Saturday 24 November 2018
The meeting will be held in Chadwick G07, UCL, Gower Street, London.
For directions please visit: UCL Chadwick Building
PROGRAMME
10.45: Registration. Please feel free to bring coffee with you. Soft drinks will be available at the meeting.
11.00–11.40: Dóra Bobory
Count Batthyány’s Letters on Alchemy – An Editorial Project
11.40-12.20: Umberto Veronesi
The Philosophers and the Crucibles: Chymical Practice from the Old Ashmolean Laboratory, Oxford
12.20-13.00: John R.R. Christie
Gender and the Representation of Chemistry: Two cases from the Eighteenth Century
13.00-14.30: LUNCH BREAK. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide lunch at this meeting but there are various cafés nearby, for example at the Friends Meeting House and Wellcome Library.
14.30-15.10: Frank James
Constructing Humphry Davy’s Biographies
15.10-15.50: William Brock
In Liebig’s Shadow: Heinrich Will (1812-90)
15.50-16.30: Michael Jewess
AERE and AEA Technology 1946-2012
The fee is £10 (SHAC and RSC Historical Group members), otherwise £15.
To register please refer to this information
Showing posts with label Chemistry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chemistry. Show all posts
Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, 2018
The seminar, usually held each year in May-June, is being moved forward to January 2018, in order to coincide with the visit of our colleague, the distinguished historian of chemistry Professor Emeritus Bernadette Bensaude Vincent (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne), to the Maison Française d’Oxford in January-February 2018.
All seminars are kindly hosted by the Maison Française (2-10 Norham Rd., Oxford), and supported by SHAC. They will as usual take place 15.00-17.00 on Wednesday afternoons. Attendance is free, and all with an interest in the history of alchemy and chemistry are welcome, particularly postgraduate students and other younger scholars. The programme is as follows:
January 17tth
Sofie Jaeger ( KCL). “Pulling the Receipts”: gender, alchemy and intellectual networks in early modern England.
Mariana Sanchez Daza (Paris Diderot). Alchemy in the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth-century.
Organizers: Marie Thébaud-Sorger (CNRS, MFO), John Perkins (Oxford Brookes), John Christie (University of Oxford). For further information, contact: jrrc_@hotmail.com
January 17tth
Sofie Jaeger ( KCL). “Pulling the Receipts”: gender, alchemy and intellectual networks in early modern England.
Mariana Sanchez Daza (Paris Diderot). Alchemy in the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth-century.
Organizers: Marie Thébaud-Sorger (CNRS, MFO), John Perkins (Oxford Brookes), John Christie (University of Oxford). For further information, contact: jrrc_@hotmail.com
Colouring & Making in Alchemy and Chemistry
The final programme and abstracts of the papers to be presented at the 7th SHAC Postgraduate Workshop are now available and attached to this email.
The workshop will take place on Wednesday 26 October 2016 at Utrecht University, hosted by the ARTECHNE research group. The theme for 2016, ‘Colouring and Making in Alchemy and Chemistry’, seeks to highlight colouring and making as twin aspects throughout the history of alchemy and chemistry. During the workshop, we will explore how these activities relate to one another in a variety of ways throughout the ages. Keynote speakers are Ernst Homburg (Maastricht) and Tara Nummedal (Brown).
This workshop, including lunch and refreshments, is free, but the number of participants is limited. Please register until 15 October by emailing Thijs Hagendijk (Utrecht), t.hagendijk@uu.nl.
