In 1903, a female student named Zhozefina Kossko-Sudakevich was officially accepted into the Moscow Agricultural Institute, marking the first instance of such admission in the history of the Russian Empire. In 1909, she achieved another historic milestone by becoming the first Russian woman to graduate in agronomy. Since the late nineteenth century, there have been many within Russian society who have advocated for increased opportunities in higher agricultural education for women. Nonetheless, breaking the stereotype of agronomy as an exclusively male occupation was a formidable challenge. To seek a degree in agriculture, Russian women had to go to Western Europe where agricultural education was more frequently extended to female students. This paper focuses on the motivations and obstacles facing women entering the fields of agriculture and horticulture in Russia. Despite the prevailing model of higher education in the Russian Empire being a predominantly state-led institution, broader public initiatives aimed at providing higher education to women proved to be of no lesser value. In this context, I review the impact of the Society for the Advancement of Women's Agricultural Education (1899) on actualizing the discourse of female education and launching a chain of non-governmental schools for women. As an example of such an initiative, I analyze the Golitsyn Higher Agricultural Women's Courses (1908) in terms of this institution's ideology and curriculum, and its students' social composition and professional development after graduation.

During a network analysis of the Dutch astronomer and psychologist Rebekka Aleida Biegel (1886-1943), we stumbled upon an often investigated group photo that most likely shows two of her close friends and a third woman posing with Albert Einstein among others in a chemistry laboratory in Zurich while having a tea party. Using data from the Dark Web, face recognition, open source intelligence (OSINT) tools, and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, we found in total four group portraits of this gathering and were able to determine the true identities of the three women, as well as one of the unknown men in one of the photos, with a very high degree of certainty. Moreover, we determined the exact day and time the photographs were taken: June 30, 1913 around 4:30 PM. After more than a century, the many riddles surrounding these group photos have been solved. By resolving the many questions regarding the (material) historical context of this iconic photograph of Einstein, three years before he published his theory of relativity, new light has been shed on one of the most exciting periods in the history of science. Our innovative research methodology-including AI, Dark Web, and OSINT-enabled us to reconstruct elements of the past of these totally forgotten and heavily marginalized women from many and diverse scattered and unassuming sources and revealed that their place in the history of physics is even more significant than thought. They, too, were part of Einstein's huge sounding board in the form of his weekly colloquium and had precise astrophysical calculations to add; an indispensible ingredient for proving Einstein's theory of relativity.

This article examines the role of gender as an embodied site of political control and resistance within Mapuche-Capuchin relations in the early period of Bavarian Capuchin mission-building in Chile (1897-1922). The study frames agricultural science education as a civilizing method employed in the Capuchin mission schools, targeting Mapuche children. The aim was to educate Mapuche children in Christian and Western gender roles, moral behavior, and rural economic occupations. Amid the overarching conflict over land rights and privatization between Mapuche communities and the Chilean government, the state's support for the Capuchin order's evangelizing mission was perceived as a long-term strategy to appropriate Indigenous lands and assimilate the Mapuche into the rural and urban workforce. The article illustrates how the conflict over embodied gender roles disrupted Mapuche socioeconomic relations.

As in most countries, the Republic of China's development of amateur radio benefited from the appeal of the amateur radio medium as well as characteristics of its technology, and it was also impacted by external factors such as war. Against a background of tradition, newly formed, but extremely strong, popular scientific beliefs fueled conflicts between state power and folk forces which played a key role in China's amateur radio development. In this study we will explore the tensions between the Chinese government's concerns for national security and distrust of folk radio research, and the rising, public demand for amateur radio. We consider how negotiations between state power and folk forces happen, and what further factors influence the construction and development of radio technology. Our analysis adopts the constructivist approach of Social Shaping of Technology (SST) theory, which focuses on the role of social factors in processes of co-construction and negotiation in technological development. We identify the folk forces, represented by the interaction between private enterprises and amateurs, as well as state power, as two of the main social factors that influenced the development of radio technology in China. From 1912 to 1937, the Chinese government was suspicious of amateur radio activities, and as a result, they instituted policies unfavorable to its development. In contrast, the Yamei Radio Co. Ltd. led the private radio manufacturing enterprises in promoting the development of amateur radio and the popularization of related technologies. In tandem, radio amateurs assisted in the promotion and technological innovation of Yamei products. From 1937 to 1949, with the government's semi-supportive and semi-skeptical attitude, amateur radio associations did make some progress. Benefiting from the early work performed by private enterprises, these associations grew into a new folk force to challenge government control, and they continued to promote the popularization and development of radio technology. Our study illuminates complex relationship among government control, non-governmental reaction, and technological development in a specific context. When there is a conflict, folk forces have the ability to mobilize against policy-driven obstacles, thus to counterbalance government control. This study not only provides a new case for SST research, but it also adds to our understanding of China's radio technology, amateur radio, and radio manufacturing industry.

