within our grasp. There is a lot of it – from a connected world in which there
are more chemists alive today creating more data than ever existed in
history. Capturing, processing, semantifying, searching and displaying the
information we need – on demand, will need technology, ideas and new
approaches to open information. The problems to solve are both technical
and social. Future chemists will view chemistry differently – as we view the
alchemists as distinct in their objectives and philosophy compared to today’s
scientists. The next generation of chemical tools will need to better reflect
the experimental data they attempt to capture, and the abstractions made in
today’s systems will disappear as computer and human evolution converges.
A lively discussion followed. Diana then brought the meeting to a close and
thanked all the speakers for an excellent series of presentations. Prof. Alan
Dronsfield (University of Derby and Chairman of the RSCHG) thanked
Diana for all the tireless work she had put into a very rewarding day. The
meeting ended at 17.15.
Bill Griffith
SHAC Anniversary Meeting
On 19 November 2010 the Society for the History of Alchemy and
Chemistry (SHAC) held a meeting at the Royal Institution to celebrate the
seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Society. Around seventy
people attended the meeting not only from the UK but from as far afield as
Montreal, Norway, Germany, Italy and the USA. It was a wonderful
occasion to meet up with colleagues from past SHAC, RSCHG and
EuCheMS Working Party on History of Chemistry meetings and from the
Chemical Heritage Foundation.
The afternoon session was based around the theme “The History of the
History of Chemistry.” Papers were given by Bill Brock (University of
Leicester) on “Exploring early modern chymistry: the first decade of the
Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry” which contained some
fascinating revelations from the Society’s archives, which have recently
been deposited at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. Frank
James (Royal Institution) then spoke on “The Two Cultures and the history
of chemistry.” Marcos Martinón-Torres (University College London) spoke
on “Recent Developments in the history of alchemy.” The final paper in this
session was by Marco Beretta (University of Bologna) on “The changing
role of history in the identity of continental chemistry.”
After tea, Hasok Chang (University of Cambridge) chaired a panel
discussion with Maurice Crosland (University of Kent), David Knight
(University of Durham) and Colin Russell (Open University) entitled “The
Good Old Days?” Following a reception in the Royal InstitutionMuseum,
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Simon Schaffer (University of Cambridge) gave a public lecture “The
Unfortunate Chemist – Tribulations of chemical philosophy in an Age of
Revolution.” Dinner in the Royal Institution’s restaurant, Time and Space,
followed and the day was brought to a close with a few words from SHAC’s
Chairman, Robert Anderson, and the Science Writer, Philip Ball.
A full report on the SHAC anniversary meeting will appear in the next issue
of the RSCHG Newsletter.
Anna Simmons
FORTHCOMING MEETINGS
Royal Society of Chemistry Historical Group Meetings
Spring meeting: Friday 18 March 2011
The Group has planned in conjunction with the Radiochemical Group, a
whole day conference on Marie Curie and the history of radioactivity. This
will be on Friday 18th March 2011 and will be a high profile event for the
RSC.
We have lined up a distinguished list of speakers, including the nuclear
scientist Dr Serge Plattard (presently Counsellor for Science and Technology
at the French Embassy) to give the keynote lecture on Marie Curie – her life
and work. The French Ambassador has been invited to open the conference,
the first session of which will be chaired by the RSC’s Chief Executive, Dr
Richard Pike. Negotiations are in place to conclude the conference with an
early-evening wine and cheese reception at Burlington House (funded, we
hope, by the RSC) for attendees and speakers. The event will be open to
RSC members generally, including members of the Radiochemical Group,
and there will be a limited number of bursaries for attendance (not travel
costs) for students.
Members will recall that I had to open a waiting list for our meeting, The
Rise and Fall of ICI. It is likely that we will have to do the same for this
meeting. Please do return the flyer enclosed with this newsletter, preferably
by email, as soon as possible.
Bill Griffith
Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry Meetings
Oxford History of Chemistry Seminars
Organized by Oxford University, Oxford Brookes University, Maison
Française d’Oxford and the Society for the History of Alchemy &
Chemistry. All welcome.
