“Time for a Universe” by R. S. Richardson looks at how the age of the universe has been calculated by various means (expansion of the universe, uranium clock, dynamics of clusters, and statistics of binaries) and the differences in the results.
There is also a good anecdote about the necessity of being cautious about data:
There is a story told about Robert lvirchoff [presumably Gustav Kirchhoff, with whom Bunsen worked], the physicist, and Wilhelm von Bunsen, inventor of the Bunsen burner, that is worth repeating. The two were strolling across the campus of the University of Heidelberg one sunny afternoon deep in conversation upon some abstruse subject. As they passed a silver-coated globe set on the lawn as an ornament Bunsen absent-mindedly ran his fingers over the reflecting surface. To his amazement the side exposed directly to the sun was cooler than the side in shadow.
Immediately the two stopped and began excitedly to investigate this anomalous heating effect. Here perhaps was a new phenomenon in heat conduction involving some mysterious interaction between solar radiation and the reflecting properties of silver. While they were busy devising a theory to account for it the school janitor came by and reversed the position of the globe.
“I have to keep turning it around every once in a while on these hot days,” he remarked.
The story is pretty good except that it seems doubtful whether a reflecting surface as good as silver would heat up so seriously. p. 107
Some quick googling doesn’t turn up any variants of the story, although WP does note of Bunsen that “Despite his lack of pretension, Bunsen was a vivid “chemical character”, had a well-developed sense of humour, and is the subject of many amusing anecdotes.”, and the cited paper, Jensen 2013, goes so far as to dub the genre of anecdotes as “Bunseniana”, and describes many published sources in German, so it is entirely possible that all the sources are in German rather than English.
Unfortunately, while entertaining, and noting that Oesper had personal acquaintance with Bunsen students, Jensen 2013 doesn’t contain any story like the sphere, and quickly checking 1 Oesper paper which should cover Bunsen’s Heidelberg period, it doesn’t either.
This doesn’t imply that R. S. Richardson is telling tales; in the 1940s, it was still usually a requirement for chemistry majors, among others, to learn either French or German, due to the dominance of those in STEM, before WWII and decades of American growth resulted in that requirement being discarded. So he could easily have learned it in German directly, or heard the story from someone who did. Oesper also apparently did a lot of research & publishing about chemist biographies, most of which (like his major book The Human Side of Scientists) is not easy to access right now, so it could easily be somewhere in there too. I don’t care enough to look into it further, but maybe someone else will.
The radiator story might be real, apparently. I was reading a random review of an Astounding issue (November 1944) and was surprised to see this part:
Some quick googling doesn’t turn up any variants of the story, although WP does note of Bunsen that “Despite his lack of pretension, Bunsen was a vivid “chemical character”, had a well-developed sense of humour, and is the subject of many amusing anecdotes.”, and the cited paper, Jensen 2013, goes so far as to dub the genre of anecdotes as “Bunseniana”, and describes many published sources in German, so it is entirely possible that all the sources are in German rather than English.
Unfortunately, while entertaining, and noting that Oesper had personal acquaintance with Bunsen students, Jensen 2013 doesn’t contain any story like the sphere, and quickly checking 1 Oesper paper which should cover Bunsen’s Heidelberg period, it doesn’t either.
This doesn’t imply that R. S. Richardson is telling tales; in the 1940s, it was still usually a requirement for chemistry majors, among others, to learn either French or German, due to the dominance of those in STEM, before WWII and decades of American growth resulted in that requirement being discarded. So he could easily have learned it in German directly, or heard the story from someone who did. Oesper also apparently did a lot of research & publishing about chemist biographies, most of which (like his major book The Human Side of Scientists) is not easy to access right now, so it could easily be somewhere in there too. I don’t care enough to look into it further, but maybe someone else will.