Every so often you read about someone who is so interesting and so unexpected that you have to find out more. I spent a happy few hours this week reading about a woman who fit this this description. She was, in many ways, a woman out of time—even though born in the 19th century, I have a feeling she'd be very comfortable living today.
She was a mining engineer who earned her degree at Stanford, traveled to China with her husband at the end of the 19th century and managed to survive the rebellion at that time. In the process she learned Chinese well enough to speak it with her husband whenever they didn't want to be overheard in the US, and with her husband, published the first translation of an important 16th century Latin manuscript on mining. Here's an image from that text (that I've color-shifted and edited in ways that break the search-by-image function. Sorry. I'm not going to make your search that easy!)
There's much more to say about this woman, but if I tell you too much more, it'll be a piece of cake to figure out who she is. But I will tell you one other clue: she was introduced to her future husband by the famous geologist Dr. Branner while they were still in school. They married and had a pretty amazing life together.
The question for you is this: Who is this remarkable woman? For extra credit, what gold medal did she win? (And why?)
Again, if you can, please let me know HOW long it took you to find the answer, and if you can, WHAT process you went through to find out!
Search on!
She was a mining engineer who earned her degree at Stanford, traveled to China with her husband at the end of the 19th century and managed to survive the rebellion at that time. In the process she learned Chinese well enough to speak it with her husband whenever they didn't want to be overheard in the US, and with her husband, published the first translation of an important 16th century Latin manuscript on mining. Here's an image from that text (that I've color-shifted and edited in ways that break the search-by-image function. Sorry. I'm not going to make your search that easy!)
The question for you is this: Who is this remarkable woman? For extra credit, what gold medal did she win? (And why?)
Again, if you can, please let me know HOW long it took you to find the answer, and if you can, WHAT process you went through to find out!
Search on!
Google searched for: female mining engineer stanford
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS445US445&gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=female+mining+engineer+stanford
First result found wikipedia article for Lou Henry Hoover
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover
Extra credit:
Googled: Lou Henry Hoover's gold medal
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS445US445&gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Lou+Henry+Hoover's+gold+medal
First result found: http://www.mininghalloffame.org/inductee.asp?i=116&b=inductees.asp&t=n&p=H&s=
"In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service."
Total time: about 2 minutes.
Is it Lou Henry Hoover?
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover - a native of my home state (Iowa) and wife of Herbert Hoover. The gold medal was for Distinguished Service and bestowed on her by the Mining & Metallurgical Society of Iowa.
ReplyDeleteI found this within seconds simply by typing "female mining engineer stanford graduate chinese speakers" into the Google search box. The gold medal took another search with her name and 'gold medal' in the search box.
A google search for "important 16th century Latin manuscript on mining" showed a bunch of unrelated sludge on the first page (unsurprising), and one nugget of gold: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CFQQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwolfgangcapito.wordpress.com%2Ftag%2Fgeorgius-agricola%2F&ei=sTf7TpzILpTBtgf0m7nQBg&usg=AFQjCNHv9F499Fq-HmmXUeVBMzDeAI5kVQ&sig2=wO8Ub7ROBMi2qOKYzDCjUg . The title and snippet showed enough points in common with your story to follow it, and the full (amazing) read shows the answer to be Lou Henry Hoover. Wikipedia doesn't show what her gold medal was but a search for "Lou Henry Hoover gold medal" pops you to the Mining Hall of Fame, with the first result having "In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service" as it's snippet. 2 minutes, total.
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover
ReplyDeleteIn 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service.
I did a google search for "mining engineer, stanford, china, 16th century Latin Manuscript"
Well, less than 5 minutes but cheating (i'm sorry)
ReplyDeleteThe answer is Lou Henry Hoover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover
In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service. http://goo.gl/fDKtO
How to:
1. the cheating part: I took the picture and converted it to grayscale.
1.1 reverse image search: fail
2. I took the grayscale picture and flip it horizontlly
2.1 reverse image search: bingo! -> the image appears in a german wikipedia article about metals
3 I took the "original" picture and I do a reverse image again -> Google said: "Best guess for this image: de re metallica agricola"
4 Wikipedia article about De re metallica -> Publication history -> "The translators were..."
5 Wikipedia article about Lou Henry Hoover -> extra data confirmed!
6 Google search "Lou Henry Hoover gold medal"
7 First result: http://goo.gl/fDKtO
All Is Fair In Love and Search ;-)
I believe that was Lou Henry Hoover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover
ReplyDeleteand she was really a remarkable person, received a gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, I believe for the translation of Agricola de re Metallica.
Am I right?
It took me half an hour, and I used only Google.
I believe that was Lou Henry Hoover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover
ReplyDeleteand she was really a remarkable person, received a gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, I believe for the translation of Agricola de re Metallica.
Am I right?
It took me half an hour, and I used only Google.
I believe that was Lou Henry Hoover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover
ReplyDeleteand she was really a remarkable person, received a gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, I believe for the translation of Agricola de re Metallica.
Am I right?
It took me half an hour, and I used only Google.
I believe that was Lou Henry Hoover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover
ReplyDeleteand she was really a remarkable person, received a gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, I believe for the translation of Agricola de re Metallica.
Am I right?
It took me half an hour, and I used only Google.
I believe that was Lou Henry Hoover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover
ReplyDeleteand she was really a remarkable person, received a gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, I believe for the translation of Agricola de re Metallica.
Am I right?
It took me half an hour, and I used only Google.
I believe that was Lou Henry Hoover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover
ReplyDeleteand she was really a remarkable person, received a gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, I believe for the translation of Agricola de re Metallica.
Am I right?
It took me half an hour, and I used only Google.
Lou Henry Hoover
ReplyDelete1. Searched for female mining engineer china stanford
2. Result for The White House site on Herbert Hoover stated that he married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, and they went to China.
2. Another search result was Wikipedia for Lou Henry and reading through that kinda confirmed things.
Extra
1914 Gold Metal from Mining & Metallurgical Society
1. Searched for Lou Henry gold metal
2. Found An independent woman: the life of Lou Henry Hoover By Anne Beiser Allen
3. Book search found the reference in Appendix C
(eBook is $105 - yikes!)
Time: 10min or so with a bit of reading of course.