Sent on behalf of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry by Dr Anna Simmons, Acting Honorary Secretary and Membership Secretary
7th SHAC Postgraduate Workshop
Wednesday, 26 October 2016, 9:45–18:15 | Utrecht University, Sweelinckzaal, Drift 21, 3512 BR Utrecht at Maastricht University, having previously researched doctorates in chemistry and the history of science. His research focuses on the boundary between science and technology as well as interactions between industry and university. Alongside various editorial activities, he served on the Council of SHAC between 1996 and 2016.
http://www.histech.nl/www/nl/about/bijzondere-leerstoel
The workshop will take place on Wednesday 26 October 2016 at Utrecht University, hosted by the ARTECHNE research group. The theme for 2016, ‘Colouring and Making in Alchemy and Chemistry’, seeks to highlight colouring and making as twin aspects throughout the history of alchemy and chemistry. During the workshop, we will explore how these activities relate to one another in a variety of ways throughout the ages. Keynote speakers are Ernst Homburg (Maastricht) and Tara Nummedal (Brown).
This workshop, including lunch and refreshments, is free, but the number of participants is limited. Please register until 15 October by emailing Thijs Hagendijk (Utrecht), t.hagendijk@uu.nl.
Sent on behalf of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry by Dr Anna Simmons, Acting Honorary Secretary and Membership Secretary
7th SHAC Postgraduate Workshop
Wednesday, 26 October 2016, 9:45–18:15 | Utrecht University, Sweelinckzaal, Drift 21, 3512 BR Utrecht at Maastricht University, having previously researched doctorates in chemistry and the history of science. His research focuses on the boundary between science and technology as well as interactions between industry and university. Alongside various editorial activities, he served on the Council of SHAC between 1996 and 2016.
http://www.histech.nl/www/nl/about/bijzondere-leerstoel
Alchemy Keynote
Prof. Tara Nummedal (Brown)
Early-Modern Alchemy as the Art of Colour
Tara Nummedal teaches early-modern history at Brown University. Having explored alchemical contracts and accusations of fraud in Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (2007), she is currently preparing a study on the sixteenth-century alchemist Anna Maria Zieglerin (ca. 1550–75) and previously edited a special issue of Ambix on ‘Alchemy and Religion in Christian Europe’.
https://vivo.brown.edu/display/tnummeda
For more information, please visit www.ambix.org or contact Mike A. Zuber (Amsterdam), studentrep@ambix.org.
Please register as a participant until 15 October by emailing Thijs Hagendijk (Utrecht), t.hagendijk@uu.nl.
Amélie Bonney (Oxford)
Creating Toxic Colours: Explosions, Poisoning and Occupational Hazards in the French and British Colour Industry, 1800–1914
Industrialized Britain and France made use of a variety of by-products from the mining industry to create an alternative source of wealth: a range of new dyes and pigments. Colours made with arsenic, zinc or aniline were each marketed as a safer variety than their counterparts, causing specific chemical elements to become fashionable or, on the contrary, undesirable. For example, aniline dyes and pigments were initially marketed as being a safe alternative to colours made with arsenic, but they were later found to be dangerous both for the workers and for the environment.
This paper will investigate why this discourse on the toxicity or the benefits of colours changed throughout the nineteenth century, and argues that this was caused by a combination of the volatility of popular conceptions of toxicity, economic interests and the development of scientific and toxicological knowledge. An investigation of the narratives of workers, scientists and occupational health physicians reveals that the harmful side-effects were often well-known in the working environment long before regulation was implemented. Often these risks were minimised by companies and government authorities in order to make a colour more marketable until a new alternative was found. The effects for workers ranged from skin lesions to acute poisoning, while on an entirely different level there were cases of industrial explosions and large-scale pollution. This paper thus provides a new context in which to discuss the development of aniline dyes as well as pigments and further develops our understanding of risk management during the production of dyes and pigments in the colour industry.
Victor de Seauve (Paris, MNHN)
Edmond Becquerel’s First Colour Photographs Monitoring the Evolution of Colours
In 1848 Edmond Becquerel developed the very first colour-photographic process and was able to record the solar spectrum with its own colours, basing himself on Seebeck’s work on silver chloride. A few prints representing still-lifes, obtained with the same process, are still conserved in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. The support is a silver plate similar to those used for daguerreotypes that underwent a sensitization step and the positive colour image is directly formed onto the sensitized plate. The exposure times were quite long, and the resulting photochromatic images could not be fixed which is why this invention was not widely used.
