Events for October 2008
October 1, 2008
Alma Dea Morani Renaissance Woman Award and Lecture Presentation
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine | Visit site »
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Award recipient and other details to be announced.
October 1, 2008
Mark Dion
“Inspired by the Wagner: An Illustrated Presentation”
The Wagner Free Institute of Science, Weeknights at the Wagner | Visit site »
Time: 4:00 - 7:00 p.m.; Lecture at 5:30 p.m.
Location: The Wagner Free Institute of Science,
1700 Montgomery Avenue
RSVP: 215-763-6529, ext. 27
Mark Dion is an internationally known artist whose work playfully explores the history of science and museums, travel and landscape genres, and the culture of nature. He is fascinated by curiosity cabinets and by principles of taxonomy and classification. His talk will focus on work and projects that share sensibility with the Wagner. Come early to explore the Wagner’s historic building and its unparalleled collections.
October 1, 2008
Kevin Borg, James Madison University
“Auto Mechanics: Technology and Expertise in Twentieth-Century America”
Hagley Museum and Library, Fall Lecture Series | Visit site »
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: Hagley Library, Copeland Room
Kevin Borg’s book is the first to explore the history of the auto mechanic shop, tracing the evolution of this profession within the context of class, race and gender and discussing how vocational education related to the unique expertise of the mechanic. Borg is an Associate Professor of History at James Madison University.
October 3, 2008
Making Modernity
Chemical Heritage Foundation | Visit site »
Time: 10:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., M-F
Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation
Masao Horiba Exhibit Hall
415 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia
“Making Modernity” is a major new exhibition that celebrates how science shapes the modern world. Ten years in the making, it opens this fall at the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s new two-story museum hall. The exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Beckman Foundation.
From chemistry’s origins to today, “Making Modernity” brings to life the unexpected beauty of science outside the lab. Visitors can trace scientific progress from the laboratory, to the factory, to their homes and learn how chemistry created and continues to improve the modern world.
Drawn from CHF’s world-class collections, the exhibition ranges from cosmetics to computers and includes scientific instruments and apparatus, rare books, fine art, and the personal papers of prominent scientists. Singular scientific objects and everyday items tell the stories of discoveries that shaped our lives.
October 3, 2008
Sharrona Pearl, Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania
Diagnostic Physiognomy: From Phrenology to Fingerprints
Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science, Regional Colloquium
Time: 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., followed by social hour and light dinner
Location: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street
Directions: http://www.librarycompany.org/about/access.htm
This chapter excerpt from the forthcoming book “Facing the Victorians: Physiognomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain” explores the use of physiognomy as a classificatory technology in medical and anthropological practice. As the century progressed, modes of classification shifted from the individual to the group, and physiognomical applications changed accordingly. In this piece, Pearl uses the writings of Francis Galton to chronicle these changes and argues for a reemergence of the individual with innovations in fingerprinting and psychoanalysis at the end of the nineteenth century.
October 3, 2008
Jan M. Goplerud, M.D., Drexel University College of Medicine, and Anna N. Dhody, Curator, Mütter Museum
“Only Human: Obstetrical and Neonatal Consequences of Evolutionary Development”
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Section on Medical History, and the Mütter Museum | Visit site »
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Location: The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
RSVP: 215.563.3737, ext. 304
October 6, 2008
Deborah Coen, Barnard College
“A Laboratory of Nature and Culture: Climate Science in a Continental Empire”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2008 Workshop | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Place: 337 Claudia Cohen Hall
October 7, 2008
Nicholas Spicher, Johns Hopkins University
PACHS 2008 Dissertation Research Fellow
The Method of Mirania: Teaching Science at the College of Philadelphia
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
This talk centers on the lecture-demonstration as an innovative method of teaching natural philosophy in the 18th century. The method was popular not only with college audiences but also in the larger culture of public science that was an essential characteristic of the Enlightenment. Using information gained from documents at the American Philosophical Society and the University of Pennsylvania, such as lecture notes, textbooks, and correspondence, Spicher describes the pedagogy of lecture-demonstrations in Philadelphia compared with that in Europe. More than mere diversions for public audiences, these lecture-demonstrations formed a basis for a new kind of scientific education and competed with older educational methods for supremacy.
Nicholas Spicher received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 2001. He is pursuing a doctorate in the history of science and technology at Johns Hopkins University. His dissertation will focus on the pedagogy of science in the 18th century. He received a one-month PACHS Dissertation Research Fellowship, the product of which is the current presentation.
October 8, 2008
Jennifer Gunn, University of Minnesota
“Building the Public Health Infrastruction from the Nurses Up, 1918-1950”
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Location: 2U Conference Room, Claire Fagin Hall, University of Pennsylvania
Information: ehweiss@nursing.upenn.edu or 215.898.4502
As late as 1942, only 33 of Minnesota’s counties spent any money on public health, and only 34 percent of the state’s population lived in an area with a full-time health officer. In this talk, Gunn explores the hypothesis that in many rural counties, the public health infrastructure emerged from and had as its core the work of public health nurses, funded initially by a variety of public and private agencies. The Upper Midwest serves as a case study to examine the transition from the public health professionals’ and demonstration projects’ “selling” of public health to the actual establishment of county health units and the role of nurses in that transition. Jennifer Gunn, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, History of Medicine, University of Minnesota.