It took me about a minute to go out to my book room and get my copy of Pirotechnia by Vannoccio Biringuccio down from the top shelf, since that seemed to fit the description of the book. The preface says that the translation is by Dr. Gnudi, and the foreword to the reissue refers to her as Mrs. Gnudi (which seems a bit insulting since she had a PhD).
ReplyDeleteA quick Google search of
Gnudi Pirotechnia
revealed that the translator's name was
Martha Teach Gnudi
Searching for that name lead to her obit at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC199285/
which mentions, among other things, the 1954 Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine for Jerome Pierce Webster and
Martha Teach Gnudi, The Life and Times of Gaspare Tagliacozzi (New York: Reichner, 1950). I did not confirm that the Welch Medal is gold.
I was not able to find a picture in the 1966 MIT Press paperback edition of Pirotechnia that matches picture provided.
Total time, about 5 minutes, mostly spent fruitlessly thumbing through my copy of Pirotechnia
It's Lou Henry Hoover. It took about 5 minutes. I searched for "woman mining engineer stanford" and her Wikipedia page was the first result. I spent most of the time verifying all her information matched. Her gold medal was for distinguished science from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America
ReplyDeleteOf, I forgot to mention I tried searching for "geologist Banner" first, but got nothing interesting. Just now, I realized why. It should be Dr. Branner, not Dr. Banner.
ReplyDeleteFolks -- I've been holding off a little bit from letting everyone's comments come onto the blog. The challenge is also being posted to LifeHacker, and I want to let THEM have a chance to solve the problem as well. Not to worry, I'll let you comments out in a little bit....
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover, Mining and Metallurgical Society of America's Gold Medal for Distinguished Service, for "distinguished service to the literature of mining."
ReplyDeleteEight to ten minutes, start to finish. I had several false starts using search phrases I thought would be more on point -- in particular, various searches for Dr. Banner proved to be a red herring (even after minusing out the Hulk!). A search for "Stanford mining engineer," however, which I thought was too general a search phrase, led me to a great page on the history of the Stanford Engineering School for Theodore Jesse Hoover, brother of the president, which reminded me of that president's family history in mining. From there Wikipedia was the fastest route to name and medal, but a search for "lou henry hoover medal distinguished service" was required to lead me to the passage in Dale Meyer's book on Mrs. Hoover on Google Books which contained the passage explaining what the medal was for.
using chrome i searched on
ReplyDeleteus woman mining engineer stanford china
no quotes.
1st entry was herbert hoover on wikipedia, chose that.
ctrl-f on word wife.
followed link to wikipedia article on lou henry hoover. got distracted for 5 minutes.
did chrome search on
lou henry hoover gold medal
no quotes.
chose 1st result
An independent woman: the life of Lou Henry Hoover - Google Books Result
and there was a page of her honorary awards the first being 1914 gold medal from mining a metallurgical society.
including 5 min. diversion, it took 8 minutes.
yes, an amazing woman!
Gord
The remarkable woman is: Lou Henry Hoover; the wife of President of the United States Herbert Hoover and First Lady of the United States. March 29, 1874 – January 7, 1944),
ReplyDeleteThe gold medal: In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service.
Why: for the translation from Latin to English of a 1565 guide to mining and metallurgy, called De Re Metallica by the German mineralogist George Agricola.
The first answer I found in about 10 seconds: [geologist Dr. Branner couple china] in Google
The second anwswer took me about 30 seconds: [Lou Henry hoover gold medal] in Google
The remarkable woman is: Lou Henry Hoover; the wife of President of the United States Herbert Hoover and First Lady of the United States. March 29, 1874 – January 7, 1944),
ReplyDeleteThe gold medal: In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service.
Why: for the translation from Latin to English of a 1565 guide to mining and metallurgy, called De Re Metallica by the German mineralogist George Agricola.
The first answer I found in about 10 seconds: [geologist Dr. Branner couple china] in Google
The second anwswer took me about 30 seconds: [Lou Henry hoover gold medal] in Google
Lou Henry Hoover
ReplyDelete5 min
Searched for key terms
It's Lou Henry Hoover (wife of President Herbert Hoover. Finding it wasn't particularly difficult since you mentioned Stanford and mining in the same breath - which met Hoover. A quick check on his Stanford alum wife and bingo.
ReplyDeleteThe gold medal she won was from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for a translation from the Latin (another language she was fluent in) of Agricola de re Metallica. This work had been published in Latin in 1556, and was a manual of mining and metallurgy.
Both Hoover worked on the translation and received the medal according to the Hoover Presidential Library
I missed the part where you asked how long - about five minutes - I found her quickly from the Stanford and mining terms - maning it was Hoover. I will admit I thought the gold medal was from the Girl Scouts, but a search on lou henry hoover and gold medal took me to Hoover Library website and "voila!"
ReplyDeleteThis one was pretty quick in comparison to last week. It took a few minutes. I used the following search terms.
ReplyDeletemining stanford china branner
The third link on the page led to Google Books, Presidential Wives, Chapter 29, Lou Henry Hoover.
She won the gold medal in 1914 for "distinguished service to the literature of mining". This was for the extensive work and research she performed in translation of De Re Metallica, a 16th century scientific text.
Lou Henry Hoover won a gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for a translation an early 1500s book on mining techniques. Search took 5-10 minutes. I searched for [Dr. Branner geology]. Scanned links for late 1800 references, saw a note on in one of the returned pages on him encouraging a woman to enter geology and decided that was promising. It gave the name Lou Henry Hoover immediately. Searching for [Lou Henry Hoover "gold medal"] gave the rest.
ReplyDeleteNot too tough! Took about 4 minutes. Tried a few combinations of search terms on google, followed some dead ends trying to find what the latin manuscript was, and then went back and used 'stanford mining engineer china'. 1st and second hits - Wikipedia entries - told the tale.
ReplyDelete30 seconds to type the request in Google:
ReplyDelete"mining engineer china woman stanford"
First result, Lou Henry Hoover in Wikipedia.
Then search "Lou Henry Hoover gold medal" and:
"In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service"
Lou Henry Hoover :)
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover. Took about 10 seconds with the search: 'woman mining engineer born 19th century graduated stanford'
ReplyDeleteLou Hoover (wife of US President Herbert Hoover). I used the following search string in Google: "16th Century Latin mining treatise." (It was the second or third search string I tried.)
