Upcoming Post Graduate Conference (Saturday, 13th January 2024)

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Here’s somewhat short notice about the upcoming Post Graduate Conference and, by the way the next SHAC on line seminar will be on Thursday 18th January 2024, not in 2025 as recently advised!

The SHAC PG Conference, Uncovering the Secrets of the Universe, will be held this Saturday (13th January 2024) coming from St John’s College, Oxford.

It can be accessed via Zoom.

Programme:

Welcome and Introduction: 11.00 – 11.15 

Session 1: 11.15 – 12.30 

  • Josh Werrett, University of Oxford 

imitatio Christi and the Aesthetics of Martyrdom in The Visions of Zosimos of Panopolis 

  • Yusuf Tayara, University of Oxford 

Towards a Literary Heresiology: Esotericism, Language, and Reason in the Work of al-Safadi 

  • Diego Gorini, University of Salento / University of Cologne 

“Rotam Rotare”: The Wheel as an Instrument of the Scientific Investigation of Nature in the Pseudo-Lullian Alchemical Works. 

Lunch: 12.30 – 13.30 

Session 2: 13.30 – 14.45 

  • Sergei Zotov, University of Warwick 

Toads, Feathers, Horseshoes, and The Seven-Footed King: Recent Developments in the Study of The Ripley Scrolls 

  • Ellen Hausner, University of Oxford 

Angels, Magic, and the Philosophers’ Stone: The Manuscripts of a Sixteenth-Century Physician 

  • Maddie Reynolds, University of Edinburgh 

‘Heavenly alchemy’: Material Culture and the Divine Cosmos in John Dee’s Apocalyptic World 

Break: 14.45 – 15.00 

Session 3: 15.00 – 16.00 

  • Elena Morgana, University of Oxford 

William Yworth’s Alkahest: Alchemical Philosophy in the 18th Century 

  • Leonardo Anatrini, University of Florence 

From Ether to God (and Everything in Between): On the Alchemical Philosophy and Laboratory Practice of François Jollivet-Castelot 

Break: 16.00 – 16.15 

Keynote Lecture: 16.15 – 16.45 

  • Frank James, University College London 

Bringing the Universe Together: The Field Theory of Michael Faraday 

Closing Remarks: 16.45 – 17.00 SHAC Conference 

2024 Morris Award: Call for Nominations

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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.

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

SHAC Autumn Meeting – ‘Alchemy and Chemistry in the Long Eighteenth Century’

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 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 

10.00 Registration and coffee   
10.30 Malika Basu  Alchemy to Chemistry in the Long Eighteenth Century – Incredible changes within the Indian Historical Tradition   
11.00 Hjalmar Fors (remote)   The alchemists children: Managing an alchemical heritage in the 18th Century 
11.30 Coffee   
12.00 Presentation of SHAC’s Oxford Part II Prize to Eleanor Smith and the Partington Prize to Armel Cornu   
12.10 Armel Cornu  Reintroducing the Senses in Narratives of Eighteenth-century Chemistry   
12.40 Mieke Adriaens and Pieter Beck  Replicating the Fontana-Ingenhousz eudiometer   
1.10 Lunch – please make your own arrangements, but a group will be going to the Wellcome café    
2.30 Anna Simmons  Inside the shop: Women, Apothecaries and Pharmacy in the Long 18th Century   
3.00 Nicholas Zumbulyadis (remote)  The Beginnings of Cobalt Chemistry in the early 18th Century (1700-1730)   
3.30 Matthew Eddy  The Inquiring Diarist:  Jane Ewbank and the Cultural Context of Experimental Philosophy in Late Georgian Yorkshire   
4.00 Tea   
4.30 John Christie   Past and Presence: Alchemy and Chemists in the European Long 18th-Century   
5.00 Hasok Chang   The forgotten history of contact electrochemistry   
5.30 A glass of wine   

Call for Papers: SHAC Postgraduate Workshop “Uncovering the Secrets of the Universe”

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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 15th December 2023. 

Partington Prize winning essay “Senses and Utility in the New Chemistry” is published Open Access!

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The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry is delighted to announce that Armel Cornu’s Partington Prize winning essay “Senses and Utility in the New Chemistry” is published Open Access in the November 2023 issue of Ambix.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2023.2265681?src=

The winner

Armel Cornu is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Swedish Research Council and based at the University of Uppsala in Sweden and the ICT department in Paris. She obtained her doctorate at the University of Uppsala in 2022 with a dissertation titled: “Enlightening Water: Science, Market & Regulation of Mineral Waters in Eighteenth-century France,” before completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her research is characterised by a social and economic approach to the development of chemistry throughout the Enlightenment.

The Partington Prize

The Partington Prize was established in memory of Professor James Riddick Partington, the Society’s first Chairman. It is awarded every three years for an original and unpublished essay on any aspect of the history of alchemy or chemistry. The prize consists of five hundred pounds (£500). The competition is open to anyone with a scholarly interest in the history of alchemy or chemistry who, has not reached thirty-five years of age, or if older is enrolled in a degree programme or has been awarded a master’s degree or PhD within the previous three years. Previous prize-winning essays can be viewed at: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/yamb20/collections/best-paper-partington-prize