Making Sense of the Aurora: A Research Project

Authors

  • Robert Marc Friedman Professor i vitenskapshistorie ved Institutt for arkeologi, konservering og historie ved Universitetet i Oslo og professor II ved Institutt for historie og religionsvitenskap ved Universitetet i Tromsø.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/13.2301

Keywords:

Aurora borealis, science in the far north, polar research, history of science

Abstract

The article provides an introduction to a on-going research project based at University of Tromsø that seeks to analyze the history of efforts to make sense of the aurora borealis from the early 1700s through to the Cold War. Following brilliant displays of the northern lights in the early eighteenth century, natural philosophers strove to explain this phenomenon that evoked widespread fear and superstition. It was not until well into the twentieth century that consensual explanation emerged for this, one of the great enigmas in the history of science. From the start, the quest to explain the aurora borealis became enmeshed with patriotic science and nationalist sentiments. The history of efforts to understand the nature and cause of the aurora poses a number of thematic problems. Being a fleeting and at times rapidly changing phenomenon, only occasionally seen south of far-northern latitudes, the aurora needed to be constituted as an object able to be brought into the domain of rational science. Observational accounts of the aurora came most often from by personsliving or travelling in the far north or in the Arctic, but these persons were generally not trained scientists: Whose witnessing counted and how was authority negotiated among professional scientists and amateurs?

Author Biography

Robert Marc Friedman, Professor i vitenskapshistorie ved Institutt for arkeologi, konservering og historie ved Universitetet i Oslo og professor II ved Institutt for historie og religionsvitenskap ved Universitetet i Tromsø.

Robert Marc Friedman er professor i vitenskapshistorie ved Institutt for arkeologi, konservering og historie ved Universitetet i Oslo og professor II ved Institutt forhistorie og religionsvitenskap ved Universitetet i Tromsø. Han har utdanning irealfag, teater og drama, og vitenskapshistorie. Han var tidligere professor i historie og 'science studies' ved University of California, San Diego. Han har utgitt en langrekke bøker og artikler om moderne vitenskap i sosial og kulturell kontekst; bl.a.,Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a ModernMeteorology (Cornell Univ. Press, 1989) og The Politics of Excellence: Behind theNobel Prize in Science (Friedman, Times, H. Holt, 2001). Han har dramatisert vitenskapshistorie for fjernsyn og teater; bl.a. ble Remembering Miss Meitner (2002) fremført profesjonelt i flere land og Amundsen vs Nansen hadde urfremføring i Tromsø på Hålogaland Teater i desember 2011. Adresse:IAKH-Historie, Pb 1008 Blindern, 0315 Oslo

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Published

2012-05-01

How to Cite

Friedman, Robert Marc. 2012. “Making Sense of the Aurora: A Research Project”. Nordlit, no. 29 (May):59-68. https://doi.org/10.7557/13.2301.