ReplyDeleteTotal search time: about 3 minutes. The second paragraph at http://www.nndb.com/people/190/000128803/ talks about the Gold Medal.
Lou Henry Hoover. 1 minute by Googling "mining engineer' stanford banner 'gold medal' china". The second search result was an entry on Herbert Hoover. The gold medal was presented to her and her husband for their translation of De Re Metallica, and was awarded to them by the Mining & Metallurgical Society of America in 1914.
ReplyDeleteTook about 90 seconds. Google search on "translate latin mining engineer woman chinese". Second hit was for Lou Henry Hoover, which seemed right. Her gold medal was for distinguished service to the MMSA. The text she translated was Agricola's "De Re Metallica". And her doctor friend was Dr. Branner, not Banner. She was our First Lady from 1929 - 1933.
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover
ReplyDeleteIn 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service.
Search Term: stanford mining engineer woman gold medal
Took about 10 minutes.
http://www.ecommcode.com/hoover/hooveronline/lhhbio/stanford.htm
ReplyDeleteLou Henry.
Search term used: "famous geologist Dr. Branner" 3rd result.
Took less than 2 minutes
As a note, I've sorta been a professional googler in that I've answered over 15000 questions at ChaCha.
(Google) Searched "female mining engineer stanford"
ReplyDeleteWhich gave me her name, Lou Henry Hoover.
Then searched "Lou Henry Hoover Gold Medal"
Which gave me "Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service."
Took about 30 seconds.
Lou Hoover.
ReplyDeleteIt took me between 4 and 5 minutes.
Here's my process: I did a google search for- 16th century Latin manuscript on mining -then I tried the same phrase with quotations. Didn't really find anything with that. I went back to the article and saw she was a stanford graduate. I searched for- famous standford graduates 19th century -. This website came up on the first page second from the bottom- http://www.biography.com/people/groups/alumni-stanford-university/natalie-wood-9536320/ -. I clicked on the- see the complete list of standford university graduates -. She was the only female born in the 19th century that made the list. I did a quick reference against wiki to confirm.
Lou Henry Hoover
ReplyDeleteMining & Metallurgical Society of America’s gold medal for translation of De Re Metallica by the German mineralogist George Agricola
Found in 3 minutes ... Googled: mining engineer stanford chinese gold medal latin
This article was 5th link: http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=32
Lou Henry Hoover. Took me 5 secs.
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover. In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service.
ReplyDeleteEasy search. Search for "china mining stanford engineer banner" (without the quotes). You can put it together very easily.
I got Lou Henry Hoover. It took 7 minutes. I used the search string, "16th century mining translation" and found her as the second result. I found you via Lifehacker, and I am now hooked!
ReplyDeleteTook less than a minute, I googled "stanford degree mining engineer woman china" and came across a Wikipedia article. It took another minute to verify all the facts. Cool stuff!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.historycentral.com/Bio/ladies/hoover.html ?
ReplyDelete"stanford women husband chinese mining latin" on google ;)
Lou Henry Hoover.
ReplyDeleteShe received the Gold Medal for Distinguished Service from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America. She received it for her (and her husband's) translation of "Agricola de re Metallica".
Took about 2 minutes. Ran a google search for 'Branner AND geologist" to find out his first name, then searched for "John Casper Branner AND husband" and ended up at http://www.classbrain.com/artbiographies/publish/printer_lou_henry_hoover.shtml
best,
david
Lou Henry Hoover.
ReplyDeleteIt took me about... five minutes? I used the terms
"mining engineer" Stanford China
in Google, and started visually scanning the results. I noticed that Henry Hoover was mentioned, and then I saw the he'd married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, before they went to China. I then googled for `lou henry hoover biography` (without any quotes) and mistakenly looked at the second result (the Wikipedia entry) first. It mentioned that "In the White House, at times, the Hoovers would converse in Chinese to foil eavesdroppers," so I knew I had the correct person, but it didn't mention any gold medals.
Going back to my `lou henry hoover biography` search, I picked the first result, which was for the National First Ladies' Library. That article mentioned that the gold medal was from the Mining & Metallurgical Society of America and was awarded to the Hoovers for their translation of the 16th century Latin manuscript you mentioned.
Lou Henry Hoover - 3 Minutes with a search on Google "female mining engineer stanford China Boxer Rebellion" and then confirmed details in wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover. She and Herbert Hoover were awarded the first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service by the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America in 1914.
ReplyDeleteIt took about 15 minutes. Googling 'female mining engineer china "gold medal" stanford degree' took me to Henry Hoover's wikipedia article and on to hers.
The answer is Lou Hoover (Louise Henry Hoover), and the Gold Medal was from the Mining & Metallurgical Society of America for their translation of De Re Metallic, Georg Agricola's classic 16th century text on mining, originally written in Latin.
ReplyDeleteMy search took roughly 10 seconds.
Step 1: Type
branner stanford "mining engineer" china "gold medal"
into Chrome. Hit Enter.
Step 2: Read the first snippet and go to the underlying page, www.gwizit.com/presidents/HerbertHoover.php (your blog entry was the second snippet).
Step 3: Skim the page and get Lou's name.
Step 4. Go back to search and enter
"louise henry" "gold medal"
Step 5. Read the first snippet and go to the page:
www.nndb.com/people/190/000128803/
which told me about the gold medal and why she got it.
My strategy, as you can see, was to type a bunch of keywords into the search engine and hope that the intersection would give me the answer I needed; that's often the first tactic I use and it works surprisingly well.
Took me about 15 minutes to find Lou Henry Hoover.
ReplyDeleteStarted with Google searches with key words from the article and then locked in on Stanford and from there Dr. "Banner" (from the misspelling that showed up on Lifehacker).
Searched Wikipedia and Google for Dr. Banner and Geology and came up empty so I went to Stanford's website for Geological Sciences and went to the history section and noticed that John Casper Branner was the first Geo professor at Stanford.
