Upcoming SHAC events

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There are several events and publications taking place in the new few weeks, including  a SHAC seminar and the Autumn SHAC meeting:

1.     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

2.     Publication of On Alums and Salts by Pseudo-Rāzī, translated, edited and introduced by Gabriele Ferrario

The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC) is delighted to announce the forthcoming publication of the second volume of Sources, the supplement to the Society’s quarterly journal Ambix published by Taylor and Francis.

This volume will publish On Alums and Salts by Pseudo-Rāzī, translated, edited and introduced by Gabriele Ferrario. This Arabic alchemical treatise, produced in 12th-century Al-Andalus, gained wide fame in its Latin translations and is also represented by a very peculiar Hebrew manuscript witness. The Sources edition will include the Arabic and Hebrew texts with translations into English. On Alums and Salts tells the story of the active acquisition of chemical knowledge, of lexical creativity and ingenuity, and of scientific engagements that seamlessly crossed chronological, linguistic, cultural and religious boundaries.

Gabriele Ferrario is assistant professor of the history of science at the University of Bologna. He received his PhD from the University of Venice in 2007 and subsequently worked in London, Philadelphia, Cambridge and Baltimore.

Those who are members of SHAC at the end of 2023 will receive a copy of Sources as part of their membership (SHAC can be joined at https://www.ambix.org/membership/subscription-2/). It will also be published on-line open access available via the Taylor and Francis website.

SHAC chair, Professor Frank James, commented that ‘I am delighted that SHAC is publishing this influential text in its Sources series which is a major contribution to studying medieval alchemy.’

3. Save the Date – SHAC Autumn Meeting ‘Alchemy and Chemistry in the Long Eighteenth Century’at University College London, 25 November 2023, starting at 10 am. Speakers include Mieke Adriaens and Pieter Beck, Malika Basu, Armel Cornu, Hasok Chang, John Christie, Matthew Eddy, Hjalmar Fors, Anna Simmons and Nicholas Zumbulyadis. Booking details to follow soon.

4.     SHAC AGM Minutes: Minutes of the SHAC AGM held on Zoom on 3 May 2023 are available at: https://www.ambix.org/meeting-minutes/

5.     Call for Abstracts – 9th EuChemS Chemistry Congress, Dublin, 7-11 July 2024. SHAC Members may be interested in the Call for abstracts for the 9th EuChemS chemistry congress in Dublin: Call for Abstracts – EuChemS 2024 . Submissions on history, education, cultural heritage and ethics in chemistry are warmly welcomed. Call for abstracts closes on Friday 8 December 2023.

6.     Ambix New Content Alerts. Members are reminded that they can sign up for new content alerts for Ambix. Details in flyer below. Articles are available online in advance of the issue’s publication. You can read Armel Cornu’s Partington Prize winning essay, ‘Senses and Utility in the New Chemistry’ from the November 2023 Ambix now at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2023.2265681?src=

New feature: Set “new content” alerts for Ambix!

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Starting now, new content alerts are available for Ambix. In order to achieve this, you simply have to visit tandfonline.com/yamb, click on “new content alerts” and register for free. That way, you never miss any brand new Ambix content.

How to set a new content alert for Ambix

Summer 2023 issue of Chemical Intelligence

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The summer 2023 issue of Chemical Intelligence, edited by Karoliina Pukkinen, is now available online for members to enjoy:

Chemical_Intelligence Summer2023Download

Summer 2023 is a bumper issue, including reports on the International Conference on the History of Chemistry in Vilnius and the Oxford Seminars in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry. There is information about recent and forthcoming Ambix issues, details of the next webinar and various news items and features on the history of alchemy and chemistry.  We hope you will enjoy the issue and also think about joining us at our next in-person meeting in November. Details below. Many thanks to Karoliina for bringing together so much material on what is happening in our field!

SHAC Autumn Meeting – Saturday 25 November 2023 in London

SHAC’s autumn meeting will explore the theme “Alchemy and Chemistry in the Long Eighteenth Century”. It will take place in London on 25 November 2023, most likely at UCL. Please send offers of papers to Frank James, frank.james@ucl.ac.uk by 15 September 2023.

Best wishes,

Carolyn

Dr Carolyn Cobbold

SHAC Membership Secretary

New Royal Society Publishing history of science platform 

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Royal Society Publishing recently launched a new history of science platform. 

Science in the making that allows free access to digitised versions of over 30,000 archival items related to the publication of our journals from the past 400+ years.   

This is an extremely important and ambitious digitisation programme that presents the complex material that lies behind the published articles including reviews by Darwin, doodles by Newton, astronomical observations, electrical experiments, anatomical illustrations and more, drawing from every branch of science.

Call for papers & online access to Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry

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As a SAHC member you may be interested in the following symposium organised by La Société Française d’Histoire de la Chimie (SFHC) www.sfhc.fr/ and partner institutions

Symposium “Heritage of Chemistry / Patrimoine de la Chimie” – To be held in Rennes (France) on 23-24 November 2023. Theme: The Laboratory: its buildings, its instruments, and its chemists

In this symposium, we want to direct attention to chemical laboratories, with special reference to the following aspects:

               – buildings specially designed for the training of chemists;

               – laboratories for both teaching and research;

               – the facilities that allowed laboratories to carry out their research;

               – the instruments they used, including those that have since become common but were innovative in their time; also instruments specific to a given research activity;

               – publications used in laboratories, such as textbooks, guides, dictionaries, directories, or wall charts;

               – and, of course, the chemists who were behind the creation of the laboratories, including their archives and laboratory notebooks.

