100 YEARS AGO

In collecting the literature regarding phosphorescent plants, I chanced on an article, by Mr. C. F. Holder, on “Living Lamps,” in No. 392, vol. lxvi. (January 1883) of Harper's Magazine. In this article, at page 191, it is said: “In South America, a vine known as the Cipo, when injured, seems to bleed streams of living fire. Large animals have been noticed standing among its crushed and broken tendrils, dripping with the gleaming fluid, and surrounded by a seeming network of fire.” Could any reader of NATURE confirm the existence of this Cipo with a phosphorescent sap? Cipo, I believe, is a name for liana, not for vines. If true, the existence of a phosphorescent sap in a superior plant would be of great physiological interest. But no mention of this or a similar case is to be found in the standard works on vegetable physiology. I fear the statement may have as much foundation as the assertion, made in the same article, that among the peasantry of Italy girls complete their gala toilet with diadems of fireflies. — Italo Giglioli, Portici, near Naples, February 18.

From Nature 3 March 1898.

50 YEARS AGO

An interesting appointment has been made at Leicester to the newly created chair of mathematics. Dr. R. L. Goodstein, of St. Paul's School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, has been a lecturer at Reading since 1935. He has no less extensive a knowledge of mathematics, as commonly understood, than any of his contemporaries; but it was Wittgenstein who excited and inspired him, and he has made his reputation and won his position by original work on the foundations of mathematics. It is half a century since Russell first insisted that investigation into the principles of mathematics was a task for expert mathematicians, not for philosophers, but hitherto the subject has been one in which a mathematician could not take more than an amateur interest without endangering his professional status. A bad tradition has been shattered at last.

From Nature 6 March 1948.

Many more abstracts like these can be found in A Bedside Nature: Genius and Eccentricity in Science, 1869-1953, a 266-page book edited by Walter Gratzer. Contact David Plant.

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