This year’s Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will take place between 7 and 28 May 2014 at the Maison Francaise d’Oxford (2-10 Norham Rd, OX2 6SE) every Wednesday, 3pm-5pm. The seminar is free of charge, and anyone with an interest in the history of alchemy, chemistry, medicine or the sciences is invited to attend. The format is two papers followed by a Questions & Answers session. In addition, there will be an opportunity to socialise at a nearby pub afterwards. Everyone is welcome to join us for dinner with the speaker and chair. The seminar will feature the following sessions/speakers:
7 May: 18th Century Scottish Chemistry
Chair: John Perkins (Oxford Brookes)
Georgette Taylor (UCL)
Pedagogues and Pedagogue-ability: Cullen versus Plummer at Edinburgh University
John Christie (Oxford)
Professors and Students in the Age of the Chemical Revolution
14 May: 18th Century Russian Alchemy and Chemistry
Chair: John Christie (Oxford)
Alexander Iosad (Oxford)
The Usefulness of Chemistry, the Uses of Science: the Place of Chemistry in Russia after Peter I
Robert Collis (Helsinki)
Alchemy and Elite Culture in Russia in the Long Eighteenth-Century, 1697-1796
21 May: Distillation Alchemy in the Renaissance
Chair: Georgiana Hedesan (Oxford)
Fabrizio Bigotti (Warburg)
‘Homo alembicus’ and the Idea of Alchemical Destillatio in Renaissance Medicine
Tillmann Taape (Cambridge)
Experience, Craftsmanship and Alchemical Medicine in Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Distillation Manuals
28 May: Early Modern Alchemy
Chair: Howard Hotson (Oxford)
Anke Timmermann (Cambridge)
Alchemy, Images and Early Modern Cambridge
Georgiana Hedesan (Oxford)
Van Helmont on the Acquisition of the Medical Alchemical Arcana
For more information, please contact Georgiana Hedesan.
