Are schools and hospitals really in danger, as one modern-day follower of Ayn Rand claims, of being taken over by ‘unionised postal workers’? Should Covid-19 not have made us realise, if we hadn’t already, that postmen and women, delivery workers, shop workers, warehouse workers, lorry drivers, home healthcare providers and childcare workers deserve both adequate pay and our respect?
There is no doubt that Andrija Mohorovičić deserves to be remembered. The work he did laid the foundations for the use of earthquake waves in understanding the Earth, but brilliance has not always been enough to ensure that a scientist is remembered. His work might easily have been overlooked, or lesser men might have received the credit, but this is one case where the right man has been honoured.
The first set of instructions issued by Louis de Freycinet to his officers was delivered to them in Sainte-Croix de Ténériffe on the 23 of October 1817, and the second, much longer, set ends with the statement that it was issued in the harbour of Rio de Janeiro on 28 December 1817. The diary proper then begins with the departure of the Uranie from Toulon on 17 September 1817.
Ayn Rand’s early novella ‘Anthem’ is often compared with George Orwell’s ‘;Nineteen Eighty-four’. There are some rather significant differences.
For scientists their late twenties and early thirties are commonly crucial years. They may not do their most important work during them, but it is then that they establish the habits and attitudes that will serve them throughout their careers. Andrija Mohorovičić may not have established a lasting reputation in Bakar, and the work he did there may be largely forgotten, but without Bakar he might never have had a reputation of any sort.
No sailing ship ever went to sea in the 18th or 19th centuries without boats, either on board or in tow. . Oddly, in none of the equipment lists that I have seen so far, which meticulously list the supplies and provisions taken on board, is there any mention of the boats that went with the Uranie,, but there were at least four.