If this process was the first response to the problem of colour in photography, the origin of colours motivated a debate between scientists in the nineteenth century, an issue that remains unresolved in the twenty-first century. In order to gain insights on the colours of the photochromatic images, we try to relate the sub-microstructure to the optical properties of the images.
In this talk we will focus on the steps of the Becquerel’s process we reproduced according to his writings. The light exposure step of the process is studied with spectrocolorimetry and the resulting images with visible reflectance spectrometry. We will attempt to define the spectral sensitivity of the process and to describe the critical parameters to obtain the most beautiful colours.
Alchemy Panel
Vincenzo Carlotta (Berlin, HU)
Chromatic References in the Making of the Transmutation Agent as Presented in the Dialogue of the Philosophers and Cleopatra
In the context offered by the Greco-Egyptian alchemical tradition, the Dialogue of the Philosophers and Cleopatra touches on distinctive topics, the importance of which has been progressively highlighted by recent scholarship. Nevertheless, the discussion about the sources of these features – and their possible influence on other works – is still open to debate.
The present paper aims at analyzing two closely related subjects: first, the relationship between the body, spirit and soul of the metallic substances, as presented by Cleopatra and her fellows; second, the role performed in this three-way relationship by the doxa of metals. This Greek word is not immediately intelligible, except through a careful analysis of its occurrences in context, and the present paper will point out how this word involves a direct reference to the outer appearance of metallic bodies – specifically, it refers to their ‘brightness’ as opposed to their ‘darkness’. Moreover, this aspect reveals the probable Christian influence on the alchemical text falsely attributed to Cleopatra vii so as to lead up to the more general, and still debated, study of the relationship between Greco-Egyptian alchemy and Christian thought. Finally, this particular case study proves to be especially fruitful since it involves both theoretical and practical issues of the discussion on metallic transmutation throughout the late classical and Byzantine eras.
Kathryn Kremnitzer & Siddhartha V. Shah (Columbia)
Making Emerald Imitation as Working Method
A recipe for making esmeraulde (emerald) appears as an illustrated marginal note under the heading Pierrerie (gemstones) in Ms. Fr. 640 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris), followed by instructions for making other coloured stones, including ruby, hyacinth and topaz. These recipes confirm the larger scope of the author-practitioner’s wide-ranging ambition to reproduce the colour and refractive effects of precious materials, suggesting that imitation is both an artistic aim and a working method to replicate natural processes in form and character.
This paper explores the strong link between coloring and making at the intersection of craft and science, in the production of jewels, bringing together the long-documented history of imitation gemstone production with the findings of our own historical reconstruction. It further reconsiders unstable conceptions of real vs. fake and authentic vs. inauthentic in the early modern period and today, to question how the economic, artistic, and use value of these craft objects was and is determined.
Thijs Hagendijk (Utrecht)
Alchemy, Art and Antwerp Peeter Coudenberghe's Colour Recipes
From antiquity up to the early modern period, it is hard to tell where alchemical practices ended and artisanal practices began. One of the places where the hybridity between alchemy and art can clearly be seen at work is in artisanal recipe books that usually covered a wide array of different practices, ranging from colour-making to metallurgy.
In this paper I investigate a late sixteenth-century Antwerp manuscript that contains recipes for the making of different paints, inks and the production of stained glass. Although the manuscript has drawn the attention of several art historians and conservators, little attention has been given to the alchemical notions and recipes that can be found throughout the manuscript. For instance, the manuscript counts eight recipes for the making of the blue pigment azure. While six of these recipes describe historically accurate procedures, two recipes call for quicksilver and sulphur. Such ingredients would never yield a blue pigment, but instead seem to allude to alchemical transmutation as the underlying process of azure-making.
To better understand the interplay between alchemy and art in this manuscript, I will take a closer look at its author – recently identified as Peeter Coudenberghe (1517–99), an apothecary who lived and worked in Antwerp at a time during which the city flourished as an important international market for artists’ materials.