From there went to Branner's page on Wikipedia and noticed the last paragraph which states, "Two of his Stanford students, United States President Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou Henry Hoover, dedicated their English translation of the medieval mining classic De Re Metallica to Branner." Then went to the De Re Metallica page to confirm the picture.
Went to the Lou Henry Hoover page and confirmed her life story and that she is the person of which you are speaking.
The medal was from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for Distinguished Service in translating De Re Metallica.
Lou Henry Hoover - manuscript is Agricola's De Re Metallica - took me about 20 minutes - actually found as i was reading through some basic info on Stanford university and they mention her and her husband being inthe firt classs..from there, I did a quick search on her name and found the info in some bio pages about her and verified book with image search related to book name...http://www.ask.com/wiki/De_Re_Metallica....Book IX: Methods of smelting ores
ReplyDeleteDo we post the answer here, I dont want to give away the answer as to who it is, but it took me about 10 min to work out who I think it is
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover. It took about 5 seconds via this google search: mining engineer stanford china
ReplyDeleteIt took about 5 more seconds to find the gold medal with this google search: lou henry hoover gold medal
The medal was: In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service.
I plugged "stanford mining engineer female" (without the quotes) into google. The first result was the wikipedia page for Lou Henry Hoover, wife of Herbert Hoover.
ReplyDeleteTime: about 5 minutes. While this wasn't too challenging, I'm excited to learn more about Lou Henry Hoover, who sounds like a very interesting person.
Lou Henry Hoover. Received a gold medal in 1914 from the Mining & Metallurgical Society for "distinguished service to the literature of mining".
ReplyDelete<60 seconds:
Googled: mining engineer stanford husband china
Googled: Lou Henry Hoover Gold Medal
Lou Henry Hoover
ReplyDeleteI took your clue in how you edited the image, saw the backward "K" and the sepia tone. A quick flip and black-and-white edit in photoshop and it worked again in Image Search, which lead right to the Wikipedia page on "De re metallica," a Command-F for "Translator" and there was the answer! Total time, about 3 minutes.
Sadly, LifeHacker refers to "Dr. Banner," which may make it tougher for those folks to solve.
ReplyDeleteIt took me about 3 minutes to determine that it was Lou Henry Hoover, wife of Herbert Hoover. I put the following search terms in Google: mining engineer stanford 16th century manuscripts. The second result took me to http://books.google.com/books?id=nQpvbaeJQCYC&pg=PA224&lpg=PA224&dq=mining+engineer+stanford+16th+century+manuscripts&source=bl&ots=vivqatdgxo&sig=H5OBGN7sSUWbohb1LAQ55Cy3j7Q&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uKj7ToDeHoXGtgff6YHQBg&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=mining%20engineer%20stanford%2016th%20century%20manuscripts&f=false. A quick scan of this page led me to the name Lou Henry Hoover, so I put that into Google and a quick scan of the wikipedia article for her determined that she was the person you were looking for as it referred to her time in China and the work of translating, together with her husband, "Agricola's De Re Metallica, a 16th century encyclopedia of mining and metallurgy. The Hoover translation was published in 1912, and is still in print as the standard English translation." Clicking on the link to the wikipedia article about the manuscript allowed me to find the image you posted, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Agricola01.jpg.
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover
ReplyDeletetook about 2 seconds on google.
Lou Hoover, First Lady.
ReplyDeleteGoogled "woman spoke chinese earned medal mining".
It actually took longer to read thru the clues and formulate the query than to find the answer.
Lou Henry Hoover
ReplyDeleteWiki search terms: stanford mining engineer boxer
I almost skipped over the name looking for a more feminine one.
So I've figured it out... It took a while, but I started searching for keywords from your question... It took me approx. 15 minutes to find the answer... I eventually searched for the "Agricola de re Metallica".. Which led me to the answer, Lou Henry Hoover.. She and her husband were honored with a for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for translating the Agricola de re Metallica. :)
ReplyDeleteThe best way to figure it out is to google "China rebellion 19th century", find out that the the rebelion was going on around the 1860s, and then google "mining engineer stanford 1860s" and the first link is one for a book called "Uncommon Americans," and gives the name Lou Henry Hoover.
ReplyDeleteThree minutes to search using Google. I first used some version of these search terms: woman china mining 19th century medal geologist banner. Then I decided to go the manuscript/Stanford route with these search terms: 16th century Latin manuscript on mining stanford engineer woman. With that search, the first result is the Lifehacker posting. The second is her wikipedia entry. Two minutes later I had the medal by googling her, results at the Hoover Presidential Library.
ReplyDeleteFun one! Thanks!
Lou Henry Hoover
ReplyDeleteI went to my library's research databases and searched Encyclopedia Britannica for woman mining engineer. It took roughly 5 minutes. I am a LifeHacker reader.
5min, Lou Henry Hoover, with google and wikipedia content -> http://www.google.com/search?ix=hcb&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=19th+woman+stanford+mining+engineer
ReplyDeletefirst result is about Herbert Hoover on wikipedia, time to read and find his wife, read the wiki article about Lou Henry Hoover to confirm it and voila :)
For the gold medal:
http://www.google.com/search?ix=hcb&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Lou+Henry+Hoover+gold+medal
first result resume:
"In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service."
1. Lou Henry Hoover; found in 2 minutes by Google search "female mining engineer Stanford Dr. Banner" then added China to get the answer: "female mining engineer China Stanford Dr. Banner"
ReplyDelete2. 1914 awarded gold medal by Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for distinguished service; found in under 1 minute by Google search "Lou Henry Hoover gold medal"
First searched for "gold medal women" -- dead end. The searched for "latin mining translation" - a quick scan of the results led me to this page - http://www.hoover.archives.gov/hooverhead/adventure.html
ReplyDeletewhich also has the answer to the extra credit question.
Took about 10 minutes, I guess.
I came to this challenge from Life Hacker. It took me about 2 minutes to find out that she was Lou Henry Hoover, First Lady. I tried 2 searches and the second one hit pay dirt. I used Google with the search term 'geologist "Dr. Banner'" 9th link on the results page and the first one I clicked was to a Google book "Encyclopedia of women and American politics." The article was on Lou Hoover and reading the rest of the article I discovered she won the gold medal from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for the translation of the 16th century mining text "De Re Metallica."