In the second half of the nineteenth century gardening flourished in Portugal's public sphere, having considerably expanded beyond the private realms of palaces and villas. Envisioned as a sophisticated branch of knowledge, horticulture became a hub for citizen science, commercial activities, public education, and civic events. This was a context that fostered and advanced women's involvement and status as gardeners, horticulturists, and educators, a development influenced by popular Portuguese perceptions of women as protectors. The Royal Society of Horticulture of Portugal (founded in Lisbon as "National" in 1898, decreed "Royal" in 1900), instantiated this enmeshment of perception with status by designating women members as 'Lady Guardians' while promoting their participation, especially as competitors and jurists in the society's flower exhibitions. The women of the society offer a window into the more general identities and professional statuses of women horticulturalists as 'guardians' in a generalized sense: they included landowners, writers, gardeners, and family business owners, with many assuming greater responsibility in widowhood. At a time when women's participation in science was highly constricted, horticulture as a field, and the Royal Society of Horticulture as its premier institution, constituted a remarkable opportunity for women to be publicly engaged and recognized for their expertise as amateur botanists alongside their male counterparts. This article's analysis demonstrates that women horticulturalists in Portugal were a quite heterogenous group, consisting of women from the highest ranks of the nobility, participating alongside women from further social ranks, inclusive of the aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and urban middle classes. Their participation in the society not only afforded them opportunities locally and civically, but also internationally, as will be illustrated by a few careers that reflect how education, travels, and professional engagement demonstrated the broad reach of Portuguese women's horticultural activities.

Palestinian peasant families had to adapt and survive under political and economic conditions dictated by European occupation and Zionist settler colonialism. Women had a major role in contributing to the efforts for survival and acquiring their status in the rural economy and the wider national struggle against British policies. Rural Arab families constituted the vast majority of the Palestinian population before the Nakba, or those displaced from their villages during the war on Palestine in 1948, and the formation of the State of Israel. The agricultural knowledge Palestinian women had and passed from one generation to the other was an important element for the survival of the peasant families under the different periods in which colonial countries and Zionist settlement shook the base of their economic existence.

Women seeking to work in horticulture in the early twentieth century were the beneficiaries of developments put in motion by the late nineteenth-century women's rights movement. From the 1860s, feminists and social reformers in Europe and America promoted the opening of higher education to women. After success on this front, by 1900, women's advocates pushed for expanding work opportunities suitable for middle-class women, including in horticulture. This article contributes to the historiography of women and gender in horticulture and agriculture by tracing the opening of horticultural and agricultural schools and employment opportunities for women in Germany and Austria. The analysis shows that while the new schools were modeled on earlier examples in Britain, the programs' curricula were based on that of the German and Austrian agricultural colleges. This European expansion of science-based horticultural education provided middle-class women with occupational prospects that proved more fruitful than university degrees until the rise of anti-Semitism in the years leading up to World War II.

This paper deals with agricultural training for Jewish women settlers in Palestine, and focuses on the first school established by the Jewish botanist and settler Hannah Meisel in 1911. The school was modeled after European schools for horticulture, but grew to serve the settler community and students' need to overcome financial challenges as well as the gendered structure of the labor force. As they pursued agricultural work, proximity to the land, and native status, the women taking part in the training program ultimately combined ideas about scientific progress and European theoretical foundations with Palestinian indigenous knowledge and practices. By appropriating Palestinian agricultural techniques and adopting vegetables as the main sphere of work and production, women settlers both struggled to shift gendered social hierarchies and became deeply involved in the settler-colonial project.

