The scientific literature: a guided tour

1. First English Periodical

Early Books and Letters

Robert Boyle: New experiments physio-mechanical (1660)

Robert Hooke: Micrographia (1665)

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek: Anatomy of Fleas (1963)

Philosophical Transactions

Henry Oldenburg and Christian Huygens: Pendulum-watches at sea (1665)

Adrien Azout-Apertures of object glassses (1665)

Henry Oldenburg: Transfusion (1667)

Robert Boyle: Experiments about respiration (1670)

Isaac Newton: Theory of light and colors (1672)

Isaac Newton: Answer to letter from Pardies (1672)

Mr. Toyard: Sieur Bernier's flying machine (1681)

Martin Lister: English vegetables (1697)

John Arbuthnot: Argument for divine providence (1710)

Benjamin Franklin: Effects of electricity in paralytic cases (1758)

Henry Cavendish: Experiments on air (1784)

Caroline Herschel: New comet (1787)

On Early English Scientific Writing

Robert Boyle: Considerations Touching Experimental Essays (1661)

Thomas Sprat: History of the Royal Society (1667)

John Hill: Works of the Royal Society (1751)

2. First French Periodicals

Concerning the Royal Academy in Paris

Jean-Babtiste Du Hamel & Bernard Fontenelle: History of the Royal Academy (1773)

Journal of the Learned

Anonymous: Letter written from Oxford (1665)

Anonymous: Review of Anatomical Description (1669)

Ole Roemer: Speed of light (1676)

Anonymous: Review of Principia (1688)

Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences Denis Dodart: History of plants (1676)

Jean Mery: Two fetuses enclosed in the same membrane (1693)

Antione de Jusssieu: Corispermum Hyssopifolium (1721)

Étienne François Geoffroy: Different realtionships obsrved in chemistry (1718)

Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertius: The figure of the earth (1738)

Compte de Buffon: Conservation and re-establishment of forests (1739)

Nicolas Desmarest: Nature of prismatic basalt (1774)

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: Combustion Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: Modern horizontal beds deposited by the sea (1789)

3. Internalization and Specialization

German Literature

Gottfried Leibniz: Calculation of various dimensions of figures (1684)

Maria Sibylla Merian: Metamorphosis of insects (1705)

Johann Heinrich Lambert: Measurement of humidity (1769)

Anonymous: Review of Three Letters on Mineralogy (1789)

American Literature

Benjamin Smith Barton: American species of dipus (1799)

Thomas Jefferson: Bones of quadruped of the clawed kind (1799)

Caspar Wistar: Description of bones deposited by President (1799)

Thomas Say: North American Insects of the genus Cicindela (1818)

Joseph Henry: Production of currents and sparks of electricity (1832)

Oliver Wendell Holmes: Contagiousness of peurperal fever (1843)

Joseph Lister: Antiseptic principle (1867)

Specialized Literature: Biology

Anonymous: Hibuscus Rosa Sinensis (1791)

T. H. Huxley: Review of Vestiges (1854)

Charles Lydell & J. D. Hooker: Papers drawn by Darwin and Wallace (1858)

Specialized Literature: Physics Julius Robert Mayer: Forces of inorganic nature (1842)

Rudolf Clausius: Nature of motion we call heat (1857)

Specialzed Literature: Chemistry Friedrich Wöhler: Alcohlic fermentation (1839)

Archibald Scott Couper: New chemical theory (1858)

Hermann Kolbe: Radical theory (1871)

4. Select Pre-modern Classics

Earth Science

James Hutton: Theory of the Earth (1788)

John Playfair: Account of James Hutton (1805)

Evolutionary Biology Alfred Russel Wallace: Tendency of varieties to depart from the original (1858)

Gregor Mendel: Plant Hybridization (1866)

Medical Science

Rudolf Virchow: Cellular pathology (1855)

Louis Pasteur: Germ theory (1880)

Robert Koch: Etiology of tuberculosis (1882)

Chemistry

Jöns Jacob Berzelius: Cause of chemical porportions (1813)

Gustav Kirchoff & Robert Bunsen: Analysis by observation of spectra (1860)

August Kekulé: Composition of aromatics (1865)

Dimitri Mendeleev: Laws of chemical elements (1869)

Physics James Clark Maxwell: Faraday's lines of force (1855)

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen: New kind of ray (1895)

Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, & G. Belmont: New strongly radioactive substance (1898)

5. Equations, Tables, and Pictures

Equations

Albert Einstein: Does the inertia of a body depend on energy content? (1905)

G. H. Hardy: Mendelian proportions and mixed population (1908)

Tables

Jean Perrin: Brownian and molecular reality (1909)

David Weaver et al.: Endogenous Immunoglobulin gene expression (1986)

Pictures

A. Wegener: Origin of continents (1912)

C. T. R. Wilson: Tracks of ionizing particles (1912)

R. P. Feynman: Space-Time approach to quantum electrodynamics (1949)

L. Pauling et al.: Structure of proteins (1951)

H. B. Whittington: The enigmatic animal Opabinia regalis (1975)

Christiane Nusslen-Volhard & Eric Wieschaus: Mutations in Drosophilia (1980)

Michael B. Eisen et al.: Genome-wide expression patterns (1998)

J. K. Webb et al.: Fine structure constant (2001)

J. Richard Gott et al.: Map of the universe