ReplyDeleteThis remarkable woman is Lou Henry, the wife of Herbert Hoover.
ReplyDeleteI performed a Google search using the key words: 19th century, Dr. Branner, mining engineer, Stanford.
After quickly scanning the results, I found the answer at the following website:
http://www.presidentprofiles.com/Grant-Eisenhower/Herbert-Hoover-Early-life-and-education.html
I scanned the article and searched for the word "engineer."
Now I'll go back to read the rest of the page because she really IS interesting! Thanks for bringing her to my attention.
A second Google search using "Lou Henry gold medal" revealed that the Gold Medal from the Mining & Metallurgical Society of America was won by the Hoover's English translation of "De Re Metallic," Georg Agricola's classic 16th century text on mining. (This was dedicated to Dr. Branner.)
http://www.nndb.com/people/190/000128803/
Thank you for the fun challenge. I'd estimate it took less than 5 minutes to find and scan the answers. I was also dealing with an inquisitive toddler at the same time though!
(I'm glad you posted this on Life Hacker as that is how I found you.)
That was fairly easy. It took me 2 minutes.
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover and she was awarded the Gold Medal for Distinguished Service
First google search was for :
female mining engineer china translate latin manuscript medal gold
Which gave me http://www.historycentral.com/Bio/ladies/hoover.html
And told me it was Lou Henry Hoover
Second google search was :
Lou Henry Hoover gold medal
Which gave me :
http://www.mininghalloffame.org/inductee.asp?i=116&b=inductees.asp&t=n&p=H&s=
"In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service"
Also, first result when googling "stanford mining latin geologist banner gold medal"
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover, Herbert Hoover's wife. Received a gold medal for translating Agricola de re Metallica. Took me about 15 mins via Google. Started with various wording, but the combination that worked was "mining engineer female 19th century Stanford University". That led me to a .pdf about mining, where I found a historical note about Herbert and his wife Lou translating the above mentioned document. I then went to wikipedia to read more about her. She was indeed quite the interesting lady! :)
ReplyDeleteTook only about two minutes to do a Google search containing some of the keywords from the write-up, resulting in: Lou Henry Hoover, who received her gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hoover.archives.gov/education/louhenrybio.html
ReplyDeleteBegun by googling "branner geologist", with no good result. Then tried "latin mining translation" and 6th result titled (from www.wikipedia.com) "De Re Metallica" and mentioned "180 years after its publication" - so the timing could fit, and so it did. Followed the link for translator and searched for "medal"... Done for extra credit!
First time I heard of this challenge of yours, liked it!
Lou Henry Hoover. She won the 1914 Mining and Metallurgical Society of America's gold medal for distinguished service. Took about three minutes. I used the clues of Stanford and Chinese rebellion to search for "Stanford alumnae Boxer rebellion" and she came up.
ReplyDeleteMy search terms were: gold medal mining china woman translate latin chinese.
ReplyDeleteThe third and fourth hits were for Lou Hoover. Just by looking at the short blurb that Google has under links, it was obvious that it was Lou Hoover.
The search took < 30 seconds.
This one was easier than the others I've done. Solved it in one search - whereas usually I need to do two or three. Confirmed with the 2nd search. So under 5 minutes if that.
ReplyDeleteFirst search was on Google.co.uk for:
geologist banner stanford chinese china mining
FIfth link mentioned Herbert Hoover marrying Lou Henry and going to China, and that both were geologists.
Herbert Hoover - Chronology - The Herbert Hoover Presidential ...
www.hoover.archives.gov/education/chronology.html
A search for Lou Henry gave the Wikipedia page on her that confirmed all the details, except the bit about the gold medal. That came from another Hoover Archives link at http://www.hoover.archives.gov/education/louhenrybio.html
The medal was for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for translating Agricola de re Metallica
Mrs. Lou Henry Hoover. She won the gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, and this was because of her translation (in collaboration with Herbert Hoover) of Agricola de re Metallica, from Latin to English.
ReplyDeleteTime taken: 3 minutes to find her name, 2 minutes more to find out about the medal.
Steps:
1. google searches "dr banner geologist" and "banner geologist", no helpful results.
2. reviewed the information, searched for "18th century mining engineering" - found a wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civil_engineers
3. browser search function: "mining" - 5 (male) names as a result
4. clicked all of them - most interesting name was Herbert Hoover, ex-president of the USA, so first looked at his wikipedia biography.
5. Searched for "wife" - first result: "Hoover and his wife learned Mandarin Chinese while he worked in China"
6. This must be her! looked for her name, found it at the beginning of the same paragraph: "Hoover married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry"
7. To find about the gold medal, google: "lou henry hoover gold medal" - first search result showed what gold medal she won, but not why. Second result (http://www.hoover.archives.gov/education/louhenrybio.html) showed why (with help of browser's search function "gold").
Pretty straight forward.
Hi there, I think I've found the answer, and yes, she lived a very interesting life. :) http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=32
ReplyDeleteMy search method was the following:
1. I used Google with the following expression: "stanford mining engineer gold medal Branner woman"
2. I read the first 5 results and used my judgment to choose the proper result.
The search took roughly 1 minute.
Cheers,
It's Lou Hoover, a simple Google query found it.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first time I have done this and it was pretty fun. In order to find the answer, I typed the following into google "16th century Latin translation mining transcript". I knew it might give me a lot of results I would have to sift through but it would give me the most to look at while still being within the realm of what I wanted. I also knew that there were probably not a lot of people who had done this so that would lower the chance of coming up with multiple persons to investigate. From there, a page for "Lou Henry Hoover" came up on Wikipedia. From the information given, I determined that she must have been the woman in the photo. Once I had her name, I googled "Lou Henry Hoover gold medal", and was presented a list that showed all her awards, and her gold medal was awarded in 1914 from The Mining and Metallurgical Society. I really enjoyed playing!!
