Event Description
The Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry (Science History Institute) presents “The Applied Arts of Alchemy,” a multi-day virtual symposium on alchemy’s practical and applied uses and their lasting impact on chemistry, technology, medicine, experimentation, and the marketplace.
Wednesday May 19, 2021
“The Thing about Alchemy. . . Secrets, Mixtures, and Discerning the Alchemical in the Potter’s Art” – Bruce Moran (University of Nevada)
Distillations Happy Hour – Elisabeth Berry Drago, Alexis Pedrick, Megan Piorko and Meagan Allen (Science History Institute)
Thursday May 20, 2021
Lightning Talks – Medicine
Meagan Allen (Indiana University/Science History Institute) – “When the Physician Is Not Enough: Roger Bacon on the Importance of Alchemy in Medical Practice”
Jo Hedesan (University of Oxford) – “Sulphur and Universal Medicines in the Work of Jan Baptist Van Helmont”
Melissa Salm (University of California, Davis) – “Alchemy of Contagion: Rethinking Disease Emergence as Radical Mixture”
Raffaele Pisano (University of Lille) and Francesca Ricci (University of Pisa) – “Historical Details on Borri’s Alchemy”
Eduardo Pierini (University of Geneva) – “Chemical Medicines and Dangerous Drugs: Angelo Sala’s Opiologia
Informal Roundtable – Synthesis Book Series
Karen Darling (University of Chicago Press), Jennifer M. Rampling (Princeton University), Alisha Rankin (Tufts University), Michelle DiMeo (Science History Institute), Lawrence M. Principe (Johns Hopkins University)
Video Launch
Distilled: A Collections Spotlight, with James Voelkel
Lightning Talks – Institutions
Vittoria Feola (University of Padua) – “Gabriele Falloppia’s Alchemical Secrets and the Hidden History of the Padua School”
Umberto Veronesi (University College London) – “The Cabinet of Professor Vigani, or Something I Have Had in Mind for Some Time Now”
Marissa Mundina Garcia (University of Barcelona) – “Graell’s Alchemy Manuscript From Historical Archives of the Hospital De La Santa Creu I Sant Pau (XVII C.)
Panel Session – Alchemy on the Page
Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck University of London) – “Print Culture and the Alchemical Republic of Letters”
Zoe Screti (University of Birmingham, UK) – “Collecting and Collating: The Emergence of Alchemical Composite Manuscripts in Early Modern England”
Tillmann Taape (Huntington Library) – “Quintessence in the Workshop: Body and Matter in Early Printed Books on Distillation”
Friday 21 May 2021
Lightning Talks – Products
Justin Niermeier-Dohoney (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science) – “Alchemy and the Making of Agricultural Sciences: Experimental Fertilizers in Seventeenth-Century England”
Margaret Maurer (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) – “Alchemical Papermaking in the Early Modern Period”
Xiaoqian Ji (Johns Hopkins University) –“The Rebirth of Alchemical Knowledge in Cosmetic Practice: Scholars’ and Amateurs’ Investigations in Early Modern China”
Corinna Gannon (Goethe University) & Christoph Jäggy (Goldsmith in Biel-Benken) – “Electrum–the Reproduction of a Sevenfold Alloy”
William R. Newman (Indiana University) – “Red and White Alchemy”
Informal Rountable – Scholarly Careers
Elisabeth Berry Drago (Science History Institute), Joel Klein (The Huntington), Anke Timmermann (Type & Forme), Agnieszka Rec (Massachusetts Historical Society)
Video Launch
Distilled: A Collections Spotlight, with Elisabeth Berry Drago
Lightning Talks – Identities
Aurelien Ruellet (Le Mans University) – “Erasmus Purling: a Case Study in Alchemical Projecting in 1650s France”
George Elliot (Brown University) – “‘The House of Experiment’: Science and Social Life in Gershom Bulkeley’s Seventeenth-Century New England Home”
Sarah Lang (University of Graz) – “Michael Maier’s Literary Framing as Self-fashioning of an Entrepreneurial Alchemist in the Economy of Secrets”
Hiro Hirai (Columbia University) –“The Case of the Ps.-Paracelsian De Natura Rerum”
Project Roundtable
Vera Keller (University of Oregon), Ted McCormick (Concordia University), Kelly Whitmer (Sewanee: The University of the South)
Wednesday 19, Thursday 20 and Friday 21 May 2021, 11:00am–4:45pm EST
Source: https://www.sciencehistory.org/conferences/the-applied-arts-of-alchemy
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