University of Amsterdam’s Emilie Skulberg Awarded Teylers Medal of Honor

Historian of Science Emilie Skulberg was awarded the golden medal of honour of the Teylers Second Society, for her entry with motto Coelestem adspicit lucem (“looking at the celestial light”) to the society’s 2021 competition. Skulberg received the medal during a special symposium in the Teylers Museum on Friday 28 June.

Teylers Second Society is one of two societies established using the inheritance of Pieter Teyler van der Hulst, an 18th century Dutch merchant, banker and philanthropist. The society aims to promote the arts and sciences, among other things through its annual competition. The 2021 competition asked to submit an original study on the importance of images for the development of academic fields and/or society, with a focus on the influence that such visual material has on the credibility of associated knowledge claims (“seeing is believing”).

Skulberg’s submission consisted of two published papers and one unpublished paper. A Black Hole in Ink: Jean-Pierre Luminet and “Realistic” Black Hole Imaging, co-authored with Dr. Martin Sparre, analysed how Jean-Pierre Luminet’s handmade drawing based on a simulation of a black hole accretion disk from 1978 was presented as “realistic”, even though black hole shadows had not yet been observed. “Mock Observations” of Galaxies, co-authored with Dr. Martin Sparre and Prof. Kristin Veel, analysed the aesthetics of visualisations based on the cosmological simulation Illustris. In the unpublished paper written for the 2021 competition, Seeing is Believing and the Absence of Light, Skulberg focused on the Event Horizon Telescope and examined how the visualisation of absence was used in visual arguments about evidence for the existence of black holes.

The award ceremony took place during a special symposium at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem on Friday 28 June.