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover - Gold Medal for Mining and Metallurgy 1914
ReplyDeleteGoogled for 19th century chinese rebellion (Boxer Rebellion) - google mining engineers boxer rebellion (google books gave Lou Henry Hoover the prototype for a First Lady, confirms prescence in boxer rebellion), google lou henry hoover (wikipedia confirms life details), google lou henry hoover gold medal (google books confirms The life of an Independent Woman: lou henry hoover, gold medal awarded 1914) plus several other medals and honorary degrees, time taken about as long as it took me to type this comment i.e. about 5 minutes
I started at 7:46 PM
ReplyDeletesearch:
geologist Dr. Banner
search:
16th century Latin manuscript on mining translation
search on Google Books:
Stanford University geology
search:
John Casper bANNER
found:
http://books.google.com/books?id=cVtFJ5tvINsC&pg=PA245&dq=Stanford+University+geology+banner&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Krv7Tr2-L8Li0QGyvMDDDg&ved=0CFUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Stanford%20University%20geology%20banner&f=false
yclopedia of women and American politics page 245
Lou Henry Hoover
Gold Medal from the Mining & Metallurgical Society of America.
I finished at 8:01PM
That one seemed pretty easy
I searched for "first translation of 16th century mining manual author". Found answer on Britannica. Lou Hoover. It took me one minute to find the name and one more to then Google "Lou Hoover gold medal" which I found on nndb.com. Their translation work on the book won them a Gold Medal from the Mining & Metallurgical Society of America
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover - I googled:
ReplyDeletewoman + translate + china + medal + mining engineer + stanford
She won a gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for the translation of a latin book on mining & metallurgy.
sorry - it only took me about 2 minutes :)
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover(wife of Herbert) The Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service.
ReplyDeleteLou Hoover, 2 minutes, searched: dr. banner stanford geologist, result number 3, Encyclopedia of women and American politics linked to google books, where I read Lou was introduced to Harry Hoover by Dr. Banner.
ReplyDeleteTook me about 30 seconds, I vagely recognized the illustration as being from Agricola's book. The medal was for her translation with her husband.
ReplyDeleteThat woman is Lou Henry. She was married to Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the USA.
ReplyDeleteNice story!
About the gold medal... She received it for distinguished services at The Mining & Metallurgical Society Of America!
ReplyDelete20 minutes. After playing on Dartmouth College's "Summon" search engine (a sort of google-scholar for licensed stuff) -- I was getting warm. Downloaded this: MINING IN CHINA: A 3000-Year Tradition
ReplyDeleteBerthold Ottens
Mineralogical Record; Jan/Feb 2005; 36, 1; Research Library pg. 4
... nice pics like yours...and so I wondered if it was Ferdinand von Richthofen, but no. Googled stanford mining engineers; learned about hoover; wiki-P to hoover; a romance; and then to here:
http://www.historycentral.com/Bio/ladies/hoover.html -via this G-search: ("Lou Henry" OR "Lou Hoover") (china OR mining OR latin)
She is Lou Henry Hoover, wife of President Herbert Hoover, and a most interesting and sympathetic woman. She and her husband won the gold medal given by the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for their translation from Latin of Agricola de re Metallica, which was originally published in 1556.
ReplyDeleteThis was easy for me because we used to live in Whittier, California, where she is well known as a Famous Resident. Confirmation came from Wikipedia and a quick Bing-powered search which produced, among other things, a biographical article published by the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.
Its Lou Henry Hoover, wife of Herbert Hoover and the manuscript they translated was called 'De re Metallica'...its all in Wikipedia. the trick was getting Dr Branner's full name Dr John Casper Branner.
ReplyDeleteGoogle "famous female mining engineer stanford", 3rd link down...Lou Henry Hoover?
ReplyDeleteThe Gold Medal was by Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for Distinguished Service
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover and in 1914 she won the gold medal from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for translating Agricola’s “De Re Metallica” (1556) with her husband.
ReplyDeleteI googled "mining engineer who earned her degree at Stanford" and found a wikipedia article for her, then to find the medal info i googled her name and gold medal
She was Lou Henry Hoover and won a gold medal from Minning and Metallurgical Society. I search for images of Medieval Minning and found the image. Then I search similar images, then found a book from Giorgios Agricola's. The book was translated by Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry, etc.
ReplyDeleteSorry about my english. I'm from Mexico
Lou Henry Hoover. 'bout 20 minutes. Wikipedia. fun exercise, thanks! (through Lifehacker)
ReplyDeleteThe search took me 5 minutes, seeing that the translation of the manuscript could be an important clue. I searched google for
ReplyDelete"first translated latin mining manuscript"
Result number 5 was the PDF of a manuscript that seemed fitting "Agricola de re Metallica", revealing the name "LOU HENRY HOOVER".
Searching on this name revealed it to be the former first lady of the USA. Googling her name, gave as a third result: http://www.hoover.archives.gov/education/louhenrybio.html
Which looked like the official biography of her, which confirmed that she was the right person and revealed that she won a gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, for the translation of the latin mining manuscript.
Google search: "Dr. Banner" AND "Geologist" led me to
ReplyDeletehttp://books.google.com/books?id=cVtFJ5tvINsC&pg=PA245&lpg=PA245&dq=%22Dr.+Banner%22+AND+Geologist%22&source=bl&ots=Y_I20nClzi&sig=xXi8FgwvgmVqdWFPJhjZWTdeZ9Q&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5t77TqKLL8irgweD1biPAg&ved=0CGAQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=%22Dr.%20Banner%22%20AND%20Geologist%22&f=false
Everything else was just interesting reading.
Took 5 seconds. Just googled "mining engineer Stanford mining text Latin translate" Lou Henry Hoover hoovers wife her wiki entry is number 3 on results just read it to confirm. I thought these challenges are supposed to be tough?
ReplyDeleteTook about 5 minutes, here are my Google search terms:
ReplyDelete"stanford mining engineer china gold medal".
I saw that Herbert Hoover came up so I read his bio and then immediately read his wifes bio.
Answer: Lou Henry Hoover
Took about 1 minute, I put the following search term into google "stanford graduation 19th century mining engineer woman" scanned the first page results without following the links until I saw the last two results which looked promising:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.helium.com/items/953689-the-legacy-of-herbert-hoover
and http://www.scottishreview.net/HerbertHoover193.shtml
They lead easily to the result, wife of Herbert Hoover, Lou Henry Hoover
Lou Henry Hoover
ReplyDeleteFound by Google search in about 2 minutes
The answer is Lou Hoover (nee Henry), the wife of U.S. President Henry Hoover.