Acknowledgements
Selection Committee
Prof. Hasok Chang (Cambridge)
Dr. Peter Forshaw (Amsterdam)
Prof. Ernst Homburg (Maastricht)
Prof. Tara Nummedal (Brown)
Financial Support In addition to the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, the following institutions have generously made this workshop possible:
University of Amsterdam – ASH: Amsterdam School of Historical Studies – HHP: History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents
Utrecht University – ARTECHNE: Technique in the Arts, 1500–1950 (European Research Council, grant agreement nr. 648718)
Prof. Tara Nummedal (Brown)
Early-Modern Alchemy as the Art of Colour
Tara Nummedal teaches early-modern history at Brown University. Having explored alchemical contracts and accusations of fraud in Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (2007), she is currently preparing a study on the sixteenth-century alchemist Anna Maria Zieglerin (ca. 1550–75) and previously edited a special issue of Ambix on ‘Alchemy and Religion in Christian Europe’.
https://vivo.brown.edu/display/tnummeda
For more information, please visit www.ambix.org or contact Mike A. Zuber (Amsterdam), studentrep@ambix.org.
Please register as a participant until 15 October by emailing Thijs Hagendijk (Utrecht), t.hagendijk@uu.nl.
Chemistry Panel
Amélie Bonney (Oxford)
Creating Toxic Colours: Explosions, Poisoning and Occupational Hazards in the French and British Colour Industry, 1800–1914
Industrialized Britain and France made use of a variety of by-products from the mining industry to create an alternative source of wealth: a range of new dyes and pigments. Colours made with arsenic, zinc or aniline were each marketed as a safer variety than their counterparts, causing specific chemical elements to become fashionable or, on the contrary, undesirable. For example, aniline dyes and pigments were initially marketed as being a safe alternative to colours made with arsenic, but they were later found to be dangerous both for the workers and for the environment.
This paper will investigate why this discourse on the toxicity or the benefits of colours changed throughout the nineteenth century, and argues that this was caused by a combination of the volatility of popular conceptions of toxicity, economic interests and the development of scientific and toxicological knowledge. An investigation of the narratives of workers, scientists and occupational health physicians reveals that the harmful side-effects were often well-known in the working environment long before regulation was implemented. Often these risks were minimised by companies and government authorities in order to make a colour more marketable until a new alternative was found. The effects for workers ranged from skin lesions to acute poisoning, while on an entirely different level there were cases of industrial explosions and large-scale pollution. This paper thus provides a new context in which to discuss the development of aniline dyes as well as pigments and further develops our understanding of risk management during the production of dyes and pigments in the colour industry.
Victor de Seauve (Paris, MNHN)
Edmond Becquerel’s First Colour Photographs Monitoring the Evolution of Colours
In 1848 Edmond Becquerel developed the very first colour-photographic process and was able to record the solar spectrum with its own colours, basing himself on Seebeck’s work on silver chloride. A few prints representing still-lifes, obtained with the same process, are still conserved in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. The support is a silver plate similar to those used for daguerreotypes that underwent a sensitization step and the positive colour image is directly formed onto the sensitized plate. The exposure times were quite long, and the resulting photochromatic images could not be fixed which is why this invention was not widely used.
If this process was the first response to the problem of colour in photography, the origin of colours motivated a debate between scientists in the nineteenth century, an issue that remains unresolved in the twenty-first century. In order to gain insights on the colours of the photochromatic images, we try to relate the sub-microstructure to the optical properties of the images.
In this talk we will focus on the steps of the Becquerel’s process we reproduced according to his writings. The light exposure step of the process is studied with spectrocolorimetry and the resulting images with visible reflectance spectrometry. We will attempt to define the spectral sensitivity of the process and to describe the critical parameters to obtain the most beautiful colours.