Xenobot, the world's first biological robot, puts numerous philosophical riddles before us. One among them pertains to the cognitive status of these entities. Are these biological robots cognitive? To evaluate the cognitive status of xenobots and to resolve the puzzle of a single mind emerging from smaller sub-units, in this article, I juxtapose the cognitive capacities of xenobots with that of two other minimal models of cognition, i.e., basal cognition and nonliving active matter cognition. Further, the article underlines the essential cognitive capabilities that xenobots need to achieve to enter what I call stage 1 of xenobotic cognition. Stage 1 is characterized by numerous cognitive mechanisms, which are integral for the survival and cognition of basal organisms. Finally, I suggest that developing xenobots that can reach Stage 1 can help us achieve sophistication in the areas of evolution of the human mind, robotics, biology and medicine, and artificial intelligence (AI).

The Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India (AHSI), founded in 1820, remains the most important producer of English-language knowledge regarding the cultivation of plants in colonial India. Members included missionaries, colonial officials, tea and indigo planters, merchants and bankers, as well as the Bengali bhadralok elites of Calcutta and some Indian princes. The writings it produced were highly gendered. Often they focus on how "improving" the political economy and agricultural productivity would create masculine identities, such as gentlemen landowners and industrious peasant husbandman. Yet I also argue that women's agricultural work was fundamental in imagining this path towards "improvement." Using descriptions of Indian farming and labor practices from the Society's meeting minutes and published transactions, as well as additional writings by its members and missionary founders, I show how many European members of the Society viewed women working outside of domestic pursuits as a sign of Indian inferiority. At the same time, many argued for the benefits of women's work, which they viewed as fundamental in making Indian households more productive. Women and their labor were a lynchpin in creating the idea of the effeminate Indian man as well as the solution for improving him. It was this intersection of race with gender which helped to define agriculture as a discipline much closer to practical knowledge than abstract science. While some European women were able to participate in the Society's production of scientific knowledge because of agriculture's practical nature, Indian knowledge (whether from men or women) tended to be openly dismissed as tradition or habit rather than truly practical. The overlap of gender with race consequently helped to create a hierarchy between practical knowledge and tradition.

According to the Dutch chemist Gerrit Jan Mulder (1802-1880), the principal aim of university education was character building and moral edification. Professional training was of secondary importance. Mulder's ideas about the vocation and moral mission of the university professor can serve as a historical counterpart to later Weberian, Mertonian, and contemporary ideas on the ethos of science. I argue that a revaluation of the moral precepts that Mulder saw as defining the life of an academic is helpful in dealing with the problems of late modern science, such as the replication crisis and research misconduct. Addressing such problems must start in the university classrooms. To empower students to internalize the principles of responsible conduct of research, we need an updated version of Mulder's idea of the university professor as a moral agent.

In well-established disciplines like history it is not common to find professionals who admit that they are driven by a "calling" or who say they have a "mission" to fulfill. In emerging disciplines, however, the situation is different: in order to gain recognition these new disciplines need highly driven practitioners, who's calling enables them to overcome opposition or neglect from the side of the established disciplines. A clear example of such a practitioner with a mission in an emerging field of knowledge is the Dutch historian of science Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (1892-1965). His career as a mathematics teacher, historical scholar, and public intellectual was marked by the desire to re-integrate science and mathematics in culture in general. Dijksterhuis regarded the history of science as a major instrument to bring about this ideal. His magnum opus, The Mechanization of the World Picture (first published in 1950 in Dutch; translated into English in 1961), was the culmination of a lifetime of writing in the service of a cultural vision that can still inspire our own generation.