ReplyDeleteTo figure out the answer, I keyed on the detail about her husband's translation. A Google search for the phrase "16th century mining text," returned a hit on the Encyclopedia Brittanica's entry for Mrs. Hoover. Then it was just a matter of running her name through Wikipedia to cross reference the other info.
Lou Henry Hoover and her husband Herbert received the Gold Medal from Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for their translation of Agricolas' De re metallica.
ReplyDeleteI searched [boxer rebellion stanford mining engineer].
First Lady Lou Henry Hoover. I went to Stanford's website -> Earth sciences -> facts and figures -> read through the page -> when I saw president hoovers name and then the first lady's name I knew it had to be her. Thought this one was pretty easy took me about 5 minutes.
ReplyDeleteI found the answer in less than five minutes with a four keyword Google search: published Latin mining manuscript. Saw the first Wiki article and it linked to a Wiki on Lou Henry Hoover. A second Google search of Lou Hoover Gold Medal resulted in the finding that she (along with husband, Herbert) got it from the Mining & Metallurgical Society of America for translating De re metallica.
ReplyDeleteAnswer found in less the 30 sec. Lou Henry Hoover: used my smart phone and Google Goggles of the above image which took me right to Wikipedia article about Lou Henry Hoover.
ReplyDeleteIn 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service.
She is Lou Henry Hoover, President Hoover's wife. She was awarded for helping Belgian refugees by King Albert I of Belgium in 1919.
ReplyDeleteI remember using StumbleUpon and read a Wikipedia entry about presidents who spoke other languages. I remember reading about Herbert Hoover translating a Latin mining manuscript with his wife. Call it a hunch.
It took 5 minutes, and my StumbleUpon history.
It is first lady Lou Henry Hoover. She and her husband won the Mining & Metallurgical Society of America’s gold medal for their translation of the 16th century manuscript, De Re Metallica.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit, I took the lazy way out. At first I scoured Stanford records (Btw, Dr. Branner was posted as Dr. Banner on LifeHacker). Then I went to the Myrlin database looking for clues in the authors of mining books published around the 1890's only to give up by 1902. Finally, noticing that the image you posted was mirrored horizontally, I mirrored it back, desaturated it, increased the contrast and did an image search. Is that cheating?
FYI, the book
Lou Henry Hoover?
ReplyDeleteThe gold medal was for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America
It took about 1-2 minutes via Google
Searched through Google for female Olympic gold medal winners, then for female Stanford mining graduates. Then searched for translation of latin mining texts and found the Hoovers on Wiki then Google again and came to http://www.hoover.archives.gov/education/louhenrybio.html
ReplyDeleteAbout 60 minutes.
The woman is Lou Henry Hoover. She won the gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for translating the Agricola de re Metallica.
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover. Wife of Herbert Hoover. Took less than 5 minutes.
ReplyDeleteGoogled: woman miner "dr. branner"
First result was: www.hoover.archives.gov/education/louhenrybio.html
Control F: gold medal found the answer - gold medal for achievement from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America for their translation of Agricola de re Metallica.
She is Lou Henry Hoover, the wife of President of the United States Herbert Hoover. It took me less tan 5min to flip the image with Gimp and get help from Google Image search.
ReplyDeleteShe is Lou Henry Hoover, the wife of President of the United States Herbert Hoover. It took me less tan 5min to flip the image with Gimp and get help from Google Image search.
ReplyDeleteShe is Lou Henry Hoover, wife of President Herbert Hoover. She won a gold medal for the translating of Agricola de re Metallica into English from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was quite fun; I'd never done something like it before. It took me about 10 minutes to find out who she was and another 10 minutes to find out why she was awarded the gold medal.
I googled the phrase "stanford mining engineer 16th century latin" without quotes. It took me to a Google Books search page with the same search terms where excerpts of A Companion to California: Newly Revised and Expanded with Illustrations was presented. I found out it was Ms Hoover there and did another search on Wikipedia for Lou Henry Hoover.
I saw at Wikipedia that she was decorated by King Albert I of Belgium for her work in the relief effort for Belgian refugees of WWI. Thinking the decoration might include a gold medal, but not certain, I googled Lou Henry Hoover Belgium. This yielded the Hoover Archives page at http://www.hoover.archives.gov/education/louhenrybio.html where it says she was awarded the gold medal for the translation work.
Thanks, this was fun!
Jeff
This was TOO EASY!! Lou Hoover is your woman! and a simple google search of "Stanford graduates in mining engineering and women" gave me a nice list with Lou Henry Hoover listed as the third choice. right time period, right social class, right college, translated latin mining text "Agricola de re Metallica"and received a gold medal from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America that work. Total time five minutes. Okay i'm a lousey typist and I had to go to the link from the wikipedia article to one the Biographical Article on Lou Hoover. BTW thanks. I really didn't know how amazing she was and her husband as well.
ReplyDeleteFound out about your site from LifeHacker, and was intrigued. Found the answer "Lou Henry Hoover" in about a minute, using the search pattern <"mining engineer" china latin manuscript translation> and the fist listing not to do with the challenge http://wolfgangcapito.wordpress.com/tag/georgius-agricola/ then the browsing spead out from there. Interesting topic, glad to have made her, and your acquaintance.
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover, decorated by King Albert I of Belgium for providing relief for Belgian refugees During World War I.
ReplyDeleteI googled "woman mining engineer stanford" (without quotes) and the first result was a Wikipedia page about her - took me few seconds.
Lou Henry Hoover. Time to find out: 2 minutes.
ReplyDeleteSearched google on:
mining engineer stanford latin chinese
got a match on Wikipedia, second link in the google results and she seemed to match the description.
Further down in the text it's mentioned that she and Herbert translated Agricola's De Re Metallica from Latin, and the Wikipedia page on De Re Metallica has the picture on it with the text 'Smelting ore, a woodcut from the book'.
For the question of gold medal, a search on:
Lou Henry Hoover gold medal
gave a hit on www.mininghalloffame.org where the following is mentioned:
"In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service."
