The adventures of Anselm Wüßtegern

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The adventures of Anselm Wüßtegern ( French Les aventures d'Anselme Lanturlu ) is a comic series by the French physicist Jean-Pierre Petit . Physical and mathematical facts are presented in the series.

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The series was initially published by Belin Verlag. Curious and open, his adventures are a pretext for popularizing science in the fields from physics or mathematics ( geometry , astrophysics , nuclear physics , and magnetohydrodynamics ) to computer science , aided by the charming Sophie who guides him in his endeavors while he searches as well as of three very learned animals: Leon the pelican, Max the bird and Tiresias the snail. The albums are filled with encounters with personalities of well-known scientists from different epochs (e.g. Einstein or Jean-Marie Souriau ). Two stories also deal with economics and anatomy .

This series is the first example in the modern history of real science education through comics . It is not a comic that would take place in the scientific community: the aim is to acquire scientific knowledge. It grew out of many drawings that the author had to make in order to teach physics and geometry to the philosophers at the Faculty of Aix-en-Provence .

The academic level of the target readership is very diverse: some albums can be understood by high school students, most by science graduates, some require an undergraduate level in mathematics.

publication

From 1980 to 1989, 14 volumes of the series were published by the French publisher Belin. In 1990 four volumes followed under the title Les nouvelles aventures d'Anselme Lanturlu published by Présence. In 2005 the story Le spondyloscope was published in Belle Santé magazine.

From 1980 the series was launched in several languages:

  • in French: Les aventures d'Anselme Lanturlu,
  • in English: The Adventures of Archibald Higgins (2 English and American editions),
  • in German: The adventures of Anselm Wüßtegern,
  • in Finnish: Anselmi Veikkonen seikkailee,
  • in Italian: Le avventure di Anselmo,
  • in Portuguese: As aventuras de Anselmo Curioso,
  • in Russian: приключения Ансельмa Ансельмa Ансельмa Лантюрлю,
  • in Polish: Przygody Anzelma Roztropka,
  • in Esperanto: La aventuroj de Anselmo Lanturlup, published by Monda Asembleo Socia ( ISBN 978-2369600350 ),
  • but also in Japanese (2 albums) and Persian (the album Tout est relatif with Sophie's costume, which was redesigned as in the American edition).

From 1982 ten volumes in German were published by Physik Verlag (Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH), including “Die magnetic Schallmauer”, “Das Geometrikon”, “Das Topologikon”, “Der Bigknall”, “Das Schwarze Loch”.

In 1995 four volumes on the subject of geometry and astrophysics were published in German by Vieweg Verlag , but are now only available in antiquarian versions.

As chairman of the association Savoir Sans Frontières (“Knowledge without Frontiers”) for the dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge, the author Jean-Pierre Petit has made all his thirty years of work, including the illustrated albums by Anselm Wüßtegern, freely accessible in several languages. The entire series has been distributed free of charge since 2005 on the website of the Savoir Sans Frontières association, which has set itself the goal of translating these albums into as many languages ​​as possible. Anselm joins the webcomic movement by expanding the dimension of community translation, another innovation in the field.

As of November 2018, 536 albums and original productions were available in 39 languages, with the website regularly adding new translations. The languages ​​most familiar to the albums downloaded from the club's website are: French (1.98 million), Spanish (1.8 million), German (73,000), English (49,000), Italian (48,000). For comparison, the Lucky Luke and Corto Maltese series are translated into about twenty languages, and the most popular series, Asterix and Tim, are translated into more than a hundred.

In 2011 Astropress Verlag (Biel-Bienne, Switzerland) published a new edition that summarizes most of the albums in several languages. Each language is the subject of 3 volumes, each volume comprises more than 600 pages:

A few albums offer Jean-Pierre Petit the opportunity to present his own scientific results on some pages that were previously the subject of scientific publications or other books. This is the case for:

  • The magnetic sound barrier
  • Faster than light
  • The twin universe
  • The topology
  • The chronology
  • Le Logotron