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“
Mastering Nature? Chemistry in History” - Programme 2011
Wednesday 9 February 2011: 3-5pm
Forensic chemistry & medicine in nineteenth-century France & Britain
Oxford Brookes University, Buckley Building, Gypsy Lane, Headington
Jose Ramon Bertomeu (University of Barcelona), “Sense and sensitivity:
toxicology and normal arsenic in nineteenth-century France.”
Cassie Watson (Oxford Brookes University), “Forensic medicine and
chemistry in nineteenth-century Britain: theory and practice.”
Wednesday 23 February 2011: 3-5pm
New Researchers: apothecaries in early modern Europe
History Faculty, George Street
Valentina Pugliano (Oxford University), “Between albarelli and vipers: the
intellectual life of the sixteenth-century apothecary connoisseur.”
Samir Boumediene (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Lyon), “Europeanizing
American remedies: the preparation of drugs in apothecaries’ back-shops in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”
Wednesday 2 March 2011: time to be confirmed
The search for natural products in the twentieth century
Maison Française, Norham Road
A showing of the film “L'if aux frontières de la vie/The yew, beneficial
poison,” will be followed by a discussion with the director, Jean-Luc
Bouvret. The film won first prize in the “Mutualités” section of ImagéSanté,
at the 2010 International Health Film Festival, Liège.
Wednesday 9
March 2011: 3-5pm
Physical chemists
History Faculty, George Street
Bill Brock, (University of Leicester), “The nine lives of Sir William
Crookes.”
Brigitte van Tiggelen, (Memosciences, Louvain), “Walter and Ida Noddack-
Tacke, a collaborative couple in chemistry.”
Saturday 28 May 2011: 10am-5pm
Alchemy and chemistry: continuities and fractures
Oxford Brookes University, Buckley Building, Gypsy Lane, Headington
Colloquium in conjunction with the University of Lille and the Department
of the History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge. Details to be
announced.
Further details, including maps & directions, can be found at
http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/hsmt/histchem/.
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Convenors: Pietro Corsi, John Christie, Robert Fox, Muriel Le Roux, John
Perkins, Viviane Quirke
Sites of Chemistry, 1600-2000
SHAC is sponsoring a four-year project to investigate the sites where
chemistry has been practised since 1600. The Wellcome Trust has awarded
£11 000 to fund the first two years of the project.
From its immediate origins in the seventeenth century chemistry has been
practised in a wide range of physical spaces and places, from the princely
court to the apothecary’s shop, from the learned society and the lecture
theatre to the university research laboratory, from the craftsman’s workshop
to the industrial R and D laboratory. In each of these, and in many other
locations and at different times, chemical practice (which includes research,
teaching, studying, industrial application and routine analysis, and
theoretical debate) has been set within differently structured physical and
social spaces and carried out by various actors for different ends. A growing
number of scholars have explored particular examples of the various sites of
chemistry, but so far little attempt has been made to exploit the opportunities
that these studies present for comparative analysis, for exploring the
development of chemistry outside the major and well-known institutions, or
for exploring the development of chemical practices over the long term. As
an experimental science the most important site for chemistry was and is the
laboratory and our understanding of its critical development into the
knowledge factory in the nineteenth century is still dependent on the ground-
breaking work of J.B. Morrell in the 1970s, in particular his “The Chemist
Breeders: The Research Schools of Liebig and Thomas Thomson,” Ambix,
1972, 19, 1-58. A number of recent studies have pointed to the wider
contexts of this evolution and suggest that it is time for a re-examination of
this influential interpretation.
This series of two-day annual conferences from 2011 to 2014 will bring
together a number of historians in order to explore the physical spaces and
places where chemistry has been practised from the seventeenth to the
twentieth century. Each year will focus on a different century (broadly
defined), beginning in July 2011 with the eighteenth century, the nineteenth
century in June 2012, the twentieth century in June 2013 and returning to the
seventeenth century in 2014. This chronological ordering will avoid a clash
with a number of international events on alchemy and chemistry in 2011,
and more importantly will coincide with an exhibition project on early-
modern chymistry in the seventeenth-century basement laboratory in the
Museum of the History of Science in Oxford.
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