10th June - The Periodic Table

In recognition of the International Year of the Periodic Table, the Science and Literature Reading Group is teaming up with AD HOC (Association for the Discussion of the History of Chemistry) for a special seminar on Primo Levi's classic piece of science-writing, The Periodic Table.

We will meet on Monday 10th June at 5pm, in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

Readings:

• Primo Levi (1919-87), The Periodic Table (1975): ‘Potassium’, ‘Nitrogen’, ‘Carbon’. 

Contact Melanie if you would like a copy of the chapters, as well as the introduction by Philip Roth to the Penguin edition.

All welcome!

Easter Term 2019: 1919

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O213712/wallpaper-butler-henry-rba/

The Science and Literature Reading Group returns in Easter Term, taking as its focus texts first published a century ago in 1919. We will meet at our usual venue, Darwin College, on Monday evenings from 7.30-9pm. All are welcome to join in our friendly and wide-ranging discussions!

29th April: Gardens

• Amy Lowell, ‘Impressionist Picture of a Garden’, and ‘The Garden by Moonlight’ 
• Saki, ‘The Occasional Garden’ 
• Virginia Woolf, Kew Gardens

 

13th May: Cities

• Murray Leinster, ‘The Runaway Skyscraper’ 
• Hope Mirrlees, Paris: A Poem

 

20th May: Health

• W.N.P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man 
• Edith Wharton, ‘Writing a War Story’

 

3rd June: Heaven and earth

• Sri Ananda Acharya, selections from Snow-Birds
• May Wedderburn Cannan, ‘Stars’
• Wallace Stevens, ‘The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician’
• W.B. Yeats, ‘The Phases of the Moon’

In recognition of the International Year of the Periodic Table, we will also be teaming up with AD HOC (Association for the Discussion of the History of Chemistry) for a special seminar on Primo Levi's classic piece of science-writing, The Periodic Table (please note earlier start time and different location).

10th June (5pm, HPS): The Periodic Table

• Primo Levi (1919-87), The Periodic Table (1975): ‘Potassium’, ‘Nitrogen’, ‘Carbon’.

We hope our planned term on AI Narratives will go ahead later in the year.

Whipple Library exhibition: Curating the Chemical Elements: Julius Lothar Meyer's Periodic Systems

"To celebrate the one event which will forever be associated with 2019 – yes, the UN & IUPAC’s Celebratory Year of the Periodic System of Elements – we are very pleased to announce the opening on Monday of our latest Whipple Library display. Curating the Chemical Elements: Julius Lothar Meyer’s Periodic Systems has been put together by HPS PhD student Karoliina Pulkkinen.

Karolina had this to say about the inspiration behind the exhibition:

The logo for the Un & IUPAC year depicts the “father of the periodic law”, Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev, who is placed next to a chemical element named after him. As a researcher working on the history of periodic system, I want you to look at that picture, squint your eyes, and imagine another bearded man there instead of Mendeleev. I ask you to do this because there were in fact several other bearded men who could be placed on that logo.

Like historian Michael Gordin, who has written a marvellous book on Mendeleev, I confess that I have little idea of who actually discovered the periodic system of chemical elements. From all the bearded men that could be titled as its discoverers, however, I would like to direct attention to a German chemist called Julius Lothar Meyer in particular. This exhibition presents Meyer’s systematisation of the elements. Arguably, Meyer’s graphs give us the most striking early visualisation of the periodic relationship between the mass of the elements and their chemical properties.

Many a time have I felt grateful for conducting my historical investigations in 2015-2019 rather than fifteen, thirty, or fifty years earlier. Apart from being able to move from one European conference to another with relative ease, I can press Ctrl+F, follow electronic trails, and download a PDF of books put together by scholars of Soviet Union. The vast majority of the sources I needed were available from the first week of my PhD.

But some things are best studied in life rather than on screen. Things too fragile, or too inconveniently put together for scanners and cameras. One such thing is Lothar Meyer’s graph showing the periodicity of chemical elements.

You would struggle to find a digitisation that shows its full scope and detail online, and big thanks are due to the staff at the Chemistry Library and Conservation at the UL for providing us with the original document. One can try to show it all on screen, (and together with the staff of Whipple, we have tried to ensure a Comfortable Online Viewing Experience), but you should come over to Free School Lane and have a look yourself. If I had the resources, I would put it on a bus: here at Whipple, you will learn something about the experts who you will not get enough of!

The exhibition is taking place in the usual cases on Level 1 of the Haycock Theatre at the Whipple Library, and can be viewed by anyone during library opening hours. We have also put together a virtual exhibition, which you can view here: https://www.whipplelib.hps.cam.ac.uk/special/exhibitions-and-displays/curating-chemical-elements

The exhibition will be on until March 2019, and we hope as many of you as possible will be able to stop by and enjoy!"

2018 Sandars Lectures - 'Chemical Attractions'

By Dr Peter Wothers, Director of Studies in Chemistry at Cambridge.

Held on the 6th, 7th and 8th of March in St Catherine’s College.


Lecture 1; 6th March.

The first lecture looks at how a young teenager first became addicted to collecting antique books on chemistry over 30 years ago. We will look at some of the very first ‘rare’ books purchased, and exactly what the attraction of them was. We will explore some of the other great chemical libraries formed in the past, and their different ‘flavours’ and strengths. We will also discuss how book collecting has changed over the past 30 years, during the age of the internet – a resource not available to the great collectors of the past. Some of the treasures stumbled across during the time collecting will be exhibited and discussed, including a possibly unique broadsheet summarizing one of the first text books of modern chemistry from the beginning of the 17th century.


Lecture 2; 7th March

This second lecture looks at some of the key chemical texts from the 18th century, when modern chemistry really began. We look at how an understanding of the air and the different gases it contains prompted a revolution in chemistry with the introduction of a new nomenclature which is still used today. We look at some of the key texts by authors such as Cavendish, Priestley, Scheele and Lavoisier and how the modern theory and language developed. We will also see how a chance acquisition of an additional item thrown in with a main lot in an auction led to the identification and purchase of an important piece of scientific apparatus. The lecture will include a couple of explosive chemical demonstrations!


Lecture 3; 8th March

In this third and final lecture, we look at some of the earliest books written by women chemists, prior to Madame Curie. Particularly important is Elizabeth Fulhame’s book from 1794: An essay on combustion, with a view to a new art of dying and painting. Also examined are the immensely influential and utterly delightful editions of Jane Marcet’s Conversations on Chemistry published between 1806 and 1853. This book takes the form of informal dialogues, or conversations, between the teacher, Mrs Bryan, and her two young students, Caroline and Emily. We will also look at other books written for younger audiences and some of the dangerous experiments they encouraged their readers to try out.

Further information here.

Primo Levi's 'The Periodic Table' on Radio 4

Dramatization starting tomorrow at 9.45am - link here.