John Perkins

We were very saddened to learn that John Perkins, SHAC Treasurer from 2007 to 2013, has passed away recently. John helped transform the Society’s activities during his tenure as Treasurer, introducing our grants scheme, co-founding the Oxford History of Alchemy and Chemistry Seminar Series and bringing together the series of conferences on Sites of Chemistry, 1600-2000. This conference series investigated the wide and diverse range of physical spaces and places where chemistry has been practised and led to several special issues of Ambix. John will be greatly missed by all who knew him. An appreciation of John’s life and work will appear in Ambix at a later date.

Ambix Edited Collection

 A new Edited Collection is available open access through July, in conjunction with the 13th International Conference on the History of Chemistry held in Vilnius, Lithuania: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/yamb20/collections/Centres-and-Peripheries-of-Chymical-Knowledge

Centres and Peripheries of Chymical Knowledge: Tracing Traditions of Alchemy and Chemistry in Eastern Europe

From the patronage networks of Rudolph II to the military campaigns of World Wars I and II, chymical knowledge was highly sought after in Eastern Europe, especially as a means to exert political power. The articles featured in this collection trace historical evidence of Eastern European chymical traditions, from a fourteenth-century Bohemian alchemical manuscript to twentieth-century global approaches to chemistry, to illustrate the mutual influence of Western and Eastern European chymical knowledge exchange. The insularity of Eastern European science before the establishment of the port of Archangel was not intentional but forced by feuding neighbouring lands. Ivan the Terrible attempted to create a Moscow medical school, but the Western European instructors he tried to bring in were blocked by the Danes and Swedes. The establishment of the port of Archangel in 1553 expedited cross-cultural chymical exchange between Eastern and Western Europe. As a result, the Russo-English trading organization Muscovy Company formed in 1555. By the 1620s, Tsar Mikhail Romanov had succeeded in forming the Apothecary Chancery at his court in Moscow. While there has been a history of Eastern European monarchs importing courtly alchemists from the West, including both John Dee (1527-1608) and his son Arthur Dee (1579-1651), many influential chymical practitioners were born and worked in Eastern Europe—such as Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius (1566-1636), Hungarian Janos Banfihunyadi (1576-1646), Mikhail Vasil’evich Lomonosov (1711-1765) of St. Petersburg, Russian born chemists Nikolai Nikolaevich Zinin (1812-1880) and Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleeve (1834-1907), as well as many notable Soviet chemists of the twentieth century.

Conversations on Chemistry

Through its Conversations on the History of Chemistry, the CHCMS aims to start a discussion around the future of the history of chemistry and the molecular sciences. How do historians of chemistry select their objects of inquiry and what are the tools and methods they use to study the past? How have they seen their specific methods and fields evolve among other examinations of scientific endeavours and how do they view the future of the field? Details of the next conversations are below.

The first few roundtables will take place on Zoom in the coming two months. Please register here to receive the links and attend. For any other questions, feel free to contact the CHCMS secretary Sarah Hijmans at sarahnhijmans@gmail.com.

Conversation 2. The history of chemistry and its audiences

1 June 2023, 1-2 pm UTC (6-7 am PT/9-10 am EST/3-4 pm CEST/10-11 pm JST)

· Philip Ball (Freelance science writer)

· Jesse Smith (Director of Curatorial Affairs, Science History Institute)

· Annette Lykknes (Historian of Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

Conversation 3. Food, toxicity and the life sciences

15 June 2023, 1-2 pm UTC (6-7 am PT/9-10 am EST/3-4 pm CEST/10-11 pm JST) (TBC)

· José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez (Professor, López Piñero Institute for the History of Medicine and Science, University of Valencia)

· Paulina Sophie Gennermann (Postdoc, Institute for History and Ethics of Medicine, Heidelberg University)

· Victoria Lee (Associate Professor, Ohio University)

Conversation 4. Resources, energy and environment

29 June 2023, 1-2 pm UTC (6-7 am PT/9-10 am EST/3-4 pm CEST/10-11 pm JST)

· Marcin Krasnodębski (Assistant Professor, Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences)

· Cyrus Mody (Professor in the History of Science, Technology, Innovation, Maastricht University)

· Tristan Revells (Postdoc, Tsinghua University)

Best regards

Various Officers of SHAC!

Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry Award Scheme 2023 – Deadline 31 May 2023

Here’s a reminder to you that Grants of up to £1000 are available for research into the history of chemistry or the history of alchemy by both new and independent scholars and also support for Subject Development of either history of chemistry or history of alchemy. If you know of anyone who you think may qualify for one of these grants please encourage them to apply.

Applicants must be members of the Society in good standing at the time of making an application, and, if successful, throughout the period of an award. For more information and application forms, please contact grants@ambix.org. Membership enquiries should be made to newjoiner@ambix.org.

If you want to apply, please make contact soon to obtain the forms and ensure your application is submitted by 31 May 2023 deadline.

