Hembrow Celsius

A Life and Death by Degrees
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80399-462-8
Verlag: The History Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 304 Seiten

The Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701-44) was arguably the world's first true Earth scientist. In Celsius: A Life and Death by Degrees, Ian Hembrow reveals what his extraordinary, but tragically short, life and career can teach us about our today and humanity's tomorrow. Our modern understanding of many of the Earth's most awe-inspiring phenomena owes much to a modest and quietly spoken, eighteenth-century Swedish astronomer, who died of tuberculosis aged just 42. From the Northern Lights, air pressure and magnetism to the shape of the planet, sea levels and early studies of climate change, Celsius unravelled some of the greatest mysteries of his time. Best known for inventing the 100-point 'centi-grade' scale, Celsius' name also now frames humanity's future in the international targets to limit average global temperature increases to no more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. As our world faces this life-or-death struggle, there's much we can learn from Celsius - if we will listen.

IAN HEMBROW is a freelance writer, researcher and former visiting scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. In 2016, while working in Sweden on a book about medicine safety, he stumbled across the story and legacy of Anders Celsius - the largely unknown man with the extremely well-known name. Ian's research took him to the Arctic Circle to retrace the steps of the pioneering 1736-37 expedition on which Celsius helped to prove the shape of the Earth. He lives with his wife in Bristol, England.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hembrow, Ian