Alchemy Panel
Vincenzo Carlotta (Berlin, HU)
Chromatic References in the Making of the Transmutation Agent as Presented in the Dialogue of the Philosophers and Cleopatra
In the context offered by the Greco-Egyptian alchemical tradition, the Dialogue of the Philosophers and Cleopatra touches on distinctive topics, the importance of which has been progressively highlighted by recent scholarship. Nevertheless, the discussion about the sources of these features – and their possible influence on other works – is still open to debate.
The present paper aims at analyzing two closely related subjects: first, the relationship between the body, spirit and soul of the metallic substances, as presented by Cleopatra and her fellows; second, the role performed in this three-way relationship by the doxa of metals. This Greek word is not immediately intelligible, except through a careful analysis of its occurrences in context, and the present paper will point out how this word involves a direct reference to the outer appearance of metallic bodies – specifically, it refers to their ‘brightness’ as opposed to their ‘darkness’. Moreover, this aspect reveals the probable Christian influence on the alchemical text falsely attributed to Cleopatra vii so as to lead up to the more general, and still debated, study of the relationship between Greco-Egyptian alchemy and Christian thought. Finally, this particular case study proves to be especially fruitful since it involves both theoretical and practical issues of the discussion on metallic transmutation throughout the late classical and Byzantine eras.
Kathryn Kremnitzer & Siddhartha V. Shah (Columbia)
Making Emerald Imitation as Working Method
A recipe for making esmeraulde (emerald) appears as an illustrated marginal note under the heading Pierrerie (gemstones) in Ms. Fr. 640 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris), followed by instructions for making other coloured stones, including ruby, hyacinth and topaz. These recipes confirm the larger scope of the author-practitioner’s wide-ranging ambition to reproduce the colour and refractive effects of precious materials, suggesting that imitation is both an artistic aim and a working method to replicate natural processes in form and character.
This paper explores the strong link between coloring and making at the intersection of craft and science, in the production of jewels, bringing together the long-documented history of imitation gemstone production with the findings of our own historical reconstruction. It further reconsiders unstable conceptions of real vs. fake and authentic vs. inauthentic in the early modern period and today, to question how the economic, artistic, and use value of these craft objects was and is determined.
Thijs Hagendijk (Utrecht)
Alchemy, Art and Antwerp Peeter Coudenberghe's Colour Recipes
From antiquity up to the early modern period, it is hard to tell where alchemical practices ended and artisanal practices began. One of the places where the hybridity between alchemy and art can clearly be seen at work is in artisanal recipe books that usually covered a wide array of different practices, ranging from colour-making to metallurgy.
In this paper I investigate a late sixteenth-century Antwerp manuscript that contains recipes for the making of different paints, inks and the production of stained glass. Although the manuscript has drawn the attention of several art historians and conservators, little attention has been given to the alchemical notions and recipes that can be found throughout the manuscript. For instance, the manuscript counts eight recipes for the making of the blue pigment azure. While six of these recipes describe historically accurate procedures, two recipes call for quicksilver and sulphur. Such ingredients would never yield a blue pigment, but instead seem to allude to alchemical transmutation as the underlying process of azure-making.
To better understand the interplay between alchemy and art in this manuscript, I will take a closer look at its author – recently identified as Peeter Coudenberghe (1517–99), an apothecary who lived and worked in Antwerp at a time during which the city flourished as an important international market for artists’ materials.
