Category Archives: SHAC Meetings & Events

Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2024

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The Oxford Seminar this year will be running three sessions, each consisting of two papers.
The session dates and times are Weds May 22nd, May 29th, and June 5th 3pm-5pm, Salon at the Maison Française d’Oxford, Norham Rd, Oxford.
Each session has two speakers, who will deliver papers of 30-40 minutes, leaving 20-30
minutes for questions and discussion.

WEDS MAY 22ND: Substance and Identity: Histoires Petites et Grandes
John R.R. Christie (Oxford): ‘A salt sui generis’: Chemical Analyses of Scarborough Spa Waters, 1734
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (Paris): Why a Biography of Carbon?

WEDS MAY 29th: Meissen Coloration and Pacific Chemical Medicine
Nicholas Zumbulyadis (Delaware): Chymistry and Art at the Cusp of the 17th and 18th
centuries
Mariana Sanchez (Paris): Distillation in the Phillipines in the 18th century

WEDS JUNE 5th: Acquiring science in early 19th century York: the diary of Jane Ewbank
Rachel Feldberg (York): From Crocodiles to the Structure of the Universe: Jane Ewbank’s shifting engagement with the Natural World
Matthew Eddy (Durham): Jane Ewbank and Experimental Philosophy: Public Lectures in late Georgian Yorkshire

shac-oxford-seminar2024Download

Programme Organizers: Jo Hedesan (georgiana.hedesan@hist.ox.ac.uk); John Christie (jrrc_@hotmail.com)


The Oxford Seminar is sponsored and supported by The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry and by the Maison Française d’Oxford.

Summer 2024 SHAC events

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Here are details of a one day in person meeting, a call for papers, the SHAC award scheme and Chemical Intelligence. I hope you find the information useful.

The Development of the Chemist’s Notebook

This one-day in-person meeting organised by the Historical Group will take place on Wednesday 13 March 2024, 10.30-17.00, at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BA.


For many centuries chemists have used notebooks to record their experiments, results, literature research and thoughts. This meeting will feature analysis of the notebook practices of some famous chemists starting from the time of Robert Boyle and consider their evolution until their most recent manifestation in electronic form.


For more information and to book please go to https://www.rsc.org/events/detail/77987/the-development-of-the-chemist-s-notebook or email Peter Morris, Historical Group Secretary, directly at doctor@peterjtmorris.plus.com, giving your name, email address and any special requirements. The event is free of charge. Coffee and tea will be available, but lunch is not included, although there are plenty of cafes nearby in Piccadilly and adjoining streets.

Programme:

10.30 Coffee

10.50 Welcome

11.00 Michael Hunter (Birkbeck, University of London): The Workdiaries of Robert Boyle

11.40 Sharon Ruston (Lancaster University): Protean Poetics in Humphry Davy’s Notebooks

12.20 Lunch (not supplied)

1.40 Matthew Eddy (University of Durham): ‘What Was a Chemistry Notebook? The Case of Charles Darwin

2.20 Frank James (University College London): How Michael Faraday’s Laboratory Notebooks Developed into a Diary

3.00 Tea

3.30 Kostas Gavroglu (University of Athens): Notebooks as Laboratories: The case of Linus Pauling

4.10 Samantha Pearman-Kanza (University of Southampton): Electronic Lab Notebooks and Beyond

4.50 Closing remarks

5.00 Meeting ends

B. New issue of Chemical Intelligence availableThe Winter 2024 issue of Chemical Intelligence, edited by Karoliina Pulkkinen, is available online for members to enjoy.https://www.ambix.org/winter-2024-issue-of-chemical-intelligence-is-out/ 

C. Reminder – SHAC Spring Meeting – Call for Papers – Deadline 1 March 2024The 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 theme is ‘From Late Antique to Early Modern Alchemy: New Approaches, New Horizons’. For further details see:https://www.ambix.org/shac-spring-meeting-call-for-papers/

D. SHAC Award Scheme 2024 Opens 1 March 2024The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry invites applications for its Award Scheme for 2024. SHAC offers two types of award: 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. Application forms must be obtained from grants@ambix.org . For further details see: https://www.ambix.org/grants/

SHAC Spring Meeting CfP – Deadline extended!

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We have extended the CFP deadline for the Spring Meeting to 10th of March. The original call is attached below. Hope this will encourage more of you to submit!

(Original Call below:).

SHAC Spring Meeting – Call For Papers

The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC) 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.

Upcoming March Seminar on Thomas Garnett

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Next on Line Seminar 21st 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

SHAC 2024 Spring Meeting – Call for Papers

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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.

Upcoming Online Seminar: The Davy Notebook Project 

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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: 

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

 

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

Upcoming SHAC on-line seminar: Some discontinuities in eighteenth-century instrumentation

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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