TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
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| Blair in climate inaction warning Former UK Prime Minster Tony Blair warns world leaders they may pay a heavy price in history if they fail to tackle global warming. bbc.co.uk |
3 ultra-efficient cars win $10M innovation award By DEE-ANN DURBIN 2010-09-16T05:08:02ZDETROIT (AP) -- An ultralight, gas-powered car that can get 102 miles per gallon is among the winners of the $10 million Automotive X Prize, a contest to develop highly efficient, production-ready vehicles.... hosted.ap.org |
Psychiatric experts assess parental alienation By DAVID CRARY 2010-10-02T03:38:23ZNEW YORK (AP) -- The American Psychiatric Association has a hot potato on its hands as it updates its catalog of mental disorders - whether to include parental alienation, a disputed term conveying how a child's relationship with one estranged parent can be poisoned by the other.... hosted.ap.org |
Virus Deadly in Livestock Is No More, U.N. Declares A vaccine campaign stopped the virus, which was last seen in Kenya in 2001. It is only the second disease, after smallpox, to be declared eradicated. feeds.nytimes.com |
Honor Frost obituary Pioneer of underwater archaeology fascinated by the MediterraneanHonor Frost had many talents – as artist, ballet designer, scholar, writer and publicist, to name a few – but her consuming passion was the world beneath the oceans. Honor, who has died aged 92, initiated underwater archaeology as a serious field for study, and pioneered its pursuit as a scientific discipline.In the 1950s, she was the first diver to realise that it was essential not only to record shipwrecks of particular historical interest photographically, but also to represent them in meticulously detailed plans. From a modest start in 1956 on a wreck off the south coast of Turkey, she developed her technique throughout the Mediterranean. She organised the spectacular excavation and reconstruction of a Carthaginian warship at Marsala in Sicily, and led an underwater campaign investigating the ancient port of Alexandria.As she herself related in her first work (mischievously entitled Under the Mediterranean, Travels with My Bottle, 1963), Honor's entry into the underwater world happened by accident. Just after the second world war, she had attended a party given by a friend at a 17th-century house on Wimbledon Hill, in south-west London. In the garden was a well, and her host improbably provided her with a diving suit. Honor descended, and became entranced by the experience, moved in particular by the falling leaves drifting through the water around her. She was hooked, and thus began a lifetime's devotion to underwater discovery. As a keen diver, she sought out Jacques Cousteau (a world leader in the field) in the south of France, soon after he had developed the aqualung in the 1940s, and Cousteau's assistant Frédéric Dumas became her close friend and mentor.A chance encounter in the early 50s took Honor to the Middle East, where she worked for Kathleen Kenyon as an archaeological draughtsman at excavations in Jericho. There she drew plans of underground bronze-age tombs and their contents, cut into the fractured rock of the rift valley in Jordan. After the dig was over, Honor moved to Lebanon and, under the wing of the Institut Français d'Archéologie in Beirut, explored the ancient harbours at Tyre and Sidon, and along the Syrian coast, which became a lifelong preoccupation. This was also the start of her interest in stone anchors – she spotted a series of them built into the walls of the bronze age temple at Byblos, and then discovered similar anchors off the nearby coast.Her curiosity led her to explore the southern coast of Turkey, and in 1957 she arrived with her aqualung at Bodrum, then a sleepy little village, reached only by a dirt track. Here she met two like-minded divers, the American Peter Throckmorton and the Turk Mustafa Kapkin. The three of them hired a caique and discovered an ancient wreck. Besides photographing it, Honor had the inspiration to apply her Jericho experience with Kenyon to make a detailed plan of it. This was the genesis of scientific underwater archaeology.An only child, born in Nicosia, Cyprus, Honor lost both her parents in childhood, and became the ward of Wilfred Evill, a noted London solicitor. He was charged with her education, and over the years they developed a close, although sometimes stormy, friendship. On Evill's death, his ward inherited his estate and an extraordinary amalgam of works of art. As a collector, Evill's philosophy had been that art knew no boundaries, and if it had quality it could all be mixed up together. In his case it included the finest Regency furniture, antique glass, Chinese porcelain and contemporary paintings, with works by Graham Sutherland and Stanley Spencer.Honor inherited not only the collection, but Evill's offices in Welbeck Street, in a Georgian house which became her home. She resided on the top two floors, decorating them to her own taste, with crimson walls and marbled wallpaper, and a massive 17th-century Portuguese bronze knocker in the form of a dolphin on her front door. Her connections with the art world were significant, for she had studied at the Central School of Art, London, and the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, then worked as a designer for the Ballet Rambert, and finally became director of publications at the Tate Gallery. She was also a close friend of Erica Brausen, director of the Hanover Gallery during its heyday and the first to exhibit Francis Bacon.Honor's fascination with the Mediterranean eventually led to her acquiring a house in Malta as a second home. She was a frequent and incisive contributor to the Mariner's Mirror, the journal of the Society for Nautical Research, often on her favourite topic, the stone anchor. Just as one cannot comprehend a motor car without studying its brakes, she saw the crucial role of ru for understanding shipwrecks, and in this she was once more a pioneer. Her exceptional skills were recognised by the Society of Antiquaries, of which she was elected a fellow in 1969.Later in life, Honor had two hip replacements, but maintained her inexhaustible energy. Just a few months ago, she was planning yet another season at Sidon and also to visit India for the first time, to see what she believed to be the largest stone anchor in the world. Honor had married once, but after her separation remained single – though not without her share of admirers – and was supported by her numerous friends of both sexes, young and old. She is survived by her niece, Alison Cathie.• Honor Frost, scholar, explorer and underwater archaeologist, born 28 October 1917; died 12 September 2010ArchaeologyPeople in scienceMiddle EastLebanonArtguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |