Holmes, Arthur

Holmes A. (1937) The Age of the Earth. Holmes, Arthur, Thomas Nelson Sons Ltd., London, UK, 263pp. 

Extrapolating from prior examples of group formation to future possibilities is a deductive process, and so it is perhaps not so unusual to bring Arthur Conan Doyle s Sherlock Holmes into the discussion. As devoted readers will testify, Conan Doyle s stories are filled with physical details, particularly those relating to the persons and behaviors of his characters. Some of those physical traits are immediately observable to other characters in the stories, whereas other physical traits are apparent only after their logical relation to human actions are made evident by Holmes. 

Agatha Christie s murder mysteries Alphabet series (A is for Alibi) by Sue Grafton The Client by John Grisham Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Shining by Stephen King Watcher by Dean R. Koontz... 

Many recent publications have focused on the chemical revolution of Lavoisier, providing a much broader context within which this work clearly fits. Perhaps the most important contemporary writer is Frederic Lawrence Holmes, who has published two books on Lavoisier, both based on detailed examination of Lavoisier s laboratory notebooks. These have provided the modern reader with a reliable analysis of Lavoisier s chemical thinking. Accounts of Lavoisier s broader activities have also been given by Arthur Donovan and Jean-Pierre Poirier. ... 

Frederic Lawrence Holmes, Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life An Exploration of Scien-tific Creativity (Madison University of Wisconsin Press, Antoine Lavoisier The Next Crucial Year (Princeton Princeton University Press, 1998). See also Holmes, Lavoisier s Conceptual Passage, in Arthur Donovan, ed., The Chemical Revolution. Essays in Reinterpretation, Osiris 4 (1988) 82-92. This special issue of Osiris also contains C.E. Perrin, Research Traditions, Lavoisier and the Chemical Revolution, 53-81. 

In 1946, Arthur Holmes and Fredrich Houtermans built on previous work to independently develop a general model for isotopic evolution of lead in the Earth. The Holmes-Houtermans common-lead method enabled determination of the ages of common leads that have had single-stage histories and was used by Clair Patterson in the mid-1950s to determine the age of the Earth. 

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of all people, was completely taken in. The creator of Sherlock Holmes, the most logical and scientific of fictional detectives, was a firm believer in spiritualism, in spite of the fact that he was a physician by training and took great pride in his powers of observation. One day, while on rounds at an Edinburgh hospital, he stopped to examine a sick baby. He then told the child s mother that she must stop painting the baby s crib. When the startled lady asked him how... 

In 1910, Arthur Holmes, a 20-year-old geology student at Imperial College in London, realized that radioactive decay could be used to measure the age of a rock. Physicists had discovered that U decays with a half life of 4.5 billion years to eight atoms of He and suspected that the final product was Pb. Holmes conjectured that when a U-containing mineral crystallized, it should be relatively free of impurities. Once the mineral solidified, Pb would begin to accumulate. The ratio Pb/U is a clock giving the age of the mineral. 

Then in 1887 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Doyle 1981, p. 22) published several fictional cases involving Sherlock Holmes such as A Study in Scarlet in Beeton s Christmas Annual of London, where Holmes can tell at a glance different soils from each other. .. has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their color and consistence in what part of London he had received them. In 1891 in The Five Orange Pips, Holmes observed, chalk-rich soil ... 

Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes. Castle Books, Secaucus. 1977. 

Frederic L. Holmes, The Boundaries of Lavoisier s Chemical Revolution, in Lavoisier et la Revolution chimique, ed. Goupil, 13-14. These two issues have always been confounded in historiography. For a recent example, see Arthur Donovan, Lavoisier and the Origins of Modern Chemistry, Osiris [2] 4, 1988, 214-231. 

If you are sure that the problem is one you have encountered before and solved successfiilly, you can simply follow your previous procedure. However, if the problem is or looks as if it is a new problem, you need to follow carefully the recommended checklist outlined in Table 2.4. An expert proceeds in problem solving by abbreviated steps many are done only mentally. A beginner should go through each step explicitly until he or she becomes experienced. For guidance, perhaps you should turn to Sherlock Holmes (as cited in Arthur Conan Doyle s The Naval Treaty ) ... 

Some of the suggested emendations can be found in the papers in The Chemical Revolution Essays in Reinterpretation, ed. Arthur Donovan, Osiris 4, 1988. J. B. Gough, Lavoisier and the Fulfillment of the Stahlian Revolution, (15-33) and Robert Siegfried, The Chemical Revolution in the History of Chemistry, (34-50) are especially relevant. A good recent summary of the historiography of emendations to the Chemical Revolution narrative is found in Frederic L. Holmes, The Boundaries of Lavoisier s Chemical Revolution, Revue d histoire des sciences 48, 1995, 11-13. 

Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Scandal in Bohemia," The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1891... 

Lavoisier s Methodological Revolution Adopting similar theoreticist and internalist sensibilities, Arthur Donovan projected a more revolutionary image of Lavoisier s science. Like Holmes, Donovan... 

Nineteenth-century medicine is characterized by investigations at the cellular level (including microbial level), the molecular level, and by even more ruthless combination of observation and hypothetical reasoning. Rational, logical methods were notably a feature by the time of late Victorian medicine. For example, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle s medical school teacher taught the system of observation and deduction that is vividly expressed in Doyle s Sherlock Holmes stories. 

The Alkylation of Esters and Nitriles Arthur C. Cope. H. I.. Holmes, and Herbert O. House... 

A literary mystery is also cormected to barirrm srrlfate. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle s crime story titled A Case of Identity, a conversation between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson goes like this. 

Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle... 

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. Sherlock Holmes in A Scandal in Bohemia (1891), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is believed by many to have first popularized the application of forensic analysis through his newspaper serials originally pubhshed in 1887 featuring the fictional character Sherlock Holmes. This work is thought to have inspired many of the early forensic scientists. One of these was Frenchman Edmond Locard, who proposed that when two objects come into contact with one another, a cross-transfer of evidence occurs (1,2). This is the basis of Locard s Exchange Principle and is the foundation of how we can often use physical evidence to link or at least associate a suspect to a crime scene or a victim. Depending on the nature of the evidence, a wide range of analytical methods are used in forensic casework. 

Of course, much interest in strychnine centers on its pharmacological properties. It is a powerful convulsant, lethal to an adult human in a dose as small as 30 mg. Death comes from central respiratory failure and is preceded by violent convulsions. Strychnine is the deadly agent in many a murder story, real and imagined. One example is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle s Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Sign of the Four, in which Dr. Watson suggests the lethal agent to be a powerful vegetable alkaloid. .. some strychnine-like substance. ... 

---