and even if they try, it will be next to impossible for them to find the tiny hole through which they entered.

This is a live trap method. To get rid of the flies, seal and throw away the trap within a few days. If forgotten, the trap is likely to become the birthplace of a next generation of flies. Before tossing the trap out, the curious might examine the flies to determine what species of flies were caught and whether they have unusual or interesting attributes. Should you decide to culture the flies, sliced bananas with a sprinkle of baker’s yeast should suffice as a food source, and a piece of cloth secured with a rubber band or a plug of cotton can be used to stopper the top without depriving the flies of oxygen. Be careful not to let the food dry out or expose the flies to prolonged heat or cold. To anesthetize the flies for close examination, place the trap on ice for five to ten minutes. If the food is very mushy, put the trap on its side, so the anesthetized flies do not get stuck in the food, or use a funnel to transfer the flies to an empty bottle before placing them on ice. A small paintbrush, makeup brush, or crab pick can be used as a pusher, and a magnifying glass, macro lens attachment on a camera, or smartphone-compatible microscope can help you inspect your flies closely. Further information, including food recipes and video demonstrations, can be found online. Who knows? Isolation of a spontaneous mutation, observation of an interesting behavior, or some other chance finding might launch a groundbreaking study.

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You can read more about First in Fly at the Atlantic.

From Latin Fragments to Greek Medicine

New year, new Loebs! Below, Loeb Classical Library General Editor Jeffrey Henderson introduces the latest additions to what critic Adam Kirsch calls “one of the greatest accomplishments of modern scholarship.”

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This season brings another exciting set of volumes for the Loeb Classical Library. A two-volume edition of Quintus Ennius (fl. ca. 204–169), the “father of Latin literature,” by Sander M. Goldberg and Gesine Manuwald (LCL 294, 537) inaugurates Fragmentary Republican Latin (FRL), a monumental new series in twelve volumes (as currently projected) that is the first Loeb Classical Library project with its own series editor (Manuwald) and one that will surely be an even more indispensable resource for all readers of Roman literature than its predecessor, Eric H. Warmington’s Remains of Old Latin (ROL) in four volumes. On the Greek side, the Library adds three new works by Galen to its growing collection of the great physician’s fundamental texts: Hygiene, Thrasybulus, and On Exercise with a Small Ball (LCL 535, 536). Meanwhile, John Yardley’s new edition of the third and fourth decades of Livy’s History of Rome proceeds apace with volume X, containing books 35–37 (LCL 301).

Remains of Old Latin (1935–40) was an outstanding achievement, masterfully collecting and organizing a broad range of material, making much of it available in a modern language for the first time, and supplying annotation at once concise and rich. ROL was nevertheless atypical of its era for featuring fragmentary texts, however important their authors. After all, the concept of scattered quotations from or paraphrases of texts subsequently lost as “fragments,” and an interest in collecting and organizing them, date only from the early modern period, especially the 19th century. Until fairly recently, fragments resided in forbiddingly specialized editions and were rarely encountered outside of footnotes, much less in translation. But that is changing, as many recent Loeb Classical Library editions illustrate, not least the landmark Early Greek Philosophy published last fall in nine volumes (LCL 524–532). The decision to replace Warmington’s venerable ROL recognized the need for substantial revision and rearrangement of the existing material; the inclusion of additional authors and genres; and the incorporation of current methodological awareness of the complex nature of fragments, their transmitting contexts, and the limitations they present for analyzing and appreciating the works of which they were once a part.

Much as Early Greek Philosophy abandoned the traditional but misleading title “Presocratics,” the new title Fragmentary Republican Latin not only avoids the unappetizing connotations of “remains” and “old,” but also reflects a much larger scope and ambition: FRL includes not only all verbatim citations of the respective authors and literary genres but also paraphrases and indirect comments, as well as the testimonia on lives and individual works. Projected to be included along with Ennius are Pacuvius and Accius as well as the tragic incerta; Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Caecilius Statius as well as the comic and dramatic incerta; the togata, Atellana, and mime; Lucilius and other political invective and popular verse; most testimonia and fragments from Roman Republican orators; most testimonia and fragments from Roman Republican historians; a selection of lyric, elegiac, and hexameter poetry; and selected inscriptions, including the Twelve Tables. Fragmentary works by authors of whom complete pieces are also extant will not be part of this collection; thus fragments of Varro, Cato, and of course Cicero will be added to the editions of their surviving works. FRL volumes will appear successively over the next few years.

A Wonderful Story of Spacetime

In Ripples in Spacetime: Einstein, Gravitational Waves, and the Future of Astronomy, internationally-acclaimed science writer Govert Schilling takes us through a century of scientific adventures to one of the biggest discoveries of history: the September 2015 detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Gravitational waves are produced by some of the most large-scale objects and cataclysmic events in the universe, associated with supermassive black holes, pulsars, colliding galaxies, and the Big Bang itself. There’s already a great deal known about how gravitational waves are produced—efforts to detect them have been ongoing since the 1960s—and further detections made with ever more sensitive equipment will provide astronomers with a completely new way of studying the violent universe, perhaps helping physicists finally solve a number of persistent uncertainties about spacetime.

