To mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Tom Wedgwood on 14 May 1771, the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry and the Royal Photographic Society have organised a virtual meeting on the afternoons of 14 and 15 May 2021, starting at 2pm BST (3pm CEST, 9am EDT). 

Tom Wedgwood, fifth child of the midlands potter Josiah Wedgwood, is now best remembered for his 1802 paper in which he outlined a chemical method of creating an image. By the middle of the nineteenth century this had become widely recognised as major precursor to the development of photography in the 1830s. But Wedgwood’s short life (he died aged 34 in 1805) encompassed much more. A member of the loosely defined radical romantic movement, he associated with such major figures at William Godwin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Beddoes, Humphry Davy and many others.  

The speakers who will discuss these and other aspects of his life and work, as well as his enduring legacy as a founder of photography, are the current Tom Wedgwood, Geoffrey Batchen (keynote), Lucy Lead, Michael Gray, Brian Dolan, Tim Fulford, Catrin Jones, Michael Pritchard and Rose Teanby. 

The full programme and registration details can be found at https://rps.org/wedgwood250 

The next online talk of the British Society for the History of Pharmacy will take place on 26 April, 18:30BST.

More info can be found here.

This Trinity Term, the Oxford Seminar in the History of Chemistry will be held online. The seminar is organised by Judith Rainhorn (Maison Française d’Oxford) and John Christie (Oxford), and is sponsored by SHAC and the Maison Française d’Oxford.

The programme focuses on 20th century chemistry and is available here.

June 3-4, 2021  Registration link

Please note that the schedule reflects U.S. Eastern Time. 

THURSDAY, JUNE 3rd 

9:30-10:00 | INTRODUCTIONS 

10:00-10:50 | CONCEALING GENDERED KNOWLEDGE 

Natacha Klein Käfer, Private Spaces, Secret Practices: Gender and Concealment in  Alchemical Laboratories under Anna and August of Saxony 

Lara Tessaro, Beauty secrets: uncovering the estrogenic roots of Canadian cosmetic  labelling regulations, 1943-44 

Grace Poudrier and Lauren Richter, PFAS Ubiquity as Corporate Accomplishment

[break: 20 min] 

11:10-12:00 | ICONS AND CIPHERS 

Sergei Zotov, The biggest secret of Newton: alchemical iconography of Coronatio  naturae 

Marlis Hinckley, Secrecy in Pseudo-Lull: The Use of Letter Codes

Megan Piorko and Sarah Lang, Sloane MS 1902 Alchemical Cipher

12:00-1:00 | KEYNOTE, Nancy Langston

FRIDAY, JUNE 4th 

10:00-10:50 | PATENTS, PROFITS, AND INVENTIONS 

Andrew Meade McGee, Open Labs Versus Proprietary Methods: Secrecy,  Information Networks, and the Evolution of an Institutional Chemical Research  Infrastructure in the First Five Decades of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research 

Vyta Pivo, The Alchemy of Concrete: The Making and Unmaking of Material History 

Alison McManus, Who Invented Agent Orange?: Priority Disputes in the Aftermath  of Wartime Secrecy 

10:50-11:40 | RULES AND RESIDUES 

Jayson Porter, As if: Furtive Arsenic (As) from Extraction to Exposure 

Jack Klempay, Residues at the Limits of Chemical Knowledge: The Case of  Chlordecone Contamination in Martinique and Guadeloupe 

Colleen Lanier Christensen, Toxic Rules?: Standardized Chemical Knowledge and the  Limits of Regulatory Action 

[break: 20 min] 

12:00-1:00 | KEYNOTE: Michelle Murphy 

1:00-1:30 | CLOSING REMARKS

The SHAC Award Scheme for 2020 funded seven applicants.

Six Research Awards were made.

Georgiana Hedesan, Independent Scholar, research trip to the University of Glasgow to explore Alchemy in Antonio Neri’s manuscript Il Tesoro del Mondo (1598-1600).

Joris Mercelis, John Hopkins University, research trip to Rochester New York to study written and visual sources in the Kodak Historical Collection.

Luis Moreno-Martinez, University of Valencia, research trips for “A transnational approach to chemistry pedagogy through the biography of Antonio García-Banús (1888-1955).”

Silvia Perez Criado, PhD Student, University of Valencia, archival research for dissertation “DDT during Franco’s regime in Spain (1939-1977).”

Zoe Screti, PhD Student, University of Birmingham, archival research trip for dissertation “The Impact of the Reformation on the study of alchemy in Early Modern England.”

Robert Van Den Berg, Independent Scholar, image reproduction costs for biography of the Dutch Physical Chemist, J.H. van’t Hoff.

In addition, one Subject Development Award for conferences or the like was approved as follows: 

Peter Forshaw, University of Amsterdam, workshop on Rosicrucian and Masonic Alchemy.

The next SHAC online Seminar Meeting will take place on 18 February, 2021. Megan Piorko will give a talk about “The Long Life of Fasciculus Chemicus: Early American Reception of Seventeenth-Century Alchemical Texts.” All are welcome to attend, but please sign up soon by sending an e-mail to: meetings [AT] ambix.org.

On 23 March, Simon Werrett will give a talk during the following SHAC Seminar Meeting.

The latest issue of Chemical Intelligence is out now! As always, it contains lots of information for SHAC’s members, including about upcoming Seminar Events, Mike Zuber’s Partington Prize winning essay, information about the Morris Award and SHAC Awards Scheme, the next Annual Postgraduate Workshop and much more!

Check it out here!