Gerbert's satanic signs

In the history of numbers, Gerbert of Aurillac, better known as Sylvester II, the 139th Pope of the Catholic Church, takes on a curious role.
He was an eclectic character: enthusiast about science and mathematics, it is handed down that he was the introducer of the Arabic numbers in Europe:
Gerbert was a figure of utmost importance as a religious, politician and scientist, who could not be ignored by his successors to the papal throne. He was considered the greatest intellectual exponent of the 10th century and one of the most important of the Middle Ages, a multifaceted and profound connoisseur of the arts of trivium and quadrivium. Thanks to his contact with the most advanced Islamic culture, Gerbert introduced in Europe the use of the clock, of a siren running on water vapor, and was the inventor of complicated musical and astronomical instruments. He used these inventions in Reims for teaching in the cathedral school. For example, Gerbert had built a complex system of celestial spheres designed to calculate the distances between the planets and, again in astronomy, asked in a letter of 984 to Lupito of Barcelona for the translation of an Arabic astronomy treaty, the Sententiae Astrolabii. Always in Reims he had a hydraulic organ built that excelled on all the previously known instruments, in which the air had to be pumped manually, and that in the sixteenth century was still visible in Ravenna. In the field of mathematics, the introduction of Arabic numerals in Europe has long been attributed to Gerbert, a merit of difficult attribution: surely the young aquitan knew them at the Hatto's school in Vich, but nothing authorizes us to think that he then made them know in the old continent. Certainly, Gerbert had the great merit of contributing to the studies on the astrolabe and of reintroducing the abacus in Europe, of which, according to an ancient chronicle, he would have learned the use by the Arabs.
The Arabic numbers were then considered demonic signs, so it should not be surprising that Pope Innocent X, in 1648, decided to resume the body with the aim of finding out if there was any trace of these sings on his predecessor. The exhumation was thus narrated by Cesare Rasponi:

When we dug under the portico, the body of Sylvester II was found intact, lying in a marble sepulcher at a depth of twelve palms. He was dressed in pontifical ornaments, his arms crossed over his chest, his head covered by the sacred tiara; the pastoral cross still hung from his neck and the ring finger of his right hand carried the papal ring. But in a moment that body dissolved in the air, which still remained impregnated with the sweet perfumes placed in the urn; nothing else remained but the silver cross and the pastoral ring.

The Arabic numbers derive from the Indian Brahmi symbols probably dating back to 300 BC and were spread mainly by the Arab mathematicians al-Khwārizmī and al-Kindi. Despite the meritorious work of introduction of Gerbert, it was only with Leonardo Fibonacci that, at the turn of the 1200s, the Arabic numbers were adopted in Europe in a systematic and widespread manner.

Ludolph van Ceulen: in searching of pi

One of the most important mathematicians for $\pi$, was Ludolph van Ceulen, German mathematician born 28 January 1540 in Hildesheim. His father, Johannes Van Ceulen, was a small trader who could not afford advanced education for a son who showed some interest in mathematics. The main difficulty for Ludolph studies was the Latin, the language in which they were written the basic texts as well as the more recent ones in mathematics and science at the time. And Latin was a subject to be advanced studies.
Another fundamental challenge was the particular historical period in which Ludolph lived. At that time, in fact, life for Protestants was rather complicated: the Spanish Inquisition was, in fact, powerful enough to extend his long hands even in Germany. The Van Ceulen's, as Protestants, were forced, like many in the same conditions, to migrate to the most welcoming Netherlands of Prince William of Orange.
On the other hand Ludolph himself was a traveler: immediately after his father's death became a little travel first in the region of Livonia (Latvia and Estonia in our age), then to Antwerp to visit his brother Gert and then to Delft in the Netherlands where he settled for a time, since there was born one of his five daughter on May 4th, 1578.
His wife, Mariken Jansen, died in 1590, but Ludolph remarriage on June 17th of that year with Adriana Simondochter, widow of Bartholomew Cloot, accounting and math teacher, with whom he had generated eight children, for a total of 13 mouths to feed. The two families, Cloot and Van Ceulen, were in a close relations of friendship, so it's pretty obvious to imagine that the marriage between Ludolph and Adriana was the best solution to avoid losing a strong relationship.

