Courtesy of the USF Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History A portrait of Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci by You Wenhui; painted at the time of Ricci’s death in Beijing, 1610. It now hangs at the Jesuit residence in Rome. It is the only known depiction of Ricci taken “from life.” When Matteo Ricci walked the streets of Beijing more than 400 years ago, he was a
Espionage at the Edge of Empire Espionage at the Edge of Empire
By BENJAMIN BREEN
by Gregory Afinogenov
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was commonplace to imagine a scientist as a lone toiler in a space of solitary reflection: Darwin on his walks on the grounds of Down House, say, or Caroline Herschel at her late night vigils beside her telescope. This changed, decisively, with the advent of “Big Science” in the early twentieth century. Historians began to re-envision science as an inherently
collective endeavor, the work of teams, corporations, or states. “Science can be effective in the national welfare only as a member of a team,” Vannevar Bush declared in his influential 1945 report