Lou Henry Hoover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover
ReplyDeleteGoogled for [woman + mining engineer + china +latin book]
Found this S&R in life hacker. Located answer in four minutes using the following steps. Highlighted and searched "16th century Latin manuscript on mining". Discarded search results and used "female mining engineer who earned her degree at Stanford". Directed to Stanford school of earth sciences web page. Found Name Lou Henry Hoover. Performed search on this name. Chose next link to www.firstladies.org. Read biography page and success.
ReplyDeleteThe answer is Lou Henry Hoover. I found it via her Wikipedia entry by using the google search terms "1899 China woman mining engineer Stanford" all together. This was my second google attempt, as using the phrase "19th century" versus "1899" was not effective.
ReplyDeleteFor the bonus, she was decorated with the "Cross of Chevalier, Order of Leopold" by King Albert I of Belgium. This required a second google search using the terms lou henry hoover king albert i belgium" which I gleaned from the Wikipedia article.
Total search time was about 5 minutes.
Is It Lou Henry Hoover? (gold medal from Mining and Metallurgical Society of America).
ReplyDeleteTook about 15 min, google with some of the terms, found a bio that corresponded to the profile.
Then I found the image with the name of the book.
LOU HENRY HOOVER
ReplyDeleteTook about 5 minutes. Did a search on "woman mining engineer who earned her degree at Stanford".
Isabel Sharpe Shepard
ReplyDeleteLou Henry
ReplyDeleteTook about 10 minutes, Dr. Banner reference, found at Stanford, first class, Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry were students.
6min - Google search: woman 19th century "mining engineer" friends of "dr banner" geologist
ReplyDeletehttp://pagerankstudio.com/Blog/2011/01/lou-henry-hoover-biography-life-and-career-facts/
Lou Henry, found in less than a minute.
ReplyDeleteI googled mining engineer Stanford China and she was on its 3-6.
Googling Lou Henry Gold Medal gave the immediate result: "In 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America awarded the Hoovers its first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover
ReplyDeleteFound in under 5 minutes via google and two searches.
The process involved imagining words the target article might have in it. Key and slightly unique words that would be mentioned over and over. I started with "Woman Miner" and a long-shot phrase that I hoped would pair down the results. "speak chinese" quoted in google as a phrase search. When that returned junk I switched up to this 'mining woman stanford "chinese rebellion"' I switched to "mining" as the start word as it would be used more often than the word miner and likely woman I suspected. Then "woman" and finally two bits that might pair down the results... A proper noun I knew would be in an accurate article "Stanford" and a long-shot phrase that might be mentioned "chinese rebellion". The first hit was about the Boxer Rebellion which lead me to the miner Herbert Hoover and his wikipedia page lead me to the link above. My basic search starts with imagining what words that are as unique as possible might be mentioned over and over in a search target. From there I add successively less and less likely to occur words or phrases all the while trying to make them as unique as possible.
For the extra points "The Society’s Gold Medal was first awarded to Herbert C. and Lou
Henry Hoover in recognition of “. . . Contributions to the Literature
of Mining. . .” This award was presented at the Society’s Annual
Dinner held at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City."
Another search in under 2 mintues. Second result in '"Lou Hoover" "Gold Metal"'.
This took me about a minute. I googled 'mining engineer stanford chinese woman'. The third result turned up the Wikipedia entry for Lou Henry Hoover, which is strangely silent about her gold medal (ctrl-f 'medal' found no results.) A follow-up query for 'lou henry hoover gold medal' turned up the Mining Hall of Fame Inductees Database, which reports that she was awarded the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America's first Gold Medal for Distinguished Service in 1914 (along with her husband, Herbert Hoover.) She had translated Agricola’s “De Re Metallica” (1556) which was 'instantly recognized as a brilliant work of scholarship and an incomparable contribution to the history of science.'
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover, Gold Medal for Distinguished Service.
ReplyDeleteIs tarted off searching and learning about Dr. Brenner, since she and her future husband met at school, I figured it must have been where he was professor. The first name that came up was H.C. Hoover, who found a mentor in Dr. Brenner. From there is was a simple search for Herbs wife, and the metal was the first given Herb and Lou by the 1914 the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America.
Literally took about 60 seconds.
ReplyDeleteSearched: Dr. Branner Geologist, and found his full name is John Casper Branner. That led to Dr. Branner's wikipedia page, where at the bottom it states "Two of his Stanford students, United States President Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou Henry Hoover, dedicated their English translation of the medieval mining classic De re metallica to Branner."
Lou Henry Hoover, 1914 Gold Medal from Mining & Metallurgical Society
ReplyDeleteGoogled 'mining engineer stanford China', third result down was Herbert Hoover on Wikipedia, Ctrl-F on that page 'wife' and found Lou Henry Hoover's page. Then googled '"lou henry hoover" gold medal', first result down was a Google Books page with the relevant info.
Lou Henry Hoover. About 2 minutes. Found who it was with one search: "1800s stanford mining engineer woman", which took me to her wikipedia page. And then a second search for "Lou Henry Hoover gold medal" took me to the relevant National Mining Hall of Fame page. The most time consuming part was reading the post to decide what to search for.
ReplyDeleteI did not use the clue about Dr. Brenner.
The image you've attached is named "smelting-ore-16th-century-3.jpg". Google image search for smelting ore 16th century, returns a bunch of relevant images, including the original photo leading to the wikipedia entry on "De re metallica".
ReplyDeleteItai -- That's actually an excellent trick. As I pointed out in one of my first blog posts (http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/2010/01/chemical-compound-search.html?showComment=1277851579843 ) one should use all of the tricks at hand (including ALT tags on images and image filenames) as clues. Nicely done.
ReplyDeleteLou Hoover, wife of Herbert Hoover.
ReplyDeleteTook my less than 10 seconds.
Searched for "16th century mining latin", 5th result was:
http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9097008
with the following blurb that tipped me off while scanning the search results:
"... birth to two sons (1903 and 1907) and collaborated with her husband on an award-winning translation of a 16th-century mining text originally written in Latin. ..."
The lady is Lou Henry Hoover and she won the gold medal for distinguished service. I just googled "famous geologist Dr. Branner" and the second link had the her name. I quick search of wikipedia confirmed the information. The I searched for her name with gold medal and the first link provided that information.
ReplyDeleteLou Henry Hoover. Less than a minute
ReplyDelete