The telescopic view of the Moon

John Philipps Emslie (1839–1913) was a British topographical artist and folklorist.
From 1854, Emslie studied at The Working Men's College, and was a student of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He became a topographical artist, and illustrated The Illustrated topical record of London vol. 9. in 1900. He wrote and illustrated the New Canterbury Tales (Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh) ca.1887.
Emslie was an original member of The Folklore Society and was a council member for that Society. He gathered local folklore from around England, making notes and topographical drawings.

He also realized a lot of scientific illustration, something like the modern infographics. For example the map of the Moon (via core77) at the beginning of the post. The caption of the map was a quotation by William Scoresby about his observation of the Moon at the Lord Rosse's telescope between 1847-48:

It appeared like a Globe of Molten Silver, and every object of the extent of a hundred yards was quite visible. Edifices, therefore of the size of York Minster might be early perceived if they had existed. But there was no appearance of anything of that nature neither was there any in diction of the existence of water or of an atmosphere. There was a vast number of extinct volcanoes, several miles in the breadth through one of them there was a line in continuance of one about 160 miles in length, which ran in a straight direction on like a railway. The general appearance however was like one vast ruin of nature.

Carlo Rubbia and the discoveries of the weak bosons

http://t.co/KGVNarwZMG by @ulaulaman about #CarloRubbia #NobelPrize #physics #particlephysics

On that day 30 years ago, I was almost certainly at school. Physics still was not my passion. Of course I started very well: when the teacher asked what is the space, I thought immediately to the universe, but the question was not referring to that "space", but in another, the geometric. But it is not about those memories that I have to indulge, but on a particular photo, in which Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer, with two goblets, presumably of wine in hand, are celebrating the announcement of the Nobel Prize for Physics

for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction

The story of this Nobel, however, began eight years earlier, in 1976. In that year, in fact, SPS, the Super Proton Synchrotron, begins to operate at CERN, originally designed to accelerate particles up to an energy of 300 GeV.

The same year David Cline, Carlo Rubbia and Peter McIntyre proposed transforming the SPS into a proton-antiproton collider, with proton and antiproton beams counter-rotating in the same beam pipe to collide head-on. This would yield centre-of-mass energies in the 500-700 GeV range⁽¹⁾.

On the other hand antiprotons must be somehow collected. The corresponding beam was then

(...) stochastically cooled in the antiproton accumulator at 3.5 GeV, and this is where the expertise of Simon Van der Meer and coworkers played a decisive role⁽¹⁾.

Brian May, astrophysicist

Brian May is the famous guitarist of the Queen, Freddie Mercury's rock band (and one of my favourite band!), but is also an astrophysicist!
He wasborn 19 July 1947 in Twickenham, London. He studied mathematics and physics at Imperial College, where he started also the PhD program, but he abandoned when Queen became a succesful band in the world. He completed his PhD in 2007⁽⁵⁾, but he did not forget his research activity, indeed he written with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott Bang! – The Complete History of the Universe (2006)... but... just a moment... research activity? Yeah!
In 1972 and 1973 two papers signed by Mr.May are be published: Mg_I Emission in the Night-Sky Spectrum and An Investigation of the Motion of Zodiacal Dust Particles (Part I), written with Mr.Hicks and Mr.Reay.
May and collegues are interestend in zodiacal light, in particular in Mg_I spectrum, near the 5183.62 Å wavelength.
The importance of this kind of studies is that the Mg_I and Mg_II formation is one feature in the interaction between atmosphere and star radiations^{(2, 3)}.
But go to the papers: in order to determine the absorbtion lines from zodiacal light, Brian and friends used the Fabry-Perot interferometer:

The method was to sample, for 48 s, each of up 18 points acrossthe spectral interval. Pulse counting electronics and a line printer recordedthe signal levelat each sample point. A second channel of pulse counting monitored the overall sky background over a widewaveband, thus allowing correction forfluctation in sky transparency. The resolving power of the interferometer was 3500, corresponding to an instrumental profile width of 1.5 Å.

Obesrvation time is September, October 1971 and April 1972 from the observatory at Izana on Tenerife, Canary Islands.