Bulent Atalay
of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA.
LEONARDO’S BRIDGE: Part 3. “Vebjørn Sand and Variations on a Theme by Leonardo”
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on February 3, 2013 
Vebjørn Sand is a contemporary Norwegian artist, who divides his time between the United States and Norway. In 1996, in viewing a special exhibition of drawings and replicas of Leonardo’s inventions, Mr. Sand became transfixed by the shear beauty and modernity of a bridge the Renaissance master had sketched in a notebook — a bridge…
LEONARDO’S BRIDGE: Part 2. “A Bridge for the Sultan”
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on January 22, 2013 
I once heard of a tradition in Turkey that Leonardo was invited to Istanbul to paint a portrait of “Mehmed the Conqueror” (Fatih Sultan Mehmet) but was unable to accept the commission. No documentation exists to corroborate this story. But there is manifest evidence of Leonardo’s contemporary, the Venetian painter Gentile Bellini, journeying to Constantinople…
LEONARDO’S BRIDGE: Part 1. “The Master of all Trades”
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on January 17, 2013 
Leonardo (1452-1519) created no more than 17 paintings during his lifetime. This part-time artist, who created the two most famous paintings in the history of art, was a consummate scientist-engineer, imbuing his art with science, and his science with art. Although he had virtually no formal education, he possessed relentless curiosity, which in combination with…
Nine Days in August 1945
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on August 9, 2012 
On August 6, 1945 the United States detonated the first nuclear weapon over another country — dropping a fission device on Hiroshima — and just three days later, dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. The first wiped out 90% of its target and resulted in approximately 80,000 immediate deaths, the second in approximately 40,000 deaths.…
Einstein’s letter to Ataturk’s Turkey
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on May 22, 2012 
A video prepared by Çankaya University in Ankara gives the historical background to the letter. According to the narrative (in Turkish) in 1949 Einstein meets a young foreign student, Münir Ürgür, at Princeton. When he learns that Ürgür is a student from Turkey, he shows visible excitement, “Do you know,” he says, “…your nation…
EINSTEIN AND ATATURK (Part 1)
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on May 16, 2012 
This story represents the intersection in the lives of two of my lifelong heroes. First there is Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist since Isaac Newton, and Time Magazine’s choice for “The Individual of the 20th Century.” As a professor of physics for four decades I have been intimately involved with almost every component of his…
NASA PART II. MANNED SPACE FLIGHT — “A breath taking success…”
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on May 8, 2012 
“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” — Neil Armstrong With the retirement of the Shuttle Discovery, the manned space program of NASA — just one of half-a-dozen components of NASA’s mission — effectively went into dormancy, at least in as far as the use of American booster rockets in…
NASA PART I. “THE PASSING OF AN ERA: THE RETIREMENT OF THE SPACE SHUTTLE”
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on April 29, 2012 
NOTE: I am interrupting a series of blogs that I’ve been writing about Einstein, in order to write a few on NASA, on the occasion of the retirement of the Space Shuttle Program. Ten days apart NASA treated us to a pair of spectacular aerial shows, first over the monuments of Washington, DC, and then…
EINSTEIN Part II: A Bundle of Contradictions
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on March 20, 2012 
Albert Einstein, whose name has become synonymous with “genius,” was a complex man, a virtual bundle of contradictions. The ultimate intellectual rebel, he demonstrated a level of intuition and imagination beyond any mathematical scientist since Isaac Newton. He was a very good mathematician, but not a mathematical genius in the mode of Newton, who…
EINSTEIN Part I: The Pi in ‘π-day’
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on March 16, 2012 
Among physics students, March 14 is known as “π-Day” (“Pi-Day”) the day that Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany in 1879. The venerable physicist is known for changing the very paradigm of physics, rejecting the three “fundamental undefinables” of length, mass and time as invariant, and positing in their place the speed of…
Patterns in Creativity: Leonardo and Newton – Corcoran Gallery of Art
