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

No current projects were found for this scholar.

Mathematics, the Body, and the Soul: Nicolaus Steno and the Search for Certainty in the 17th Century

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Selected Publications

Castel-Branco, Nuno (2024). “Thinking the Earth with the Body: How the Anatomist Nicolaus Steno (1638–1686) Read History in the Earth’s Strata.” Isis 115 (2): 312–334. https://doi.org/10.1086/730392.

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Castel-Branco, Nuno and Troels Kardel (2022). “Drawing Muscles with Diagrams: How a Novel Dissection Cut Inspired Nicolaus Steno’s Mathematical Myology (1667).” Notes and Records, June 29, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2022.0005.

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Castel-Branco, Nuno (2022). “Physico-Mathematics and the Life Sciences: Experiencing the Mechanism of Venous Return, 1650s–1680s.” Annals of Science 79 (4): 442–467. https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2022.2086301.

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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…

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Past Events

Presentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities

"Was Galileo a Heretic? Make up your mind."

JHU Class, Johns Hopkins University

"Amicizia promossa da veleni: la collaborazione tra Niccolò Stenone e Francesco Redi"

International Congress on "Poison. Knowledge, uses, pratices.", University of Trent

"Nicolaus Steno’s Arrival in Italy and Mathematics"

International Conference Galilean Foundations for a Solid Earth 1669-2019: 350th anniversary of Nicolaus Steno’s Prodromus, University of Florence

"Material Piety: Science and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Portugal"

Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Renaissance Society of America, Toronto

"Hendrick Uwens and the mathematical backstage of a missionary’s life"

Missionary Orbits workshop: Science and Medicine in the Early Modern World, Johns Hopkins University

News & Press

Nuno Castel-Branco awarded AH Oliveira Marques Prize for Best Article

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