Session 1: The Great Inventions That Changed the World
A series of online conferences, open to the general public.
The "Wednesdays of the Miguel Alemán Chair of Excellence" presents a series of 4 web conferences on the theme of "Great Inventions that Changed the World", organized with the Universidad Antónoma de Mexico (Unam), Indiana University and Sorbonne University.
Held on the last Wednesday of each month from January to April, from 4:00 pm to 6:30 pm.
The conferences will have the same format: two speakers on the same theme, a moderator and a discussion with the public. They will be accessible in the three languages (English, Spanish and French) simultaneously.
The conference on January 27, 2021 will be devoted to navigation.
Abstract:
- Louise Bénat-Tachot (Sorbonne University) "The art of navigation through the prism of American waters: expertise and challenges in the 16th century".
The objective is to analyze how people learned to navigate in American waters. The challenges were many: identifying the wind and current system, weather phenomena, unprecedented weather conditions along the American continents, from pole to pole. Some of the pilots distinguished themselves by their accumulated knowledge and experience. Thus, these actors of the nascent colonization wrote new chapters of an Americanized "art of navigation".
- Marcelo Ramírez Ruiz, (UNAM): "Circumnavigation and Cosmographic Problems in the 16th Century".
For many centuries, navigation was confronted with the problem of calculating the equivalence in leagues of one degree of the equatorial circumference. The results determined the measurement of distances at different latitudes, routes and the delimitation of imperial domains, as we will analyze in the case of the round-the-world voyage in the 16th century.
Moderator: Pedro Machado (Indiana University)
Privileged Partnerships
Within the framework of its strategic partnerships, Sorbonne University maintains a special link with these two prestigious institutions, in the field of the humanities and the origins of life, and soon of environmental transition and climate, music, heritage and chemistry, with UNAM.
With Indiana University, cooperation focuses on high-energy physics, neurosciences and artificial intelligence. Other disciplines will also be the subject of joint work, such as history, linguistics, journalism and communication.
This series of lectures is an illustration of these fruitful exchanges.