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on December 2, 2011 To former students and other friends in the Washington, DC area. I would love to see you at the lecture, Patterns in Creativity: Leonardo and Newton – Corcoran Gallery of Art. on December 7 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. These two transformative geniuses share many traits, and differ in many others. I plan to…
The Passing of a Scientific Giant: Norman F. Ramsey (1915-2011)
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on November 8, 2011 
On November 4, 2011, Norman F. Ramsey, one of the titans of 20th century science, passed away in Wayland, Massachusetts. His life and career had spanned almost a century. The technologies that sprung from his work touch the lives of billions living today. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), a mainstay of medical diagnostics technology, and the Atomic…
A Tribute to Steve Jobs
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on October 6, 2011 
August 10, 2011. The Crystal Serenity, the cruise ship on which I was serving as a lecturer, was anchored in the French Riviera, off the coast of Cannes. Late at night I wandered into the computer lab where a roomful of 27″ iIMacs (68 cm) were fast asleep, their screen savers creating an eye catching…
A Decade After 9/11
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on September 11, 2011 
9/11 Boat Rescue The photograph shows a mangled piece of the original antenna crowning one of the 110 story buildings. The relic is on permanent display at the Newseum in Washington, DC. (Photo by the author.) This is a sad day in the United States, as well as in the rest of the civilized world.…
A Brief History of the Astronomical Telescope IV: Did Leonardo Invent the Telescope 100 Years Before Galileo?
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on July 5, 2011 
Unbeknownst to me in the 2005 PICMET talk, André Buys was in the audience. A professor at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, Buys was a nuclear engineer, and an avid amateur telescope maker. In the following two years Dr. Buys delved deeply into Leonardo’s surviving codices, and even built a replica of…
A Brief History of the Astronomical Telescope III: Newton and his Reflecting Telescope
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on June 21, 2011 
“Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in night. God said, ‘Let Newton Be!’ And all was light.” . — Alexander Pope. Galileo died in 1642 after a turbulent…
Brief History of the Astronomical Telescope II: Lenses and Mirrors
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on June 13, 2011 
Transparent materials, including glass, diamonds or even water, will bend, or refract, rays of light. If a globule of the transparent material possesses axial symmetry, then it can focus the light, or act as “a lens” (a word inspired by the Latin word for a grain of lentil, evocative of the shape of the double…
Brief History of the Astronomical Telescope I: Galileo Galilei and the unlikely fate of his middle finger…
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on May 25, 2011 
Just as 2005, commemorating the Centennial of Einstein’s Annus Mirabilus (“Miracle Year”) was celebrated as the “Year of Physics,” 2009 commemorating the 400th Anniversary of the invention of the astronomical telescope was celebrated as the “Year of Astronomy.” It is generally known that the German-Dutch lens maker Hans Lipperchey had received the first patent for…
Remembering Gallipoli II: Resurrecting Ismail Hakki
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on May 9, 2011 
On June 23, 2006 I had been serving as a lecturer on board the cruise ship, Crystal Serenity, when the ship docked for the day in Thessalonica (the old Ottoman Turkish city of “Selanik”). With close friends from the ship, I drove to Virgina, to see the tumulus of Phillip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the…
Remembering Gallipoli I: ANZAC Day 2011
Posted by Bulent Atalay of Author, National Geographic Books; author, Smithsonian Books; Prof. UMW, Adj Prof UVA. on May 3, 2011 
Sailing north through the Dardanelles, the straits that separate the Asian side of Turkey from the European, the land is pockmarked with numberless trenches. It is here that hundreds of thousands of troops — Turkish and Allied — faced each other in 1915. The preponderant numbers on the Allied side comprised the Australian and New Zealand troops, mobilized into the “Australian and New Zealand Army Corps,” or “ANZAC.” When it was all over, a half million young men, approximately evenly divided between the two sides, had been wounded or killed.
