the next on-line seminar of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will be given by Professor Eric Scerri (UCLA) who will present  

A Brief Philosophical History of the Periodic Table 

This will be live on Thursday, 19 January 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, via the following Eventbrite link: 

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/shac-online-seminar-professor-eric-scerri-tickets-499088044777

Alternatively, the seminar can be accessed live on YouTube at https://youtu.be/Fjln_vAqvSQ


Most previous on-line seminars can be found on the SHAC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/SocietyforHistoryofAlchemyandChemistry

 

A Brief Philosophical History of the Periodic Table 

Eric Scerri

My talk will begin with a brief history of the origins of the periodic table, starting with the contributions of Dalton, Döbereiner and others. I will proceed to the independent discovery of the periodic table by as many as six individuals, culminating with Mendeleev’s table just over 150 years ago. The emphasis will be on philosophical aspects of these developments such as the debate concerning the relative merits of predictions and accommodations.  

I will discuss the challenges that the periodic table faced, such as the existence of pair reversals and the discovery of the noble gases. Next came several discoveries in physics, including X-rays, radioactivity and the electron, all of which had a profound effect on the understanding of the periodic table. Research in atomic structure beginning at the turn of the 20th century prompted some physicists such as J.J. Thomson and Niels Bohr to begin to seek a fundamental explanation for the periodic table in terms of electronic structure.  

The later developed quantum mechanics of Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Pauli and others led to a more rigorous explanation, although some open questions remain up to present times. For example, there is yet no fundamental explanation for the empirical rule that the occupation of atomic orbitals proceeds via the simple n + 1 rule.  

In addition, relativistic effects are being increasingly considered in attempts to understand the heavier elements in particular. Finally, several other remaining open questions will be mentioned, such as the membership of group 3 of the periodic table, alternative representations such as the 32-column format, the left-step periodic table and whether there may exist an ‘optimal form’ of the periodic table. 

The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC) invites applications for Postgraduate Representative, a two- or three-year term to begin in January 2023.

As leader of SHAC’s extensive Graduate Network, the Postgraduate Representative serves as an advocate for early career scholars in the history of alchemy, chemistry, and related fields. They are chiefly responsible for designing, planning, and facilitating the Society’s Postgraduate Workshop, an annual international meeting that brings together early career researchers to network and present works in progress. The Postgraduate Representative also attends biennial Council meetings, where they serve as liaison between the Graduate Network and the Society’s leadership.

Eligibility: Applicants should be SHAC student members in good standing and currently enrolled in a PhD program or equivalent, with research interests in the history of alchemy, chemistry, or adjacent fields.

Please apply by submitting a cover letter and curriculum vitae to studentrep@ambix.org (Alison McManus) and a.simmons@ucl.ac.uk (Anna Simmons). The cover letter should include a brief biography and a synopsis of your PhD research project, including the length of your program and your stage within it. Please include ideas on how you intend to shape the Graduate Network and potential workshop topics of interest to historians of alchemy and chemistry. The Society especially welcomes suggestions for workshops that cross disciplines, geographies, and time periods.

Application deadline: October 30

The next on-line seminar of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will be given by Professor Frank James (University College London) who will present

Trying to Return Europe to the Ancien Régime: Humphry Davy in Naples Chemically Recovering Ancient Literature, 1817-1820

This will be live on Thursday 29 September 2022 beginning at 5.00pm BST (6.00pm CEST, 12 noon EDT, 9.00am PDT). The format will be a talk of 20-30 minutes, followed by a moderated discussion of half an hour.

As with the last seminar the Zoom link can be accessed by anyone, member of SHAC or not, via this following Eventbrite link.

Most previous on-line seminars can be found on the SHAC YouTube Channel.


Frank James

Chairman, SHAC

Synopsis:

Following the destruction of Herculaneum in 79CE after the eruption of Vesuvius, the library, now known as the Villa dei Papiri, remained untouched until the 1750s.Then around 2000 papyri, all in a very fragile state, were excavated. It was hoped that these rolls might contain many of the lost works of antiquity and much effort was put into unrolling them and transcribing the contents. Their fragility meant that work was painfully slow and from 1800 the Prince of Wales (later the Prince Regent and then George IV) began taking a strong personal interest in speeding up the process, boosted when the King of the Two Sicilies presented a few rolls to him in 1817. One of the members of the commission established with the task of unrolling, was the leading English chemist Humphry Davy. Davy, fresh from his success with the miners’ safety lamp, began to develop chemical methods of unrolling. His work met with sufficient success for the Prince Regent to personally command Davy to go to Naples to continue his work with the full support of the British state. In Italy Davy antagonised many of the savants in the Naples Archaeological Museum with his arrogance. Furthermore, once texts began to be transcribed, the thorny issue arose of who owned the intellectual property so produced. The most interesting feature to this whole story was the (unsuccessful) attempt, combining modern science and ancient literature, to restore something of the pre-1789 norms of courtly exchange between Hanoverian London and Bourbon Naples.