SHAC Spring Meeting ‘From Antique to Early Modern Alchemy: New Approaches, New Horizons’

You are invited to attend the SHAC Spring Meeting ‘From Antique to Early Modern Alchemy: New Approaches, New Horizons’ held on 28 and 29 May 2024 at Maison Française d’Oxford.   The meeting will host panels on topics that include ancient perfume making in Egypt and Assyria, alchemical symbolism and imagery, the use of new techniques such as machine learning for the history of alchemy or practical experimentation and furnace reconstructions. Please see programme attached for more information.  

The keynote speaker is Prof Jennifer M. Rampling (Princeton), who will talk on “Alchemical Monsters”.   Attendance is free but registration is required. Please register at the following link: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/society-for-the-history-of-alchemy-and-chemistry/t-nogqvop.  

The event will also be hosted in hybrid format. A hybrid link will be provided about a week prior to the event.   Please note the meeting ends at 1pm on 29 May. It is followed up by another related (and free) event, the Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, ‘Meissen Coloration and Pacific Chemical Medicine’, featuring Nicholas Zumbulyadis (Delaware) and Mariana Sanchez (Paris), from 3pm to 5pm at Maison Française d’Oxford.

This is an in-person only meeting.  

Oxford Double Book Launch

We are pleased to announce a double book launch event, to celebrate the
publication of two books by distinguished and long-serving historians of
science and chemistry.


Thomas Garnett: Science, Medicine, Mobility in Eighteenth-Century
Britain (Bloomsbury) by Robert Fox Emeritus Professor of History of
Science, Oxford, published in February 2024.


Carbon: A Biography (Polity), the English translation of Carbone. Ses vies,
ses oeuvres (2018, Ed. Seuil) by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent Emeritus
Professor Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Sacha Loeve
(Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3), to be published in June 2024.


The launch will be held in the Salon at the Maison Française, Norham Rd.,
Oxford, 5-6pm, on Wednesday 22nd May, following the first meeting of the
Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (3pm-5pm
Maison Française), where Bernadette will be delivering a paper entitled
‘Why a Biography of Carbon?’


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

Spring 2024 Talks in the Turba series on the history of alchemy

The Turba series on the history of alchemy is returning this spring with three online (Zoom) meetings scheduled in April and May.

Please join us for one or more of the following:

Friday, 12 April 2024
Antonio Clericuzio (Roma Tre) – ‘Thomas Willis’ Chemical Philosophy’

Friday, 26 April 2024
Matteo Soranzo (McGill) – ‘A Lullian Workshop in Quattrocento Venice: Preliminary Findings on Cristoforo da Parigi/Perugia’

Friday, 17 May 2024
Umberto Veronesi (Vicarte), ‘The Archaeology of Alchemy and Chemistry: Past, Present and Ideas for the Future’

The meetings are held from 6pm UK time, 7pm CET or 1pm ET for up to one hour.

If you are interested and don’t have the Zoom link (the same as last year), please write to johedesan [at] gmail.com

All the best,

Dr Georgiana D. Hedesan

Departmental Lecturer in History of Science

Recheduled SHAC on line seminar and other matters

We were sorry to have to postpone the on-line seminar two weeks ago due to technical difficulty. These have now been resolved and the seminar has been rescheduled to  25th April.

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, 25th April 2024, beginning at 5.00pm British Summer Time (1 hour ahead of GMT). 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-dvoggra



The seminar will be also accessible live on YouTube

There are two other items that members of SHAC may find of interest.

The first is a call for papers for the History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Mérida, Mexico, 7-10 November 2024

Multidisciplinary approaches to the history of chemistry

Proposed session for History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Mérida, Mexico, 7-10 November 2024; co-sponsored by the HSS Forum on History of Chemistry, the Commission on the History of Chemistry and the Molecular Sciences and the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry.

The aim of the proposed session is to bring historians and practitioners of these multidisciplinary approaches to the history of chemistry together to contrast their results and methods, and to promote a multidisciplinary dialogue for the sake of the history of chemistry. We are, in particular, interested in addressing the following questions:

  • What specific questions can be resolved by the multidisciplinary approaches to the history of chemistry and which cannot?
  • What is the role of formal models in historiographical narratives?
  • What is the appropriate coarse-graining level for the history of chemistry, and to what extent can this level be addressed by different disciplines?
  • Can multidisciplinary approaches help link macrohistory with microhistory?
  • What formal models are most suitable for historiographical research?
  • What are the disciplinary challenges posed by the history of chemistry?

We invite scholars and researchers to submit abstracts addressing any of the aforementioned topics or related areas within the history of chemistry. Submissions may include empirical studies, theoretical frameworks, methodological advancements, or interdisciplinary perspectives. We encourage innovative approaches and welcome contributions from both established academics and early-career researchers.

If you are interested in participating in this session, please send your name, affiliation, email address and the topic of your presentation to Guillermo Restrepo (restrepo@mis.mpg.de) by 8 April 2024. At a later date, organizers will request a title and an abstract, but they are not needed at this stage.

The second is notification of the forthcoming 9th EuChemS Chemistry Congress (ECC-9), to be held in Dublin, Ireland, from 7th – 11th July, 2024.

The Institute of Chemistry of Ireland (ICI) is delighted and honoured to be organising this event.

The 9th EuChemS Chemistry Congress will have an exciting scientific programme with world-leading plenary speakers, invited speakers and short oral presentations, supplemented with a series of poster presentations, focused around eight scientific themes:

·        Advances in Synthetic Organic Chemistry 

·        Catalysis 

·        Chemistry Meets Biology For Health 

·        Education, History, Cultural Heritage, and Ethics in Chemistry

·        Energy, Environment and Sustainability 

·        Nanochemistry/Materials 

·        Physical, Analytical and Computational Chemistry  /AI)

·        Supramolecular Chemistry 

·        The programme will feature dedicated sessions organised by the EuChemS European Young Chemists´ Network of EuChemS (EYCN) and the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland (ICI)

Full Details are at https://euchems2024.org/

Best regards

SHAC officers.

Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2024

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

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.

2024 Morris Award: Call for Nominations

The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry solicits nominations for the 2024 John and Martha Morris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the History of Modern Chemistry or the History of the Chemical Industry. This award honours the memory of John and Martha Morris, the late parents of Peter Morris, the former editor of Ambix, who has contributed the endowment for this award. The recipient chosen to receive the Morris Award will be expected to deliver a lecture at a meeting of SHAC, where the awardee will be presented with an appropriate framed photograph, picture or document and the sum of £300. The award is international in scope, and nominations are invited from anywhere in the world. Past winners of the Award include Ernst Homburg, Yasu Furukawa, Anthony S. Travis, Mary Jo Nye and Raymond Stokes.

A complete nomination consists of

• a complete curriculum vitae for the nominee, including biographical data, educational background, awards, honours, list of publications, and other service to the profession;

• a letter of nomination summarising the nominee’s outstanding scholarly achievement in either the history of the chemical industry or in the history of recent chemistry (post -1945) and the unique contributions that merit this award; and

• names of two or three individuals for the panel to contact for further information if needed.

Only complete nominations will be considered for the award and the nomination documents must be submitted in electronic form. The Award will be judged by the selection panel on the basis of scholarly publication. All nomination materials should be submitted by e-mail to Peter Morris at doctor@peterjtmorris.plus.com and a separate email which indicates that the material has been submitted should be sent to the same address (a precaution in case of incomplete transmission of documents) for arrival no later than 1 May 2024.

Best Regards

Rob Johnstone

Pp Dr Carloyn Cobbold

Membership Secretary SHAC

Summer 2024 SHAC events

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/