Acknowledgements
Selection Committee
Prof. Hasok Chang (Cambridge)
Dr. Peter Forshaw (Amsterdam)
Prof. Ernst Homburg (Maastricht)
Prof. Tara Nummedal (Brown)
Financial Support In addition to the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, the following institutions have generously made this workshop possible:
University of Amsterdam – ASH: Amsterdam School of Historical Studies – HHP: History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents
Utrecht University – ARTECHNE: Technique in the Arts, 1500–1950 (European Research Council, grant agreement nr. 648718)
SOCIETY for the HISTORY of ALCHEMY and CHEMISTRY
CALL FOR PAPERS: 11th International Conference on the History of Chemistry (11ichc)
The programme committee especially encourages the submission of panel/session proposals, but also welcomes the submission of stand-alone papers. Session organizers and contributors are free to send their proposals on any topic on the history of chemistry, broadly construed as the cluster of molecular sciences, industry, technology and engineering. A non-exhaustive list of possible sessions could include historical papers on the development of all aspects of the material and life sciences, such as:
All proposals must be in English, the language of the conference. Submitted abstracts and session proposals will be subject to review by an advisory committee. Although the conference is open to individual paper submissions, preference will be given to organised sessions with three or more papers. All paper proposals must use the template provided below, and must include (1) an abstract of the session topic (up to 150 words), the name(s) of the organiser(s), and the proposed papers; (2) abstracts for each paper (up to 200 words); (3) a short CV of the organiser(s).
Template
Please use the following template for panels and individual papers: template
- Chemistry, professors, textbooks and classrooms
- Teaching and didactics of history of chemistry
- Chemistry and law: controversies, expertise, counter-expertise, fraud and activism
- Toxics regulation, risk assessment and public health
- Environmental chemistry, energy and regulation
- Chemistry, industry, and economy
- Spaces and sites of chemistry
- Instruments, collections and material culture
- Biographies and prosopographies, and databases
- Chemistry, war and exile
- Representation of chemistry, and visual cultures
- Alchemy, Chymistry and Early Modern Science and Medicine
- Gender and chemistry
- Proposal Guidelines
All proposals must be in English, the language of the conference. Submitted abstracts and session proposals will be subject to review by an advisory committee. Although the conference is open to individual paper submissions, preference will be given to organised sessions with three or more papers. All paper proposals must use the template provided below, and must include (1) an abstract of the session topic (up to 150 words), the name(s) of the organiser(s), and the proposed papers; (2) abstracts for each paper (up to 200 words); (3) a short CV of the organiser(s).
Template
Please use the following template for panels and individual papers: template
Important Dates
Deadline for submitting proposals (both panels and individual papers): 31 January, 2017
Notification of acceptance: 31 March, 2017
Early Registration: 31 May, 2017
Conference dates: 29 August – 2 September 2017
Deadline for submitting proposals (both panels and individual papers): 31 January, 2017
Notification of acceptance: 31 March, 2017
Early Registration: 31 May, 2017
Conference dates: 29 August – 2 September 2017
10th International Conference on the History of Chemistry (10th ICHC)
University of Aveiro, Portugal, 9th to 12th September 2015
This interdisciplinary conference welcomes participants from a range of
academic disciplines including history of science and technology,
science and technology studies (STS), economic and business history, and
the history of material culture and museum studies. We also warmly
welcome participants from chemistry and related disciplines with an
interest in the history of their discipline.
The theme is CHEMICAL BIOGRAPHY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Key-notes : Prof. Jorge Calado, Prof. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and
Prof. Michael Gordin
Biographies-whether in the form of books or articles-have always been an
important genre in the history of chemistry. General histories of
chemistry have often taken a biographical approach, most notably the
four volume work of J. R. Partington. Many chemists, especially in the
German-speaking world, have written autobiographies which along with the
formal obituaries produced by national academies of science have formed
an important source of information for historians of chemistry. More
recently the American Chemical Society published the "Profiles, Pathways
and Dreams" series which extended the autobiographical form up to the
end of the 20th century. For several decades in the latter half of the
20th century, professional historians of chemistry avoided the
biographical approach as being inherently too hagiographical and
"Whiggish". However following the pioneering work of scholars in the
history of physics the biography has been taken up anew as a framework
for analysing thematic problems and social-cultural questions. This
conference will critically examine this conceptual "turn" in the
historiography of chemistry and explore ways in which the biographical
approach can be fruitfully employed by historians of chemistry.
