Abstract
We provide a tour of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, following four routes through the city and one elsewhere in the city and beyond, focusing on sites of importance in physics. Route 1 covers the Old Town, its Gothic Quarter, Plaça del Rei, Plaça de Sant Jaume, and Jewish Quarter. Route 2 identifies sites on and close to La Rambla, the main promenade in the city. Route 3 goes from the medieval shipyards to the Board of Commerce to Citadel Park. Route 4 concentrates on the Extension (Eixample) and covers the restored University, the Industrial University, and the new campus of the University of Barcelona. Elsewhere in the city and beyond are the Fabra Observatory; the Plaça de les Glòries with its large steel sculpture depicting the meridian arc from Dunkirk to Barcelona; Montjuïc, the site of the National Art Museum of Catalonia; and the National Museum of Science and Technology in Terrassa.
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Notes
The names of institutions and streets are mostly given in Catalan, which is the language proper to Catalonia and, together with Spanish, also its official language.
Domènech i Montaner studied physics and mathematics at the University of Barcelona before embarking on his architectural career.
At the Battle of Lepanto the fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of southern European maritime states, defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire and prevented its further expansion on the European side of the Mediterranean.
A plaque at the former Palace of the Governor commemorates the inauguration of the Institut-Escola on February 3, 1932.
Inserting numbers, we obtain x = 66 ± 47.3 = 113.3 meters (when discarding the meaningless negative root), which, stated accurately, is the distance between two corresponding points in adjacent blocks.
The inscription, in Catalan, Spanish, and French reads in English: “On 20 June 1792 Jean Baptiste Délambre and Pierre Méchain started measuring the Paris meridian arc between Dunkirk and Barcelona. This operation, which took 6 years of trigonometric measurements, allowed them to calculate the circumference of the Earth and to establish the meter as the 1/10,000th part of a quarter of the terrestrial meridian.”
The plaque reads: “Des d’aquest emplaçament, el científic francès,/Pierre F. Méchain va efectuar el darrer/mesurament triangular que va donar lloc al/naixement del sistema mètric decimal./Barcelona, 10 de desembre de 1999/Del 1799 al 1999.”
References
We have privileged references in English; sources in Spanish or Catalan are usually limited to major contributions, particularly monographs. A rather useful, beautifully illustrated guide to science in the city is Xavier Duran and Mercè Piqueras, Passejades per la Barcelona científica (Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2003), also available in English as Walks around the scientific world of Barcelona (Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2003).
Robert Hughes, Barcelona (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), p. 141. On the historical construction of the Gothic Quarter, see Agustín Cócola Gant, El Barrio Gótico de Barcelona: Planificación del Pasado e Imagen de Marca (Barcelona: Ediciones Madroño, 2011); Ph.D. Dissertation, Universitat de Barcelona, 2010; website <http://hdl.handle.net/10803/2027>.
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George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952), p. 130.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Roger H. Stuewer for his careful and thoughtful editorial work on our paper. One of the authors (XR) acknowledges the support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity through the research project HAR2011-27308 Physics, Culture and Politics in Spain.
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Antoni Roca-Rosell, physicist and historian of science, has published extensively on the history of the physical sciences and technology in Catalonia and Spain. Xavier Roqué (corresponding author) trained as a physicist and historian of science; his research interests are in the history of the 20th-century physical sciences and the cultural relations of physics.
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Roca-Rosell, A., Roqué, X. Physical Science in Barcelona. Phys. Perspect. 15, 470–498 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-013-0122-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-013-0122-4
Keywords
- Ferran Alsina i Parallada
- Albert Billeter
- Ildefons Cerdà i Sunyer
- Tomàs Cerdà
- Antoni Cibat i Arnautó
- Josep Comas i Solà
- Albert Einstein
- Eduard Fontserè i Riba
- Bernat de Granollachs
- Rafael Guastavino
- Abraham bar Hiyya
- Pierre Méchain
- Narcís Monturiol i Estarriol
- George Orwell
- Santiago Ramón y Cajal
- Francesc Salvà i Campillo
- Francesc Santponç i Roca
- Francesc Subiràs
- Esteve Terradas i Illa
- Jesús M. Tharrats
- Tables of Barcelona
- University of Barcelona
- Industrial University
- Autonomous University of Barcelona
- Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona
- Royal Military Academy of Mathematics
- Royal Academy of Medicine
- Catalan Academy of Humanities and Sciences
- Catalan Society of Physics
- Catalan Society of the History of Science and Technology
- Catalan Science Archive Service
- Catalan National Library
- Maritime Museum
- Fabra Observatory
- International Exhibition of 1888
- Universal Exhibition of 1929
- history of physics and astronomy