Herbert Spencer versus Thomson and Tait

Reevaluating progressive eugenics: Herbert Spencer Jennings and the 1924 immigration legislation.

From 'circumstances' to 'environment': Herbert Spencer and the origins of the idea of organism-environment interaction.

The word 'environment' has a history. Before the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of a singular, abstract entity--the organism--interacting with another singular, abstract entity--the environment--was virtually unknown. In this paper I trace how the idea of a plurality of external conditions or circumstances was replaced by the idea of a singular environment. The central figure behind this shif...

Lawson Tait, His Life and Work

lawson tait, his life and work By W. J. Stewart McKay, M.B., M.Ch., B.Sc , Bailllere, Tlndall & Cox,,London 1922. 578 pp. With 34 plates. Price 25s. net. This is a remarkable book. It is something much more than a mere life of Lawson Tait : it is a vigorous, well written and exceptionally interesting account of the origins and evolution of modern gynaecology and abdominal surgery. The portraits...

Michael Tait: Research Statement

My research uses algebraic and geometric methods to prove theorems in extremal combinatorics. Going the other way, I also use combinatorial methods to prove algebraic results. Algebraic methods are deeply embedded in my work and nearly all of my success in graph theoretic research has come from attacking purely combinatorial problems through the lens of algebra, combinatorial number theory, or ...

The Tait Flyping Conjecture

We announce a proof of the Tait flyping conjecture; the confirmation of this conjecture renders almost trivial the problem of deciding whether two given alternating link diagrams represent equivalent links. The proof of the conjecture also shows that alternating links have no "hidden" symmetries. In the nineteenth century, the celebrated physicist and knot tabulator P. G. Tait proposed the foll...