Next on Line Seminar 21^st March

The next on-line seminar of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will be given by Professor Robert Fox (University of Oxford) who will present:

Thomas Garnett: Science, medicine, mobility in eighteenth-century Britain

This will be live on Thursday, 21 March 2024, beginning at 5.00pm GMT (6.00pm CET, 1pm EDT, 10.00am PDT). The format will be a talk of 20-30 minutes, followed by a moderated discussion of half an hour.

As with recent seminars the Zoom link can be freely accessed by anyone, member of SHAC or not, by booking through the following Ticket Source link:

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/society-for-the-history-of-alchemy-and-chemistry/t-earnvkk 

The seminar will be also accessible live on YouTube at https://youtube.com/live/5g8UnYocouw?feature=share

Most previous on-line seminars can be found on the SHAC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/SocietyforHistoryofAlchemyandChemistry
 

Thomas Garnett: Science, medicine, mobility in eighteenth-century Britain

Robert Fox

Thomas Garnett’s career took him from rural obscurity in eighteenth-century Westmorland to metropolitan prominence as the Royal Institution’s first professor of natural philosophy and chemistry, before his premature death at 36 in 1802. His rise to the summit of British science, via an Edinburgh M.D. and practice as a pioneering spa doctor in Harrogate, was far from easy. But in this talk I present his trajectory as less of a “rags to riches” story of success against the odds than as an exemplar of the opportunities that existed in the expanding marketplace for scientific and medical knowledge in the early years of British industrialization. 

_______________________________________________________________________________

Other Dates for your diary

The next SHAC webinars will be held on Thursdays 23 May, 11 July, 26 September and 28 November. Details will be sent to members by email and look out for the recordings on our YouTube channel afterwards.

SHAC’s AGM will be held on Tuesday 14 May on Zoom at 2pm. Further details will be published in March.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Best regards

Rob Johnstone

Hon Treasurer, SHAC

The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry invites abstract submissions for its Annual Spring Meeting, to be held at the University of Oxford (Maison Francaise d’Oxford) on 28 May 2024. The meeting will be hybrid, although we strongly encourage in person attendance.

The keynote speaker is Prof. Jennifer M. Rampling (Princeton).

The theme is ‘From Late Antique to Early Modern Alchemy: New Approaches, New Horizons’. Under this broad remit, we encourage submissions that explore:

• New methodologies and approaches to the study of alchemy / chymistry
• Interdisciplinary perspectives setting alchemy / chymistry in dialogue with other fields of learned or craft knowledge
• Case studies of individuals, groups, or institutions pursuing alchemy / chymistry in conjunction with other fields of knowledge
• The material, visual, and experimental cultures of alchemy / chymistry
• Diverse sites of alchemical / chymical practice

The submissions can be individual presentations, panels with 3 speakers or roundtable proposals. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes in length.

Please submit your abstract, together with a CV or a paragraph detailing your background, to: georgiana.hedesan [AT] history.ox.ac.uk by 1 March 2024.

Please address any queries to the same address.

The next on-line seminar of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will be given by Professor Sharon Ruston (Lancaster University) who will present: 

The Davy Notebook Project 

This will be live on Thursday, 18 January 2024, beginning at 5.00pm GMT (6.00pm CET, 12noon ET, 9.00am PT). The format will be a talk of 20-30 minutes, followed by a moderated discussion of half an hour.  

As with recent seminars the Zoom link can be freely accessed by anyone, member of SHAC or not, by booking through the following Ticket Source link: 

 

The seminar will be also accessible live on YouTube at https://youtube.com/live/0CuHR7jqovI?feature=share

Most previous on-line seminars can be found on the SHAC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/SocietyforHistoryofAlchemyandChemistry

 

The Davy Notebook Project 

Sharon Ruston 

Coming to the end of a four-year project crowdsourcing transcription of Sir Humphry Davy’s notebooks, Professor Sharon Ruston will reflect on the discoveries that have been made and the joys and pitfalls encountered. Nearly 3500 people around the world have been transcribing Davy’s surviving notebooks funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK using the platform Zooniverse. They will be published via Lancaster Digital Collections. Details of the project can be found here: https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/davynotebooks/ 

Best wishes

Frank James

Chairman, SHAC

Reminder – Next SHAC on-line seminar, Thursday, 9 November 2023, 5pm GMT 

The next on-line seminar of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will be given by Dr Adrian Wilson (University of Leeds) who will present: 

Some discontinuities in eighteenth-century instrumentation 

The pneumatic trough and the Fahrenheit thermometer are well recognised as eighteenth-century inventions of lasting importance. They become even more interesting, I shall propose, if we attend to certain discontinuities in the processes by which they came into the world. In respect of the thermometer, this exploration will draw on recent papers by Powers (2014) and McCaskey (2020); the pneumatic trough seems still to await correspondingly close investigation, but there are ample indications that such investigation would be worthwhile. I shall conclude by raising the question as to why such discontinuities have tended to be overlooked. 

This will be live on Thursday, 9 November 2023, beginning at 5.00pm GMT (6.00pm CET, 12noon ET, 9.00am PT). The format will be a talk of 20-30 minutes, followed by a moderated discussion of half an hour.  

As with recent seminars the Zoom link can be freely accessed by anyone, member of SHAC or not, by booking through the following TicketSource link: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/society-for-the-history-of-alchemy-and-chemistry/t-krqpqkx

The seminar will be also accessible live on YouTube:

at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BmDXfvdCCA

 One day in-person meeting to be held on Saturday 25 November 2023.  B.4.04, Cruciform Building, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT. 

Please register (fee £20) at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/society-for-the-history-of-alchemy-and-chemistry/t-dvpgxjr 

13 January 2024, Online / St John’s College, University of Oxford 

The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC) invites proposals for the 2024 iteration of its annual postgraduate workshop, “Uncovering the Secrets of the Universe.” This conference explores the relationship between the (al)chemical sciences and the fundamental nature of our reality. From the mystical practitioners of Late Antique Egypt who used alchemy as a practice to understand salvation, to the archaic understanding of earth, air, wind, and fire as the four elements to explain the properties which we see in the world around us, without forgetting the chemists of today and their use of the periodic table to explain the makeup of the cosmos and the astrochemists who seek to understand interactions in worlds beyond our own, (al)chemists have always used their practice in an attempt to dig up and expose the mysteries of the universe. How have alchemy and chemistry been used throughout history to understand the very makeup of the cosmos? How have they been used as a framework to interpret the natural, as well as the supernatural? To what extent have (al)chemists throughout history perceived themselves as the discoverers and guardians of cosmic secrets, and with what consequences for their work?  

We welcome proposals for 15-20 minute talks by graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and other scholars. If you are interested in presenting your work, please send an abstract of maximum 300 words and a short bio to SHAC Student Representative Josh Werrett, at studentrep@ambix.org. The deadline for submissions is 15^th December 2023.