Turning the Book Wheel

from the first edition of Peter Apianus’ Cosmographicus liber (1524) a volvelle or movable diagram showing a map of the world including America!

The Epitoma (1496), an abridgement and translation of the Syntaxis of Ptolemy, was begun by Georg von Peurbach and finished by his pupil, Johannes Müller, better known as Regiomontanus, who died today in 1476. This image is from our recently scanned copy in the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology which is available for download in its entirety from the Internet Archive

Portrait of Tatiana Ehrenfest-Afanaseva (1876-1964) for Women’s History Month.

Tatyana Afanaseva (also written Afanasyeva) was a Russian mathematician who studied at the University of Göttingen.  She married physicist Paul Ehrenfest in 1904 and they collaborated throughout their careers, most notably on a review of statistical mechanics.

Smithsonian Libraries has a handwritten article (later published in Physikalische Zeitschrift in 1913) by Afanaseva titled “Zur frage uber die Koncentrationsschwankungen in Radioactiven Losungen.” (“To the question of concentration fluctuations in radioactive solutions.”) (transl. approximate, courtesy Google Translate.)