Call for papers

If you are interested in the theme of the symposium, please send an abstract of your contribution in English or in French (2500 characters, spaces included, or 350 words maximum) before July 10, 2023 to: PatrimoineChimie.2023@gmail.com

In response, the symposium’s organizing committee will propose either an oral presentation or the possibility of participation in a poster session.

Circulated on behalf of the members of the organizing Committee:

Danielle FAUQUE (SFHC); Julie PRISER (ASEISTE); Jacques ROLLAND (Rennes en Sciences)

NB. French is the main language of the symposium. Power point presentations and posters must be in French, although talks may be delivered in English.

Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry

Matteo Martelli’s The Four Books of Pseudo-Democritus, previously only available in hard copy, is now available digitally:  https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2013.12288743

The four alchemical books ascribed to the Greek atomist Democritus rank among the most ancient examples of Western alchemical writing. They cover a range of technical questions and recipes, similar to those handled in the earliest surviving chemical manuscripts. The Books also played a central role in the development of alchemy as a discipline. Members can access The Four Books of Pseudo-Democritus, by logging in to the member area to access Ambix, where it is listed as a supplement to vol. 60, 2013.

Best regards

Carolyn Cobbold Members Secretary SHAC

End of May 2023 Newsletter (John Perkins, Edited Collections, Conversations on Chemistry)

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John Perkins

We were very saddened to learn that John Perkins, SHAC Treasurer from 2007 to 2013, has passed away recently. John helped transform the Society’s activities during his tenure as Treasurer, introducing our grants scheme, co-founding the Oxford History of Alchemy and Chemistry Seminar Series and bringing together the series of conferences on Sites of Chemistry, 1600-2000. This conference series investigated the wide and diverse range of physical spaces and places where chemistry has been practised and led to several special issues of Ambix. John will be greatly missed by all who knew him. An appreciation of John’s life and work will appear in Ambix at a later date.

Ambix Edited Collection

 A new Edited Collection is available open access through July, in conjunction with the 13th International Conference on the History of Chemistry held in Vilnius, Lithuania: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/yamb20/collections/Centres-and-Peripheries-of-Chymical-Knowledge

Centres and Peripheries of Chymical Knowledge: Tracing Traditions of Alchemy and Chemistry in Eastern Europe

From the patronage networks of Rudolph II to the military campaigns of World Wars I and II, chymical knowledge was highly sought after in Eastern Europe, especially as a means to exert political power. The articles featured in this collection trace historical evidence of Eastern European chymical traditions, from a fourteenth-century Bohemian alchemical manuscript to twentieth-century global approaches to chemistry, to illustrate the mutual influence of Western and Eastern European chymical knowledge exchange. The insularity of Eastern European science before the establishment of the port of Archangel was not intentional but forced by feuding neighbouring lands. Ivan the Terrible attempted to create a Moscow medical school, but the Western European instructors he tried to bring in were blocked by the Danes and Swedes. The establishment of the port of Archangel in 1553 expedited cross-cultural chymical exchange between Eastern and Western Europe. As a result, the Russo-English trading organization Muscovy Company formed in 1555. By the 1620s, Tsar Mikhail Romanov had succeeded in forming the Apothecary Chancery at his court in Moscow. While there has been a history of Eastern European monarchs importing courtly alchemists from the West, including both John Dee (1527-1608) and his son Arthur Dee (1579-1651), many influential chymical practitioners were born and worked in Eastern Europe—such as Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius (1566-1636), Hungarian Janos Banfihunyadi (1576-1646), Mikhail Vasil’evich Lomonosov (1711-1765) of St. Petersburg, Russian born chemists Nikolai Nikolaevich Zinin (1812-1880) and Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleeve (1834-1907), as well as many notable Soviet chemists of the twentieth century.

Conversations on Chemistry

Through its Conversations on the History of Chemistry, the CHCMS aims to start a discussion around the future of the history of chemistry and the molecular sciences. How do historians of chemistry select their objects of inquiry and what are the tools and methods they use to study the past? How have they seen their specific methods and fields evolve among other examinations of scientific endeavours and how do they view the future of the field? Details of the next conversations are below.

The first few roundtables will take place on Zoom in the coming two months. Please register here to receive the links and attend. For any other questions, feel free to contact the CHCMS secretary Sarah Hijmans at sarahnhijmans@gmail.com.

Conversation 2. The history of chemistry and its audiences

1 June 2023, 1-2 pm UTC (6-7 am PT/9-10 am EST/3-4 pm CEST/10-11 pm JST)

· Philip Ball (Freelance science writer)

· Jesse Smith (Director of Curatorial Affairs, Science History Institute)

· Annette Lykknes (Historian of Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

Conversation 3. Food, toxicity and the life sciences

15 June 2023, 1-2 pm UTC (6-7 am PT/9-10 am EST/3-4 pm CEST/10-11 pm JST) (TBC)

· José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez (Professor, López Piñero Institute for the History of Medicine and Science, University of Valencia)

· Paulina Sophie Gennermann (Postdoc, Institute for History and Ethics of Medicine, Heidelberg University)

· Victoria Lee (Associate Professor, Ohio University)

Conversation 4. Resources, energy and environment

29 June 2023, 1-2 pm UTC (6-7 am PT/9-10 am EST/3-4 pm CEST/10-11 pm JST)

· Marcin Krasnodębski (Assistant Professor, Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences)

· Cyrus Mody (Professor in the History of Science, Technology, Innovation, Maastricht University)

· Tristan Revells (Postdoc, Tsinghua University)

Best regards

Various Officers of SHAC!