The new Issue of Chemical Intelligence, the first one edited by our new CI-editor Karoliina Pulkkinen, is now online! It includes reports of conferences and awards, information about the Partington Prize and upcoming conferences, and more! The issue can be downloaded here.
SHAC Postgraduate Workshop
This year’s SHAC Postgraduate Workshop will be held from 28-30 November, 2019 at the Ritman Library, Amsterdam.
The programme can be downloaded here.
Registration is possible via studentrep [AT] ambix.org
The program
SHAC Autumn Meeting and AGM
This year marks the centenary of the death of William Crookes. Journalist, chemist, photographer, spiritualist, businessman, sometime Secretary of the Royal Institution and President of the Royal Society of London, Crookes was a key figure in the science of the second half of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. This meeting, organised by the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, the Historical Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Institution, which is part of the ChemFest celebrations of the sesquicentenary of the periodic table, will examine various aspects of Crookes’s extraordinary career and his place in science.
The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry’s AGM will also be held at this meeting and further details about this will be sent to members in the autumn.
Programme
13.15 SHAC AGM
13.30 Registration for Crookes Meeting
13:45 Welcome and Introduction: Frank James, (Royal Institution and Chair of SHAC)
First Session Chair: Anna Simmons (UCL)
13.50 Richard Noakes (Exeter University)
‘Two Parallel Lines’? The Trajectories of Physical and Psychical Research in the Work of William Crookes
14:30 Kelley Wilder (De Montfort University, Leicester)
William Crookes, a life in Photo-Chemistry
15.10 Refreshment Break
Second Session Chair: Peter Morris (Chair of RSCHG) 15.30 Frank James (Royal Institution and UCL)
William Crookes and Michael Faraday
16.10 Paul Ranford (UCL)
Crookes’s “Invisible Helper” – George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903)
16.50 William Brock (University of Leicester)
The key to the deepest mystery of nature: Crookes, periodicity and the genesis and evolution of the elements
17.30 Close of meeting
There is no charge for this meeting, but prior registration is essential. Please email Robert Johnstone (robert.johnstone.14 [AT] ucl.ac.uk) if you would like to attend. If having registered, you are unable to attend, please notify Robert Johnstone.
The meeting will take place at Saturday 19 October 2019, at the Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London, W1S 4BS
OXFORD SEMINAR IN THE HISTORY OF ALCHEMY AND CHEMISTRY
The Oxford seminar in the history of alchemy and chemistry will will take place during Trinity Term, and is organised with the support of SHAC. It’s convenors are John Christie, Oxford and Marie Thébaud-Sorger, MFO.
See here the programme:
Wednesday 22 May, 3.00-5.00pm
Jo Hedesan, Oxford
« Alchemy and Paracelsianism at the Casino San Marco in Florence under the patronage of Antonio de’ Medici (1576-1621) »
Ute Frietsch, Wolfenbüttel
« Alchemy as an organising principle of the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II »
Wednesday 29 May, 3.00-5.00pm
A prospect and preview of A Cultural History of Chemistry (6 vols., Bloomsbury, forthcoming) With Peter Morris (Joint Editor-in Chief), John Christie (contributor, vol. 4).
Wednesday 5 June, 4.00-6.00pm
Pierre Teissier, Université de Nantes
« Chemical Substitutions in XXth Century Materials Research »
Mat Paskins, LSE
« The Substitutes Directory: Narratives and Practices of Substitution »
Location :
Maison française d’Oxford
2-10 Norham Road
OX2 6RF Oxford
Cambridge Bibliographical Society – Talk on “Spiritus Anima”
The Cambridge Bibliographical Society will be hosting an event which may be of interest to SHAC’s members. On 1 May, Ed Potten and Tim Chesters will give a paper on “’Spiritus anima’ – an unrecorded seventeenth-century alchemist’s library at Clare College, Cambridge.”
The talk will take place on 1 May in Milstein Seminar Rooms, at the main University Library, 5.00-6.00pm, with refreshments from 4.30pm. All are welcome.
About their paper:
“The identity of the annotator of a collection of extraordinary seventeenth-century alchemical manuscripts, now in the Sloane Collection, has long eluded scholars. The recent discovery of a collection of sixty printed books in the Fellows’ Library at Clare College, Cambridge, all annotated in the same characteristic hand, utilizing the same complex system of cross-referencing and the same approach to organizing and recording knowledge, casts new light on the Sloane annotator, his methods and his identity. Ed Potten (University of York, and formerly Head of Rare Books at the University Library) and Dr Tim Chesters (Modern & Medieval Languages, University of Cambridge) will share their discoveries about this enigmatic annotator, accompanied by a display of books.”
Short courses at British Society for the History of Pharmacy
The British Society for the History of Pharmacy is hosting two short courses which may be of interest to SHAC’s members.
The first course covers a three-day programme on the history of pharmacy and the pharmaceutical industry from 1-3 July. The programme and the application form can be downloaded here.
The second course is about ethics and philosophy of medicine and runs from 1-2 July. The programme and the application can be found here.
The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London is also hosting a three-day conference on the history and future of medicine, from 1 to 3 May. For more information and to apply, click here.
CfP: SHAC Postgraduate Workshop 2019
The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry invites submissions for the 10th Annual Postgraduate Workshop. This year’s topic will be“Society and the Creation of (al)Chemical Knowledge.”
The workshop will take place on 29-30 November, 2019, and will be hosted by the Ritman Library in Amsterdam (the Netherlands).
The deadline for applications is 1 June, 2019.
More information about the workshop and about applying can be found here.