The conference will embrace all aspects of the history of alchemy and
chemistry including the history of materials and the history of
biochemistry. Papers which simply present the biography of a chemist
will not be accepted, as there must be a line of argument or a
historical problematic. Papers might address:
Proposals for papers on other topics can be submitted, but preference will be given to papers reflecting the conference theme. Proposals can be made for sessions, standard papers (20 minutes), short papers (10 minutes) and posters.
Proposals (abstracts) should be uploaded using Easychair on the website and be a minimum of 150 words and a maximum of 300 words. The session proposals should also contain the abstracts of the proposed papers. The deadline for all proposals is midnight (Universal Time/GMT) on 30 April 2015.
Further details of the conference, including local arrangements and accommodation, will be found on the website. Please address any queries to the chair of the programme committee, Peter Morris.
This interdisciplinary conference welcomes participants from a range of
academic disciplines including history of science and technology,
science and technology studies (STS), economic and business history, and
the history of material culture and museum studies. We also warmly
welcome participants from chemistry and related disciplines with an
interest in the history of their discipline.
The theme is CHEMICAL BIOGRAPHY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Key-notes : Prof. Jorge Calado, Prof. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and
Prof. Michael Gordin
Biographies-whether in the form of books or articles-have always been an
important genre in the history of chemistry. General histories of
chemistry have often taken a biographical approach, most notably the
four volume work of J. R. Partington. Many chemists, especially in the
German-speaking world, have written autobiographies which along with the
formal obituaries produced by national academies of science have formed
an important source of information for historians of chemistry. More
recently the American Chemical Society published the "Profiles, Pathways
and Dreams" series which extended the autobiographical form up to the
end of the 20th century. For several decades in the latter half of the
20th century, professional historians of chemistry avoided the
biographical approach as being inherently too hagiographical and
"Whiggish". However following the pioneering work of scholars in the
history of physics the biography has been taken up anew as a framework
for analysing thematic problems and social-cultural questions. This
conference will critically examine this conceptual "turn" in the
historiography of chemistry and explore ways in which the biographical
approach can be fruitfully employed by historians of chemistry.
The conference will embrace all aspects of the history of alchemy and
chemistry including the history of materials and the history of
biochemistry. Papers which simply present the biography of a chemist
will not be accepted, as there must be a line of argument or a
historical problematic. Papers might address:
- Autobiographies as a source for historians of chemistry
- Biography and discipline building
- Biographies and nationalism
- The making and unmaking of chemical heroes
- Myths and misrepresentation
- Iconography as a mode of self-representation in the visual arts, sculpture and photography
- The historiography of the biographical mode
- Collective biographies including biographical dictionaries and the "biographies" of research groups
Proposals for papers on other topics can be submitted, but preference will be given to papers reflecting the conference theme. Proposals can be made for sessions, standard papers (20 minutes), short papers (10 minutes) and posters.
Proposals (abstracts) should be uploaded using Easychair on the website and be a minimum of 150 words and a maximum of 300 words. The session proposals should also contain the abstracts of the proposed papers. The deadline for all proposals is midnight (Universal Time/GMT) on 30 April 2015.
Further details of the conference, including local arrangements and accommodation, will be found on the website. Please address any queries to the chair of the programme committee, Peter Morris.
In the Beginning: Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry
The Spring Meeting of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC):
Saturday 16 March 2013, 13.00 to 17.30
Richard Eden Room, Gillian Beer House, Clare Hall (West Court site), Herschel Road, Cambridge
The early sources of alchemy, chemistry and chemical technology - influential antique and early medieval works, composed in Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew - remain relatively little known, and present unique challenges to scholarship. This meeting showcases the most up-to-date work on these intriguing sources: both shedding new light on early ideas, practices and authorities, and evaluating their impact on the development of western alchemy, chemistry and chemical medicine.
The meeting celebrates the completion of the first volume of a new series, *Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry*. The series will provide monograph-length critical editions and English translations of influential works of early alchemy and chemistry, to be included in subscriptions to the Society's journal, Ambix.
