The evolution of liquid and gas centrifuges

Although the principle of separation by centrifugation has been known for nearly a century, the technical difficulties of using it in practice are very great. Only in comparatively recent years has there been sufficient understanding of the underlying theory, and availability of suitable materials of construction, for the high-speed centrifuge to be used as a powerful aid to medical research and, very recently, as a means of separating isotopes on an industrial scale.     

A Geohistorical Study of ‘The Rise of Modern Science’: Mapping Scientific Practice Through Urban Networks, 1500–1900

Using data on the ‘career’ paths of one thousand ‘leading scientists’ from 1450 to 1900, what is conventionally called the ‘rise of modern science’ is mapped as a changing geography of scientific practice in urban networks. Four distinctive networks of scientific practice are identified. A primate network centred on Padua and central and northern Italy in the sixteenth century expands across the Alps to become a polycentric network in the seventeenth century, which in turn dissipates into a weak polycentric network in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century marks a huge change of scale as a primate network centred on Berlin and dominated by German-speaking universities. These geographies are interpreted as core-producing processes in Wallerstein’s modern world-system; the rise of modern scientific practice is central to the development of structures of knowledge that relate to, but do not mirror, material changes in the system.