Schilling looks back to the development of the theoretical and technical aspects of gravitational wave detection and also forward to those expectations for the future, all while conveying the persistence, excitement, and scientific significance of the hunt. As British Astronomer Royal Martin Rees notes in his Foreword to the book, Schilling “tells of boisterous controversies, setbacks, and amazing technical achievements by scientists and engineers who struggled for decades to achieve fantastic precision. He relates how they emerged triumphant, revealing clues to the bedrock nature of space and time. It is a wonderful story, engagingly and rivetingly told.”

In the video below, Schilling introduces Ripples in Spacetime.

One Line to Rule the World

Spring has arrived, and with it, daylight saving time. As the clocks go forward an hour in the UK, as they did earlier this month in the US, we’re taking a look at how Greenwich became the home of time. A new book by Geographer Royal for Scotland, Professor Charles Withers, asks the question, how did the prime meridian, a singular world-ruling feature, come to be sited in southeast London? Why was it chosen over Washington, Paris, or Beijing? The passage below, excerpted from the prologue of Zero Degrees: Geographies of the Prime Meridian, explains how the choice of Greenwich to mark 0° longitude would go on to solve complex problems of global measurement that had engaged geographers, astronomers, and mariners since ancient times.

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In November 1883, a sixty-seven-year-old English sailor addressed a letter to the world’s geographical societies. There are, he began, “some things that belong to all mankind.” What William Parker Snow had in mind was nothing less than a single prime meridian, a global base point or line to be used by all nations. From such an agreed point of terrestrial measurement, he reasoned, navigators and geographers could plot their voyages and align their maps, and perhaps astronomers could even chart the heavens, all using a standard point of earthly reference. One prime meridian for the world and only one, stressed Parker Snow, would be of “vast benefit to Science and Humanity.”

His appeal for a uniform base of measurement was rooted in personal experience. Born in 1817 in Poole, England, William Parker Snow was a sailor, an author, a sometime Patagonian colonist, a historian of the American Civil War, and, important to his own self-image, a veteran of Arctic exploration. He was also reputed to be psychic and lived, as one contemporary remarked, “on the edge of the Fourth Dimension.” Parker Snow’s supposed otherworldly powers, revealed in a dream in January 1850, convinced him (but few others) of the location of the ill-fated Franklin expedition that was lost in the Arctic in 1847–1848. As a young man, Parker Snow had himself nearly perished at sea during a storm when his vessel had a close encounter with another ship that had derived its mid-ocean position and course from an initial meridian different from his own.

The Space Race and the Grassroots

Celebrated as an American triumph and immortalized as “one giant leap for mankind,” the Apollo 11 moon landing has always had a certain buzzcut cast. But July 1969 was of course a shaggy time in America—the moon landing took place just three weeks before Woodstock—and the space program had a surprisingly intimate relationship with the social and political movements of the 1960s and 1970s. As historian Neil Maher documents in Apollo in the Age of Aquarius, the space race both provoked and responded to the struggles for civil rights and for peace in Vietnam, the environmental and feminist movements, and even the counterculture.

Here’s Maher in the book’s Introduction:

Apollo in the Age of Aquarius tells the story of the shared history of the space race and the social and political movements of the 1960s era. It argues not only that these two historical phenomena were mutually dependent on one another for popular and political support, but also that they represented two factions in a national debate regarding the present and future course of the United States. Was America the sort of nation that would spend $24 billion to land men on the lunar surface, or a country more interested in using such resources to solve political problems such as racism, war, pollution, and sexism right in its own backyard? This controversy over national purpose, moreover, ultimately transformed, albeit unevenly, both the space race and these grassroots movements. While shared opposition to space exploration nurtured these movements during the 1960s, making NASA a somewhat reluctant driver of broader social change, in the 1970s civil rights leaders, peace activists, environmentalists, feminists, and those in the counterculture successfully pressured the space agency to reorient some of its technology away from outer space toward our bright blue planet. As a result, Apollo, in partnership with what the cast of Hair was calling the “Age of Aquarius,” brought both the space race and American politics back down to Earth.

President Lyndon Johnson himself remarked on that interplay, writing in his memoirs that “If we could send a man to the moon, we knew we should be able to send a poor boy to school and provide decent medical care for the aged.”

As Maher shows, though, it took a lot of agitation and activism to make such things plain. Civil rights organizers and the black press, for example, worked hard to popularize the notion that the space race was diverting federal funds and national attention from a decaying city environment and unhealthy urban housing. Mainstream African American magazines and newspapers ran pieces with such titles as “Moon Probe Laudable—But Blacks Need Help,” “Moonshot Missed Most Blacks,” and “‘Only Way I Could Get on the Moon Is to Be the First Janitor There.’” Artists followed suit, as in Gil Scott-Heron’s indelible “Whitey on the Moon,” recorded in a Harlem nightclub in 1970:

In a surprising but ultimately ineffectual show of institutional accountability, NASA responded to such uproar by establishing an Urban Systems Project Office that “spun off” space technologies to track city sprawl, monitor urban air pollution, and, in a cooperative venture with HUD, to lower urban energy consumption by retooling the Apollo space capsule’s extremely efficient heating and cooling systems for use in low-income housing projects.