Programme:
Lawrence M. Principe (Johns Hopkins University): "Early Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry"
Matteo Martelli (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): "Zosimus and the First Book of Alchemy"
Gabriele Ferrario (Cambridge University Library): "Judaeo-Arabic Alchemy in the Cairo Genizah"
Sébastien Moureau (Université catholique de Louvain): "Elixir and Ferment, Alchemy and Medicine: The Link Between Pseudo-Avicenna's De anima, Roger Bacon, and Pseudo-Aristotle's Secretum secretorum"
Jennifer Rampling (University of Cambridge): "Plotting the Future of Medieval Alchemy"
Roundtable discussion
Full programme here: http://www.ambix.org/sources/
Registration is £10 (£6 for students and SHAC members). Online registration here: http://www.ambix.org/registration-form/
Colloquium organized by SHAC, with support from the British Society for the History of Science and the Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Pre-Modern Europe.
Please contact Jennifer Rampling with any queries: jmr82@cam.ac.uk
Saturday 16 March 2013, 13.00 to 17.30
Richard Eden Room, Gillian Beer House, Clare Hall (West Court site), Herschel Road, Cambridge
The early sources of alchemy, chemistry and chemical technology - influential antique and early medieval works, composed in Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew - remain relatively little known, and present unique challenges to scholarship. This meeting showcases the most up-to-date work on these intriguing sources: both shedding new light on early ideas, practices and authorities, and evaluating their impact on the development of western alchemy, chemistry and chemical medicine.
The meeting celebrates the completion of the first volume of a new series, *Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry*. The series will provide monograph-length critical editions and English translations of influential works of early alchemy and chemistry, to be included in subscriptions to the Society's journal, Ambix.
Programme:
Lawrence M. Principe (Johns Hopkins University): "Early Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry"
Matteo Martelli (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): "Zosimus and the First Book of Alchemy"
Gabriele Ferrario (Cambridge University Library): "Judaeo-Arabic Alchemy in the Cairo Genizah"
Sébastien Moureau (Université catholique de Louvain): "Elixir and Ferment, Alchemy and Medicine: The Link Between Pseudo-Avicenna's De anima, Roger Bacon, and Pseudo-Aristotle's Secretum secretorum"
Jennifer Rampling (University of Cambridge): "Plotting the Future of Medieval Alchemy"
Roundtable discussion
Full programme here: http://www.ambix.org/sources/
Registration is £10 (£6 for students and SHAC members). Online registration here: http://www.ambix.org/registration-form/
Colloquium organized by SHAC, with support from the British Society for the History of Science and the Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Pre-Modern Europe.
Please contact Jennifer Rampling with any queries: jmr82@cam.ac.uk
Rumford Scholarship 2013-2014
The Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) and the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC) are pleased to invite applications for the 2013-2014 Rumford Scholarship.
This annual award will enable the Rumford Scholar to travel to Europe in order to undertake original research in the history of chemistry or alchemy in libraries/archives/museum collections using their particular resources. The award may be held in any European country.
The value of the award is £2300. Applications are due April 7, 2013. For more information or an application, please go to:
http://www.chemheritage.org/research/fellowships-and-travel-grants/beckman-center-fellowships/index.aspx#FellowshipsandTravelGrants
Anna Marie Roos, Ph.D., F.L.S.
Hon. Secretary of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Email: anna.roos@history.ox.ac.uk
This annual award will enable the Rumford Scholar to travel to Europe in order to undertake original research in the history of chemistry or alchemy in libraries/archives/museum collections using their particular resources. The award may be held in any European country.
The value of the award is £2300. Applications are due April 7, 2013. For more information or an application, please go to:
http://www.chemheritage.org/research/fellowships-and-travel-grants/beckman-center-fellowships/index.aspx#FellowshipsandTravelGrants
Anna Marie Roos, Ph.D., F.L.S.
Hon. Secretary of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Email: anna.roos@history.ox.ac.uk
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