This essay aims to shed some light on the still common sense of a vocation among scientists. Taking its cue from Paul Forman's analysis of twentieth-century disciplinary science and Emile Durkheim's social view of religions, it suggests that modern scientific communities resemble religious communities in their penchant for transcendence. The essay aims to illustrate this perspective by looking at some developments within the physics discipline since its emergence in the late nineteenth century. One indication for this penchant is the tendency to distance oneself from the material conditions which allowed the discipline to flourish. These utilitarian conditions, industrial as well as material, were seen to pose a threat to the disinterested pursuit of truth. Another is the persistent tendency among theoretical physicists to search for otherworldly, immaterial and unifying foundations.

This editorial introduces the collection, "Specialists with Spirit: Re-Enchanting the Vocation of Science," co-edited by Dorien Daling and Hanneke Hoekstra. The collection offers a tribute to the eminent historian of science, Klaas van Berkel, commemorating his retirement from the University of Groningen. The papers compel us to consider the ongoing tensions between knowledge production and the social, political, and economic constraints faced by scholars, a theme that Max Weber famously addressed in his 1917 lecture, Wissenschaft als Beruf, which the collection's contributors revisit as they consider a range of historical and contemporary questions concerning science and its study by historians.

Intellectuals tend to cherish heroes who embody their ideal way of life. The fact that the personas of the unworldly Greek philosophers Diogenes and Crates were so popular in the late Middle Ages proves that Max Weber's Idealtypus of the "authentic man of science" (as termed by Steven Shapin) has been problematic for centuries. This finding gives cause to modify Max Weber's and Shapin's viewpoints about the loss of the "authentic man of science" due to professionalization. The development of the university as an educational institution in the High Middle Ages chained the academic once and for all to a formal training that costs time and money: investments that were expected to have reward. Soon, university-trained experts were highly appreciated by local and national authorities. By combining Frank Rexroth's and Marcel Bubert's ideas on the coming into being of an "amor sciendi" in the twelfth century Arts faculties, with David Kaldewey's and Klaas van Berkel's appeals for academic autonomy, my article argues that academics have always struggled to protect the pursuit of truth, even while they recognized its vital importance from the beginning.

This article is both a comment on the collection of papers, "Specialists with Spirit: Re-Enchanting the Vocation of Science," offered as a tribute to Klaas van Berkel, and an attempt to add historical depth to present-day sensibilities about the academic discipline called the history of science: Is it a special sort of inquiry? Is science as its subject matter a special sort of culture? Max Weber's 1917 Science as a Vocation lecture, and its continuing appropriations, is a focal point for addressing these questions.

In his 1917 lecture for Munich students (most often entitled in English translation "Science as a Vocation"), Max Weber addressed numerous issues: not only how "profession" and "calling" are related in science and scholarship, but also Entzauberung ("disenchantment"); rationality and its limits; ultimate values; and the field of tension between science and religion. The present essay locates these themes in Weber's oeuvre from 1911 onward, and analyses how they resonate and culminate in Weber's address in 1917. It is in 1911 that he decided to engage with the problem that was to stand central in his thinking until his death in 1920: the nature and causes of certain specific turns in the course of European history which, so he argued, have proven to be of "universal significance." Special attention is given in the present essay to how Weber dealt in this connection with the rise of modern science and the rise of modern tonal harmony. A concluding section explains what, over a century later, makes reading Weber still so rewarding an experience.

Can love affect knowledge and knowledge affect love? John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor-Mill, Max and Marianne Weber, and Bertrand and Dora Russell had a definite vocation: they wanted to change the world. They questioned traditional gender arrangements through publications on equality, marriage, and education. They were liberal thinkers, advocating individual freedom and autonomy, vis à vis the constraints of state and society. Their partnership inspired their work, a living experiment conducted through their own unconventional relationship. Over time, their increasingly radical, avant-garde ideas on marriage complicated the ongoing negotiation over power and intimacy which typified their marriages. Building on the historiography of social science couples, and by means of an analysis of the micro-social dynamics of marriage as documented in the life writings of the Mills, the Webers, and the Russells, I analyse the connections between gender, intimacy, and creativity. These couples' experiences highlight the non-rational dimension of a most rational endeavour.