Nuno Castel-Branco
Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow (Aug 2021-Jul 2022)
Nuno Castel-Branco obtained his PhD in the History of Science at Johns Hopkins University in May 2021. He received an MSc in physics from the University of Lisbon (ISTécnico) and published his research in the journal Physics Letters B. He is now studying the rise of the new sciences in seventeenth-century Europe through the career of the anatomist Nicolaus Steno. He has won several awards in Europe and the United States, such as a Fulbright Fellowship and a Huntington Exchange Fellowship. He also studies the development of Jesuit science in early modern Portugal, for which he has several articles accepted for publication in journals including Early Science and Medicine and Renaissance Quarterly.
Projects
Mathematics, the Body, and the Soul: Nicolaus Steno and the Search for Certainty in the 17th Century
Selected Publications
Castel-Branco, Nuno (2022). “Friendship Fostered by Poison: The Collaboration of Nicolaus Steno and Francesco Redi.” In Poison: Knowledge, Uses, Practices, ed. C. Mordeglia and A. Paravicini Bagliani, 325–346. Florence: SISMEL–Edizioni del Galluzzo.
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Castel-Branco, Nuno (2021). “Galileo and the Pandemic.” The Wall Street Journal, December 2021.
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Castel-Branco, Nuno (2021). “Galileo and the Pope Fell Out Over a Story About a Cidada.” Scientific American , July 9, 2021. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/galileo-and-the-pope-who-loved-cicadas/.
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Castel-Branco, Nuno (2021). “Dissecting with Numbers: Mathematics in Nicolaus Steno’s Early Anatomical Writings, 1661-64.” Substantia 5 (1 Suppl.): 29–42. https://doi.org/10.36253/Substantia-1276 .
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Presentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities
JHU Class, Johns Hopkins University
International Congress on "Poison. Knowledge, uses, pratices.", University of Trent
International Conference Galilean Foundations for a Solid Earth 1669-2019: 350th anniversary of Nicolaus Steno’s Prodromus, University of Florence
Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Renaissance Society of America, Toronto
Missionary Orbits workshop: Science and Medicine in the Early Modern World, Johns Hopkins University