The next on-line seminar of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will be given by Dr Alison McManus (Johns Hopkins University) who will present
“A Compound of Considerable Interest”: British Nerve Agent Research during the Second World War
This will be live on Thursday, 23 March 2023, beginning at 5.00pm GMT (6.00pm CET, 1pm ET, 10.00am 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 Eventbrite link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/shac-on-line-seminar-dr-alison-mcmanus-tickets-570573399397
Alternatively, the seminar can be accessed live on YouTube at https://youtube.com/live/aexu17ziSVA.
Most previous on-line seminars can be found on the SHAC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/SocietyforHistoryofAlchemyandChemistry
“A Compound of Considerable Interest”: British Nerve Agent Research during the Second World War
Alison McManus
During the Second World War, British chemists nearly developed organophosphate nerve agents to rival the rumoured German superweapons that we now know as tabun, sarin, and soman. They did so under the aegis of the Chemical Defence Experimental Station (CDES) at Porton Down, which issued research contracts to the Chemistry and Physiological Laboratories at the University of Cambridge. In this talk, I reconstruct the chemical screening programs that took place within these laboratories, highlighting acts of intelligence gathering, the interpretation of evidence, and iterative experimentation (some of which drew from parallel work across the Atlantic). As a result of these extensive surveys, chemists and physiologists identified compounds with striking structural similarities to the German nerve agents but which never approached their degree of toxicity. In conclusion, I offer institutional, economic, and epistemological explanations for this infamous “near miss” in military history.