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 17

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.

January 24

Julia Carr-Trebelhorn (University of Oxford).  “Powers of Perfection”: the chemical and material mastery of Alexandre Brongiart.

Cat Rushmore (Oxford Brookes).  The uses and misuses of carbon tetrachloride in British homes from the 1930’s to the 1980’s.

January 31

Carolyn Cobbold (University of Cambridge).  How chemists sought to regulate food in France, Germany, Britain and the United States, 1800-1914.

Karoliina Pulkkinen (University of Cambridge).  Values and uses: how Mendeleev’s valuing of completeness supported predicting.

Organizers: Marie Thébaud-Sorger (CNRS,MFO), John Perkins (Oxford Brookes), John Christie (University of Oxford). For further information, contact: jrrc_@hotmail.com

PUBLIC LECTURE BY PROFESSOR BERNADETTE BENSAUDE VINCENT

As part of the programme for her visit to MFO, Professor Bensaude Vincent will be giving a public lecture at the Maison, 17.15 on 23 January. The lecture is entitled Chemistry without borders: the role of chemists in twentieth- century technologies. Attendance free, all welcome.