Leseproben

PROLOGUE
IN SEARCH OF TRUTH
‘That’s where Professor Celsius worked,’ said my companion Ralph, pointing to a squat, old, yellow and white building in the busy pedestrianised shopping street. ‘What, Celsius … as in centigrade?’ I asked, halting in my stride. ‘Yes.’ ‘Wow!’ This is how my search for Celsius and fascination with his influence began. It was my first visit to the pretty Swedish university city of Uppsala. I’d been commissioned to write a book about the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Drug Monitoring there, and my host, the Englishman Professor Ralph Edwards, had taken me out for a lunchtime stroll. We walked up a steep path to the salmon pink castle, the high walls and twin domes of which dominate the city’s skyline. From there, we descended to crunch across the gravel of the flawless botanical garden dedicated to Uppsala’s famous scientific son, the taxonomist Carl Linnaeus (1707–78), and then wound our way back into the modern city centre, where we now stood in the pedestrianised shopping street of Svartbäcksgatan. The building in front of us, which had brought me to such a sudden, standing stop was Scandinavia’s first purpose-built astronomical observatory, created here in 1741 by another of the city’s and country’s most notable Enlightenment figures, Anders Celsius. For some reason, the mention of this person’s name, in that place, at that moment, sent a tingle through my whole body. I felt connected to something urgent and important. So this was where Celsius, the man whose name – now enshrined in the internationally agreed targets to tackle global climate change, which frame the whole future of humanity1 – went about his business. This was where he scanned the skies, observed the stars and invented his eponymous temperature scale. I knew that the painfully negotiated United Nations agreements were all about limiting future average temperature rises to just a few degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But what else did I know about this familiar name and the scientist behind it? Like most people, I realised, very little. But, in that instant, I was seized by a desire to discover more. I didn’t have to wait long. A short distance along the street we encountered a more-than-life-size bronze statue of Anders Celsius. For a man who lived in the first half of the eighteenth century, it’s a curiously modern and figurative depiction. He stands slim and erect, gazing to the heavens with a sextant raised in his outstretched left hand and a long bulb thermometer in his right. The stylised tails of a periwig and long frock coat splay out behind him, and he perches on top of a tapering, tiered arrangement of spouts and spheres that once cascaded with water, but then lay dusty and dry. I wondered if this was an ominous, if unintentional, visual metaphor for the state of our planet. At the bottom of the sculpture is a beachball-sized Earth globe – its key meridians and lines of latitude cast in the dark metal. Apart from a perky, upturned nose, the statue has no facial features and few other surface details. But it immediately suggests a sprightly, confident and gracious young man – an enquiring mind and energetic spirit. Unlike many statues, this figure seemed to have life and personality, and it set me thinking: what could this long-dead person tell me about my life today, and the future prospects for humanity? What should we be aware of every time we use his name? And what might we learn from him, his work and the time in which he lived? This book tells how Anders Celsius progressed from child to man, and from bright student to a fully fledged scientific great, whose career was cut tragically short. It examines who and what he became, and how the city and landscape where he spent most of his life shaped him. It also traces my own journey to follow in his footsteps and establish his lasting relevance. It seeks to rescue Celsius the man from obscurity and restore him to his rightful place among the best-known names of science and history. In the months that followed, and on subsequent visits to Uppsala and other parts of Sweden, I learned more about Celsius. I discovered that he came from an illustrious family line of Swedish astronomers and mathematicians, and that he died from tuberculosis in 1744 when he was just 42. I also found out that his achievements extended far beyond inventing the temperature scale that defines most people’s knowledge. In fact, his work on thermometry came right at the end of his life, a footnote to a far broader career. Anders Celsius was, I rapidly came to recognise, a theorist and practitioner of extraordinary range and long-term vision: a master of not just astronomy, but the whole realm of natural philosophy – mathematics, geophysics, geodesy – and a multilingual pioneer of measurement, data and analysis. Celsius was arguably the father of all climatology and Earth sciences. His life and work stand at the confluence of an astounding rollcall of the most influential European thinkers and leaders – from French and Swedish royalty to Pope Clement XII, Voltaire, Descartes, Newton and the Cassinis. Among scientific giants, his star and the constellation of his collaborators shone particularly bright. As the layers of this mercurial man and his life were revealed to me, I began to wonder what Celsius would make of our species in the twenty-first century. What might he think about humanity’s slow awakening to its destructive habits and the overdue efforts to reduce or reverse our impact upon the fleck of space we call home? I imagined that he would see this not as a problem of science or nature, but as a problem of humankind, and one that only we can resolve. By telling Celsius’ story I’ve sought to explore these questions and suggest answers to some of them. At the dawn of the Anthropocene Age, the effects of human-induced global warming are fast outstripping the planet’s natural ability to heal itself. And the Homo sapiens species stands incontrovertibly answerable for an accelerating mass extinction of thousands of other organisms. The United Nations estimates that around 150 species now become extinct every day.2 Against this backdrop, what can, should or must we learn from the curiously forgotten Anders Celsius? From my research into his life and from following his path across Europe’s cities and into the frozen beauty beyond the Arctic Circle, I’m convinced that the quiet Uppsala scholar still has much to teach us. These lessons come not just from his trailblazing methods and breakthrough discoveries, but also his patient manner, his courtesy and deep-rooted instincts for international collaboration and long-term improvement. In an academic career lasting barely two decades, Celsius was able to peer through the narrow aperture of his present to see and understand both past and future aeons in their true context. He recognised the universal forces that shape our world, and grasped the opportunities and obligations that rest with humans during our fleeting presence. Like his statue in Uppsala’s Svartbäcksgatan, he stood on top of the world, and he gave his life to bequeath better knowledge to later generations. The key question for us, three centuries after his death, is: are we inclined to look, listen and take heed of these messages from the past? The observatory building where Ralph and I stopped stands at a diagonal to the modern street, its sharp corners interrupting the line of otherwise flat, modern frontages. This is because it pre-dates the last of several fires that consumed much of the old city. Each time Uppsala burnt down and was rebuilt, the street pattern altered, reflecting perhaps the citizens’ desire for a new start. So Celsius’ edifice stands slightly askew – the road’s only evidence of a medieval urban layout lost to merciless flames and heat. The building’s appearance suggests something of its creator too – a man who stood together yet aside from others, a modest but prominent scientist, simultaneously self-effacing and high achieving. He was able to perceive things his predecessors and contemporaries could not, and his impact still reverberates. Celsius was an immensely practical scientist: an accomplished craftsman, draughtsman, technician and administrator, as well as a theorist. He was devoted to exhaustive, empirical observation and experiment in search of fundamental truths. And he embodied the new mood and style of the European Enlightenment – a quest to comprehend the elemental drivers of creation, and humanity’s place within it. Today’s thinkers, strategists, decision-makers and opinion-formers face the same questions. How and where do we stand on Earth, in our solar system and the universe? If, as history and current circumstances would suggest, humans are hardwired towards expansion, dominance, conflict and consumption, how can we continue to thrive and survive within a largely sealed system of finite resources? And how are we obligated to act, now that we’re aware of the damage we’ve already wrought and continue to inflict? If it’s already too late to save ourselves, do we have any higher responsibility for the continuance and well-being of our planet? To whom or what, if at all, are we accountable? If today’s humans are as enlightened, informed and inventive as we so often assert, we will do well to look back into the life and accomplishments of Anders Celsius. Encoded within his methods, his feats, his character and...