Robert Proctor
@rproctor.bsky.social
Architectural historian of the twentieth century.
Robert Neel Proctor is an American historian of science and Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University, where he is also Professor by courtesy of Pulmonary Medicine. While a professor of the history of science at Pennsylvania State University in 1999, he became the first historian to testify against the tobacco industry. .. more
History
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Engineering
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Robert Proctor
@rproctor.bsky.social
· May 30
Percy Thomas | UWP
www.uwp.co.uk
My book is finally published! Percy Thomas: Modern Architecture as a National Service. www.uwp.co.uk/book/percy-t...
Particularly admired this Walter Ritchie sculpture, mid-1950s, moved to the side of the art gallery, representing (so the sign says) 'Man's struggle to control the world inside himself' and that 'outside himself'.
Short trip to Coventry, where I saw some wonders I remember and others I didn't.
'after a detailed investigation, and a flurry of mathematical modelling, Prof Alain Goriely at the University of Oxford has reached an awkward conclusion. The optical illusions the curves are meant to fix are either nonsense or practically imperceptible....the illusions are themselves an illusion.'
UK mathematician debunks myth around Parthenon’s optical illusions
Study challenges belief that temple’s curves were designed to correct optical illusions that would have ruined its clean lines
www.theguardian.com
Have always suspected this, that the curves are to give a definite character rather than to appear straight.
Reposted by Robert Proctor
UK mathematician debunks myth around Parthenon’s optical illusions
Study challenges belief that temple’s curves were designed to correct optical illusions that would have ruined its clean lines
www.theguardian.com
'after a detailed investigation, and a flurry of mathematical modelling, Prof Alain Goriely at the University of Oxford has reached an awkward conclusion. The optical illusions the curves are meant to fix are either nonsense or practically imperceptible....the illusions are themselves an illusion.'
Already a problem for most C20 research due to the invention of the telephone. Also wonder how we'll understand what anything looked like since nobody prints photos any more.