Rob Johnstone

Hon Treasurer, SHAC

Dear colleagues,

Please find below two announcements related to the history of alchemy:

1. Talk by Prof Jennifer M. Rampling at the Oxford Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Monday 24 April 2023, 4pm-5:15pm,
Maison Française d’Oxford, 2-10 Norham Road, Oxford OX2 6SE

(walk-in, no registration required)

Fantasy or experiment? Reading alchemical imagery in early modern England

Alchemy is famous for its spectacular, allegorical images, in which chemical substances and processes are frequently depicted as human and animal figures, from battling dragons to the famous “chemical wedding.” But can this imagery tell us anything about how chemical processes were actually practiced and understood – and how can we tell the difference between experimental information and fantastical speculation? This talk will trace how practitioners in medieval and early modern Europe – especially in England – manipulated visual imagery in order to signal their place within ancient genealogies of knowledge, while also advertising new practical developments. Drawing on my own attempts to reconstruct historical experiments in a modern laboratory, I ask how these practitioners used images to promote alchemical projects to readers and patrons, even as they struggled with the dual challenge of reproducing accurate images on the page, and authentic chemical effects in the laboratory. 

2. Oxford Seminars in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (Oxford Trinity Term 2023)

The Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, which has been organised at the Maison Française d’Oxford (2-10 Norham Road, Oxford OX2 6SE) for more than a decade, is now back to in person meetings during Oxford’s Trinity term (May-June 2023). The event is co-organised by Jo Hedesan and John Christie, and can be attended by anyone who wishes to without prior registration. The meetings are scheduled between 3 and 5pm on the following Wednesdays:

3 May – Medieval Islamic Alchemy and its Influence

• Chair: Jennifer M. Rampling (Princeton)
• Salam Rassi (Edinburgh) – ‘Alchemy and Religious Authority in the Islamic World: The Case of Ibn Umayl (fl. c. 912)’
• Tom Fischer (EPHE Paris) – ‘New Perspectives on the Transmission and Influence of Senior Zadith’s Tabula chemica’ 

17 May – Vintage Analogies in Medieval and Early Modern Medical Alchemy

• Chair: Rob Iliffe (Oxford)
• Mark Thakkar (St Andrews): ‘Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel? Medieval Sermons as a Source for the History of Fermentation’
• Carmen Schmechel (FU Berlin): ‘The “Wine Stone”: Tartar as a Cause of Disease in Paracelsus and Joseph Duchesne’

24 May – Religion and Medicine in Early Modern Alchemy

• Chair: Jo Hedesan (Oxford)
• Zoe Screti (Oxford): ‘“This Parallisme Shews”: Comparing Alchemy and Religion in a Sixteenth-Century Alchemical Treatise’
• Elisabeth Moreau (Cambridge): ‘Galenic and Paracelsian Methods of Healing in Daniel Sennert’s Chymical Medicine (1619)’

31 May – Chemical Careers in New Contexts, 1760-1860

• Chair: John Christie (Oxford)
• Robert Fox (Oxford): ‘Thomas Garnett. Science, medicine, mobility in eighteenth-century England’
• Frank James and Anna Simmons (UCL): ‘The Disappearing Act of William Thomas Brande: How History of Science Marginalises Some but not Others’

14 June – What’s in a Substance? Making Identity and Purity in Modern Chemistry

• Chair: John Christie (Oxford)
• Catherine Jackson (Oxford): ‘Solving the Synthesis Paradox: Making Purity and Identity’
• Marabel Riesmeier (Cambridge): ‘Individuating Chemicals: Substantial Shifts in the 20th Century’

On behalf of the organizer,

Georgiana Hedesan 

Grants of up to £1000 are available for research into the history of chemistry or the history of alchemy by both new and independent scholars and also support for Subject Development of either history of chemistry or history of alchemy.

Further details: https://www.ambix.org/grants/ 

Applicants must be members of the Society in good standing at the time of making an application, and, if successful, throughout the period of an award. For more information and application forms, please contact grants@ambix.org. Membership enquiries should be made to newjoiner@ambix.org. If you want to apply, please make contact soon to obtain the forms and ensure your application is submitted by 31 May 2023 deadline.

Sent on behalf of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry by

Dr Anna Simmons

The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry is delighted to announce that the winner of the 2023 Partington Prize is Dr Armel Cornu of the Science History Institute for her entry “Senses and utility in the New Chemistry.”

Armel Cornu is a postdoctoral researcher at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. She majored in chemistry and history before graduating with a masters degree in the history of science at Université Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris. She obtained her doctorate at the University of Uppsala in 2022 with a dissertation centring on the market, regulation, and science of mineral waters in eighteenth-century France. Her research is characterised by a social and economic approach to the development of chemistry throughout the Enlightenment. She currently works on the uses of sensorial impressions in the practice and perception of eighteenth-century chemistry.

The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry established the Partington Prize in memory of Professor James Riddick Partington, the Society’s first Chairman. It is awarded every three years for an original and unpublished essay on any aspect of the history of alchemy or chemistry. The prize-winning article will appear in the Society’s journal, Ambix, in due course.

REMINDER – SHAC AWARD SCHEME 2023

Applications are now open for the SHAC Award Scheme 2023, with a closing date of 31 May 2023.

SHAC offers two types of award up to a maximum value of £1000: support for research into the history of chemistry or history of alchemy by both new and independent scholars and support for Subject Development of either history of chemistry or history of alchemy. It is expected that applicants will be advised of the outcome of their application by 31 July 2023. The Awards are most suitable for activities planned to be undertaken during the academic year October 2023–September 2024. To apply please request a form from grants@ambix.org . Applicants must be members of the Society in good standing at the time of making an application, and, if successful, throughout the period of an award.

For further details see: https://www.ambix.org/grants/

With best wishes,

Chris Campbell

Honorary Secretary

SHAC