6th International Conference on the History of Chemistry

Programme

“NEIGHBOURS AND TERRITORIES: THE EVOLVING IDENTITY OF CHEMISTRY”

Throughout its history, chemistry has been shifting ground between different territories. From its roots in artisan technology, pharmaceutical workshops and alchemical philosophy, it developed into the archetypical laboratory science of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, claiming full academic status. Chemists invaded many new fields, from agriculture and industry, to medicine, public hygiene and pharmacology. In the twentieth century, chemistry contributed to the major developments in molecular biology, quantum mechanics, environmental science and nanotechnology. But it also gained a key position in the oil industry, the fabrication of plastics and pharmaceutical research. This broad and continuous adaptation of the discipline to various fields of expertise, has brought chemistry in close contact with neighbouring disciplines and social pressures. Time and again, chemists have needed to carve out their territory, to negotiate with other specialists, and to claim particular expertise in widely diverging fields. The conference aims at a better understanding of the territories claimed by chemistry and its shifting boundaries with other disciplines.

 

Plenary lectures:

 

· Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (Université Paris IX - Nanterre), “The new Identity of Chemistry as Biomimetic and Nanoscience”

· Ernst Homburg (Universiteit Maastricht), “Close Neighbours, but Different Chemistries: Chemistry in the Low Countries 1600-1900”

· Lawrence Principe (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore), “Transmuting Chymistry into Chemistry: Eighteenth-Century Chrysopoeia and its Repudiation”

· Ana Simões (Universidade de Lisboa), “Dangerous liaisons or unavoidable associations: quantum chemistry at the crossroads of chemistry, physics and mathematics”