Today was our first full day in London. We had arranged with Laurence Stales for a guided science  tour of London. Laurence has a web site we found  (https://www.laurenceswalks.co.uk/) that we found online. We corresponded with him before the trip and he arranged the most wonderful 6 hour ‘back streets of science’ tour. It was fantastic. Laurence is a learned, funny, friendly and articulate interpreter of science  He’s a mechanical engineer, a  published author and an archivist in the Royal Institution. .  The perfect English science guy !

 

We woke early-ish and took the tube to a shopping center opposite St. Pauls church and met up with Laurence

We learned about how Robert Hooke figured out the catenary equations that allowed Hooke in 1670 to design the proper  curvature to allow St. Pauls dome to be built. (the catnery’s are related to those weird hyperbolic functions you never used on your calculator 🙂  Hooke was a weird dude.. He was so secretive that he encoded the solution to the catenary solution he found as and anagram

abcccddeeeeefggiiiiiiiillmmmmnnnnnooprrsssttttttuuuuuuuux.

which was later decrypted into the latin as 

Ut pendet continuum flexile, sic stabit contiguum rigidum inversum

which translated to  english is

As hangs a flexible cable so, inverted, stand the touching pieces of an arch.
 
Of course 🙂 

Hooke did so many things.. he helped remap London after the great fire of 1666.. he invented the law of a springs force (still called Hookes law) .. /;  the was the head of the Royal Society…… .. When his arch Rival Sir Issac Newton took over the Royal Society, ehe had all pictures of Hooke removed….   We visited the Royal Society.. which was not much to see.. then saw it’s older more picturesque location. I enjoyed that  because the ROyal Society is the model for the US National Academy that I’m a. member of. 

 

 

We learned all this by 11 AM !

We spent the rest of the day exploring London science with Laurences expert help.   We stopped by THe brides church, Samuel Johnson (first official Eeglish lexicographer) . Kings College London (where3 I saw my freind and former bosses Harriett’s picture as one of the celebrated alums !!!

Then lunch at the Royal Society…. including a lunch at their very nice cafeteria (actually .. I think anyone can eat there.. but it felt special with lLaurence 🙂 

From there we walked a bit through the pop and circumstance of the recent coronation…  London was still in top form !

We walked to the Royal Instittion … which was my favorite thing of the day. Laurence is a. member and an archivist there. His knowledge of the place helped us reallly take in the place… 

The building is beutiful.. there4’s a model of  the physicists Michael Farady,. one of the most famous lumns.. note his hand nt the form of the right hand rule !

Touring the place with Laurence was amazing.   

We loved the art in the gallery.. many famous scientists represented here.. including painings of the famous ‘christmas lectures’.. which still happen to this day ! 

Note here that Lord Kelvin seems to be ‘resting his eyes’

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We got to visit the presentation room where so many famous sceintists have spoken.. and so many sciene talks for the public have been held. Laurnece told us that there are several talks. every month for the public on topics related to sceince… and that the christmas shows are still produced there and shown recorded on BB. It was an honor to visit that room !

 

 

From there we went into the basement where We saw equipment from some. of the most famous scientists in history :

• Dewer’s Dewer for holding super cold  liquified gases
• Gas samples purified by Humphyy Davies (a notorious Nitrous Oxide lover) .. 
• Bragg’s optical instruments
• Rayleighs spectrometer
• Thompsons particle devices. 
• Tyndall’s work on  why the sky is blue
• And.. best of all… Michael Faradays laboratory.. which has been preserved to this day thanks to a happy accident of architecture !
  
  
  

then it was time to say goodbye to Laurence. It had been such an excellent day. We highly (!!!) recommend you meet up with Laurence when you are next in london  by way of https://www.laurenceswalks.co.uk/about-me

That was already a very full day.. but it wasn’t over by a long shot ! We tube the tube back to the house. Took a short rest.. then began a mile walk to Santa Maria… a pizza place chosen by Diane’s distant cousin Massimo..  We’d made connection with Massimo by way of Diane’s brother Steve who’s done extensive genealogical research on both sides of his and Diane’s family (and his wife’s family as well) .   Steve had reached out to Massimo several years ago by mail after he and his wife Gulia had moved from Italy to England.  .. Steve lost track of Mssimo a couple of years ago… . I was able to reconnect with Massimo  on Linkedin  and we’d made a plan to meet up when we were in London. Massimo had chosen the Santa Maria Pizzaria because.. he and Gulia felt it was thepest aNapolese style pizza outsode of Naploi… Massimo said it was even better than the pizza in Napoli !

We got to Santa Maria first.. then Massimo and Gulia showed up. It was so fun meeting them !.. they are both so nice and freindly..We ordered and started into our story…   Diane and I are traveling  to Italy in September with our close friends Linda and David. Our plan is to visit the towns of the places where Dianes grandparents are from in Abruzzo and and Lindas grandmother is from in Calabria..

Our goal tonight.. aside from meeting a  wonderful new relative.. was to find out things and people to see In Abruzzo. We are specifically interested in  proving or disproving a long told family story of how Dianes grandmother came to the US

Massimo’s last name is Ruano.. his grandfather was was the brother of DIane’s grandmothers mother. Massimo and his family are from the small town of Bucchianico. in the Abruzzo region of Italy.. It’s the same town that  Diane’s Grandmother Pierina  and Grandfather Constantine  were from.  The history we know is that Dianes Grandfather came over to Binghamton NY by ship in the `1920’s . He married Teresa Mancini who was also from Bucchianico. .. Constantino and Teresa had 3 children before Teresa  sadly died of pneumonia. After a while in 1930 , Constantino sailed back to Italy to find a new wife to help him raise  the small kids, (Dieane’s aunts Toni, Marie and Armond) . Teresa’s parents actually helped Constantino find his new wife, Pierina. The family lore is that Pierina’s parents Stefano and Anna were eager to Get Pierina married off because she had two suitors and oen had killed the other .. perhaps in a duel. 

No one who could verify this story is still alive in this country, so we’re hopign to get tot he bottom of it when we visit…    Massimo was pretty sure that the story could not be true… but he picked up his phone and called his father back in  Bucchianico.. THey strarted speakign Italian… and when Massimo hung up.. he told us his dad had confirmed that when he’d been a kid, he’d heard the story.. thoguyh it happened before he was born.. It was an amazing moment..

Now we’re planning on visiting Massimo’s dad and his mom on our trop. Neither speaks english.. but by luck, Massimo’s mom also speaks German.. so I should be able to communicate ok.. It will eb so fun to learn more.. !!!I

It was a great evening with Massimo and Gulia.. they are such wonderful people..w e’re very glad to be connected to them !

We said goodbye and walked home…. processing all we’d heard…
.. what a great day !

nite all, nite sam 
-me