The adventures of Anselm Wüßtegern

  • Why can't I fly ?, Physik-Verlag, Weinheim, 1987 ( ISBN 3-87664-087-3 ) (Translated from Si on volait? By D. Hardt and F. Herrmann)
  • Informagie, Physik-Verlag, Weinheim, 1982 ( ISBN 3-87664-061-X ) (Translated from L'informagique by A. Pierre and P. Weber)
  • The black hole, Physik-Verlag, Weinheim, 1982 ( ISBN 3-87664-060-1 ) (Translated from Le trou noir by A. Pierre and P. Weber)
  • Everything is relative, Physik-Verlag, Weinheim, 1982 ( ISBN 3-87664-063-6 ) (Translated from Tout est relatif by A. Pierre and P. Weber)
  • The Big Bang, Physik-Verlag, Weinheim, 1983 ( ISBN 3-87664-076-8 ) ( transl . Big bang by F. Herrmann)
  • What do robots dream of, Physik-Verlag, Weinheim, 1983 ( ISBN 3-87664-077-6 ) (trans. A quoi rêvent les robot? By F. Herrmann)
  • The magnetic sound barrier, Physik-Verlag, Weinheim, 1987 ( ISBN 3-87664-078-4 ) ( transl . Le mur du silence by F. Herrmann)
  • Cosmic story (s), Physik-Verlag, Weinheim, 1987 ( ISBN 3-87664-132-2 ) (trans. Cosmic story by F. Herrmann)
  • Das Topologikon, Physik-Verlag, Weinheim, 1987 ( ISBN 3-87664-133-0 ) (Translated from Le topologicon by F. Herrmann)

Anselm and Sophie in the other Savoir Sans Frontières albums.

We find the characters of Anselm and Sophie in the albums:

  • L'Ambre et le Verre - histoire de l'électricité, published by the association "Science et Culture pour Tous". The printing of the 1000 copies was funded by the Free Foundation, 2010. The characters Anselm and Sophie are drawn younger, without the name Anselm appearing.
  • The pyramids, the secret of Imothep: Egyptology
  • Electricité, autrement: for high school students
  • Flight mechanics: aviation industry
  • Faster than light: cosmology
  • The Twin Universe: Cosmology

We find the character of Sophie (in brown) in "Achille Moneyback découvre l'informatique" (Introduction to programming in Basic), which presents the first version of the Logotron computer in its second part.

The character of Anselm (and that of Sophie the blonde, replaced by Sophia / Deborah the brunette) can be found on the album “Les mille et une nuits scientifiques” (riddles in the topology ).

We find the character of Anselm (under the name Candide) on the album "Floating like in seventh heaven" (aviation, helicopter).

Neither character appears in the album "Aschenpussel 2000", which takes up the main characters of the story by introducing a popularization of information theory for high school students.

Anselm's albums are used by universities to support science education.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. tape dessinees de vulgarisation scientifique. Qu'est-ce que Lanturluland? Retrieved March 3, 2019 .
  2. La scienza a fumetti. Retrieved March 3, 2019 (Italian).
  3. This series is quoted in the following article: Кислов А.Г. Культураинтеллектуальногодосуга: поэтиказадачириторикарешений , РАЦИО.ru, 2011, No 5, p. 106-129.
  4. Languages. In: savoir-sans-frontieres.com. Retrieved March 3, 2019 .
  5. (fr) Albums can be downloaded from the University of Lyon website
  6. (pt) Download the first albums in Portuguese from the University of Coimbra website.
  7. (it) Presentation (PDF) of the albums by Anselm and the Savoir Sans Frontières association by the Mathematical Institute of the University of Rome.
  8. (pl) Positive evaluation of the album "The Black Hole" in the Polish magazine Foton 84 .
  9. (fr) Vincent Borrelli, lecturer, chaired a conference on October 21, 2013, organized by the INSA Lyon Mathematics Center and entitled: What is the shape of the universe? The album "Das Geometrikon" is named as a reference.
  10. (fr) Three Anselm albums are published by Michèle Porte in her book Mémoire de la science, vol. II , book without collection of Fontenay notebooks, ENS editions, seminars 1986-87-December 88, Fontenay / Saint-Cloud
  11. (fr) “Das Geometrikon” is mentioned by Thomas Hausberger, Manuel Bächtold, in: Enjeux des Géométries non euclidiennes , publication by the IREM de Montpellier - Production of the Mathematics and Philosophy Group, 2015. <hal-0144292915915>
  12. (fr) The page Mathematics and Comics of the mathematics subject of the University of Toulouse cites the Anselm series; these albums are also quickly commented on on this blog dedicated to math teaching.