Today Cambridge University offered a complete free digital archive of the personal papers of Sir Isaac Newton, including the Principa Mathematica and his first published research paper. The archives join a number of efforts to open original works of scientific greatness to the world:

• Charles Darwin's entire personal library, complete with annotations and handwritten marginalia, digitized, indexed, and searchable, part of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (previously)
• Mapping The Republic of Letters and Electronic Enlightenment, wonderful sites showing the communication and social connections of Enlightenment writers.

Newton's original works are handily supplemented by The Newton Project, showing the man's insertions and deletions to his own work.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul on Dec 12, 2011 - 10 comments

Did Errol Morris's brother invent email? Film documentarian Errol Morris starts an extended, discursive piece at the Opionator section of the New York Times. Having previously documented his investigation of Crimean War photographs, Morris has posted the first part of a planned five part series covering his older brother's role in creating an early form of email. Along the way he touches on the computer culture of the 60s, dining options in Cambridge, MA, the MIT experience, and the Van Vleck dynasty.
posted by benito.strauss on Jun 21, 2011 - 40 comments

There is an inspiring mural on the back of the Micro Center building in Cambridge, MA. It commemorates the freeway revolt against the proposed I-695 Inner Belt. There are usually cars parked in front of it, but some have managed to get good photos.
posted by smammy on May 23, 2011 - 51 comments

Snowdecahedron. When life hands you a blizzard, make a Platonic solid. "Temporary public art" from Dan Sternof Beyer.
posted by escabeche on Feb 3, 2011 - 58 comments

"The Cellar Tapes" (1982) (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5) is a televised version of the revue show originally performed in 1981 by the Footlights - a group of comic writers-performers at the University of Cambridge. It is performed by Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Tony Slattery, Paul Shearer and Penny Dwyer.
posted by severiina on May 17, 2010 - 11 comments

Ten years ago today, Mark Sandman died on stage during a Morphine concert at the Giardini del Principe in Palestrina, Italy. His music and its impact has not always received the type of attention normally given to rock stars tragically struck down in their prime, let alone one this brilliant. [more inside]
posted by allen.spaulding on Jul 3, 2009 - 51 comments

§7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is such a contradictory figure that there are, in professional philosophical usage, two of him. Wittgenstein I had solved every philosophical problem in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921); having nothing else to do, he went home to Austria and became, unsuccessfully, a schoolteacher. In 1929, Wittgenstein I returned to Cambridge, where he began his transformation into Wittgenstein II. He was no longer confident in the Tractatus, his certainty in any answers less firm. Wittgenstein II's great, posthumous, work was the Philosophical Investigations. But Wittgenstein the living man was one, not two: musician and architect, reader of mysteries and engineer. "If philosophy has anything to do with wisdom," he once wrote, "there's certainly not a grain of that in Mind, and quite often a grain in the detective stories."
posted by nasreddin on Sep 7, 2007 - 52 comments

Project Nova: on the 9th of September three Cambridge engineering students launched a balloon equipped with a camera and tracking devices. It reached a height of 32km and took 857 photographs during its three hour flight, some showing the curvature of the earth. You can also download a KML file to follow the balloon's flight path in Google Earth.
posted by jack_mo on Sep 23, 2006 - 24 comments

Cambridge in Colour ... long exposures during twilight or moonlit conditions can produce other-worldly images. Be sure to check out the digital photo tutorials, too.
posted by crunchland on Aug 1, 2005 - 35 comments

This has a value in our profession, and it doesn't have to do with scale at all. It has to do with the actual meaning of a house.
posted by alms on Sep 9, 2004 - 8 comments

Isaac Newton Massive, ongoing project based at Cambridge University, devoted to putting Newton's MSS on the Web. At present, the digitized materials available range from journals to scientific MSS to theological speculations.
posted by thomas j wise on Nov 1, 2003 - 6 comments

Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), Lord of Zuylichem, was a poet, musician, diplomat and secretary to 2 Princes of Orange. He attended Oxford and Cambridge and corresponded with virtually every contemporary of any intellectual importance in Europe, including Charles I of England, Anton von Leeuwenhoek and Peter Paul Ruebens, to name a very few. He also played the lute for King James. As the definition of a Renaissance man, he makes me feel sort of inadequate.
posted by charlesv on Jul 26, 2002 - 4 comments

'Cambridge Students Beaten by Israeli Army' Three of my fellow students spent their Easter vacation on the West Bank as unofficial international observers. In the course of accompanying Palestinian medics to a refugee camp, with medical supplies and food, they were allegedly stopped and beaten by Israeli troops.
While their actions are undoubtedly noble and brave ("we are doing the job the UN should be doing"), the Israeli embassy suggests that "whilst the intentions were geniune, (their) actions have been misguided."
I can't decide what to think. (more inside)
posted by chrismear on Apr 27, 2002 - 25 comments