Central to this essay is the debate about the ultimate purpose of studying history and about the social role of the historian as it was conducted in the first two decades after the Second World War in Belgium and the Netherlands. Many historians took the view after the war that the study of the past must contribute directly to (political) reconstruction and the shaping of (democratic) public opinion. In the eyes of historians like the Amsterdam Professor Jan Romein and the powerful Belgian Inspector for History Teaching Leopold Flam, historiography should not be focused on knowledge of the past as such, and the same was certainly true of history teaching. On the contrary, the social capital that they represented was founded on their involvement with the present. Against this presentist position there grew the conception that the study of the past for its own sake remained of great importance in post-war society, and in fact that such an orientation towards the past itself and a critical attitude towards those who wished to use history to shape contemporary society could actually help prevent a new dictatorship or a new conflict. This historicist standpoint was regarded as anything but ‘aloof’ or ‘unethical’ by its advocates like the Utrecht Professor Pieter Geyl.

Jacob Max Rabbie, an internationally renowned social psychologist and a founding member of the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP), died on June 29, 2013. Jaap was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, on October 4, 1927. Jaap studied social psychology at the University of Amsterdam and became the face of Dutch social psychology. His later research focused on aggression between individuals and groups, his early work attempted to isolate the minimal conditions that suffice to generate discriminatory ingroup-outgroup attitudes. Jaap was a dedicated and passionate scientist, oriented to getting things right even when this meant going against the current stream.

Einthoven not only designed a high quality instrument, the string galvanometer, for recording the ECG, he also shaped the conceptual framework to understand it. He reduced the body to an equilateral triangle and the cardiac electric activity to a dipole, represented by an arrow (i.e. a vector) in the triangle's center. Up to the present day the interpretation of the ECG is based on the model of a dipole vector being projected on the various leads. The model is practical but intuitive, not physically founded. Burger analysed the relation between heart vector and leads according to the principles of physics. It then follows that an ECG lead must be treated as a vector (lead vector) and that the lead voltage is not simply proportional to the projection of the vector on the lead, but must be multiplied by the value (length) of the lead vector, the lead strength. Anatomical lead axis and electrical lead axis are different entities and the anatomical body space must be distinguished from electrical space. Appreciation of these underlying physical principles should contribute to a better understanding of the ECG. The development of these principles by Burger is described, together with some personal notes and a sketch of the personality of this pioneer of medical physics.

Verzamelaars (personen): Johannes Herman Kernkamp ; J. J. Poelhekke