Circulation of Coronavirus Images: Helping Social Distancing?

soon as the SARS‐Cov2 disease was recognized by experts to potentially cause a serious pandemic, a three dimensional diagrammatic image of the virus, colored in strong red, conquered public media globally.This study confronts this iconic virus image with a historic image analysis of 33,000 biomedical articles on coronaviruses published between 1968–2020 and interviews with some of their authors.Only a small fraction of scientific virus publications entail images of the complete virus. Red as an alarm color is not used at all by scientists who don't aim for a non‐scientific public.Circulation in this case concerns the movement of iconic images from a scientific context into a general public. On the basis of hps‐studies on scientific diagrams and especially on color use in scientific diagrams to convey specific messages in public, the paper discusses the role of the claim of public corona‐virus diagram as “scientific.”It points at relevant differences between most frequent scientific corona‐virus images and the diagrammatic image used in public. Both author‐ and readerships (in science and public) follow contrasting aims and values. Thus, the images meet non‐expert readers for whom the images entail very different – and potentially unintended – meanings then to virus experts.Peer Reviewe

Giving a Theory a Material Body. Staining Technique and the “Autarchy of the Nucleus” since 1876

Bock von Wülfingen B. Giving a Theory a Material Body. Staining Technique and the “Autarchy of the Nucleus” since 1876. In: Bock von Wülfingen B, ed. Traces. Generating What Was There. De Gruyter; 2017: 65-74

Editorial

Bock von Wülfingen B. Editorial. In: Bock von Wülfingen B, ed. Spuren. Erzeugung des Dagewesenen. De Gruyter; 2017: 7-8

Editorial

Bock von Wülfingen B. Editorial. In: Bock von Wülfingen B, ed. Traces. Generating What Was There. De Gruyter; 2017: 7-10

Editorial

Bock von Wülfingen B. Editorial. In: Bock von Wülfingen B, ed. Science in Color. Visualizing Achromatic Knowlegde. De Gruyter; 2019: 9-16

Diagrammatic Traditions: Color in Metabolic Maps

Bock von Wülfingen B. Diagrammatic Traditions: Color in Metabolic Maps. In: Bock von Wülfingen B, ed. Science in Color. Visualizing Achromatic Knowlegde. De Gruyter; 2019: 195-218

Einer Theorie Körper verleihen. Die Färbetechnik und die „Alleinherrschaft des Zellkerns“ ab 1876

Bock von Wülfingen B. Einer Theorie Körper verleihen. Die Färbetechnik und die „Alleinherrschaft des Zellkerns“ ab 1876. In: Bock von Wülfingen B, ed. Spuren. Erzeugung des Dagewesenen. De Gruyter; 2017: 57-65

The Periodic Tableau

While symbolic colour use has always played a conspicuous role in science research and education, the use of colour in historic diagrams remains a lacuna in the history of science. Investigating the colour use in diagrams often means uncovering a whole cosmology that is not otherwise explicit in the diagram itself. The periodic table is a salient and iconic example of non‐mimetic colour use in science. Andreas von Antropoff's (1924) rectangular table of recurrent rainbow colours is famous, as are Alcindo Flores Cabral's (1949) application of colour in his round snail form, using the RGB scheme, and Mazurs's (1967) pine tree system, consisting of warm and cold colours that he attributed to specific groups of elements—an attribution that we can relate back to humoralism and alchemy. From the first periodic tables in the 19th century, individual researchers have used different colour regimes. While standardization may play an obvious role in chemistry and its diagrams, all the more impressive is the anarchistic use of colour in the various diagrams which continue to be created. This article focuses on periodic tables in chemical journals and text books, and explores and compares the development of colour codes found in the few existing polychrome diagrams from the 1920s to the 1970s.Peer Reviewe

Rezension: Differenz und Vererbung. Geschlechterordnungen in der Genetik und Hormonforschung 1890-1950 von Helga Satzinger

Bock von Wülfingen B. Rezension: Differenz und Vererbung. Geschlechterordnungen in der Genetik und Hormonforschung 1890-1950 von Helga Satzinger. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. 2010;33(4):440-441