October 15, 2008
Annual Fall Meeting, Medical History Society of New Jersey
Medical History Society of New Jersey | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Place: The Nassau Club of Princeton, 6 Mercer Street, Princeton, NJ
Information: Dr. Sandra Moss, 732-549-5843 or moss.sandra@gmail.com
Talks by Mark Mappen, Ph.D., New Jersey Historical Commission; Robert Vietrogoski, M.L.S., C.A., UMDNJ Special Collections; Amit Sharma, B.A., and Kenneth Swan, M.D., UMDNJ-NJMS, Department of Surgery; and Norman Ertel, M.D., Endocrinology and Metabolism. Medical Stamp Exhibit by Fred Skvara, M.D. Keynote address by Margaret Humphreys, M.D., Ph.D., Duke University (see separate listing). See web site for complete program.
October 15, 2008
Margaret Humphreys, Duke University
“The South’s Secret Weapon: Disease, Environment, and the Civil War”
Medical History Society of New Jersey | Visit site »
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Place: The Nassau Club, 6 Mercer Street, Princeton, NJ
Information: Dr. Sandra Moss, 732-549-5843 or moss.sandra@gmail.com)
Margaret Humphreys, M.D., Ph.D., Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine, Duke University, will present the 6th University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Foundation Lecture at the Annual Fall Meeting of the Medical History Society of New Jersey.
October 16, 2008
Steven Weintraub, Lehigh University
“Cayley Documents in Lehigh’s Possession”
Philadelphia Area Seminar on the History of Mathematics | Visit site »
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: Villanova University
The Lehigh University Library has acquired a set of letters and an unpublished manuscript by Arthur Cayley. This talk will be a report on this collection and its background, both mathematical and historical.
October 17, 2008
Paul Pasles, Villanova University
Benjamin Franklin’s Numbers: An Unsung Mathematical Odyssey
Friends of the Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science | Visit site »
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Lecture, reception, and booksigning
Times: Reception: 5:30 p.m., Program: 6:00 p.m.
Place: American Philsophical Society, Benjamin Franklin Hall, 427 Chestnut Street
In Benjamin Franklin’s Numbers, Paul Pasles gives us the first mathematical biography of Franklin, drawing upon previously unknown sources to illustrate Franklin’s genius for numbers. He reveals a side of the iconic statesman, scientist, and writer that few Americans know--his mathematical side. In fact, Franklin indulged in many areas of mathematics, including number theory, geometry, statistics, and economics. Franklin’s hugely popular Poor Richard’s Almanac featured such things as population estimates and a host of mathematical digressions. Pasles explains the mathematics behind the magic squares and circles that were a lifelong fascination of Franklin’s. If you think you already know Benjamin Franklin’s story, Pasles’s entertaining and richly detailed study will make you think again. Paul C. Pasles is associate professor of mathematical sciences at Villanova University.
October 20, 2008
Sharrona Pearl, Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania
“Building the Fourth Wall: Victorian Theatrical Realism”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2008 Workshop | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Place: 337 Claudia Cohen Hall, University of Pennsylvania
October 20, 2008
Amazing Machine! A Special Demonstration of the Maillardet Automaton
The Franklin Institute | Visit site »
Times: 30-minute demonstrations at 1:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m., and 5:00 p.m.
Place: The Franklin Instiutte Science Museum
The Franklin will be giving a rare demonstration of its remarkable Maillardet automaton. Built in the early 1800s, this exquisite piece from The Franklin’s permanent collection was built by inventor Henri Maillardet. The spring-activated automaton draws pictures and writes verses in both French and English, including two three poems, two cherubs, one carousel and one tall ship. It is believed that this automaton has the largest cam-based memory of any automaton of the era. The Maillardet automaton is now permanently exhibited within The Franklin’s Amazing Machine exhibit. The demonstration is free with museum admission.
October 21, 2008
Hiro Hirai, Edelstein Senior Research Fellow, Chemical Heritage Foundation
“Matter and Life in the Natural Philosophy of Daniel Sennert”
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
Daniel Sennert, a professor of medicine at the Lutheran University of Wittenberg (Germany), tried to establish a synthesis of Aristotelian hylomorphism and Democritean atomism. He developed his idea of “living atoms,” especially in the fields of biology and embryology. The leading minds of the next generation of scholars, like Pierre Gassendi and Robert Boyle, eagerly read Sennert’s works. This talk explains Sennert’s conceptions of matter and life that provide the framework for Hiro’s research project at CHF.
Hiro Hirai is the Edelstein senior research fellow at CHF (2008–2009). He is particularly interested in early modern ideas on the origin of life. His first book, titled Concept of Seeds in Renaissance Matter Theories, was published in 2005 (Brepols: Turnhout). He is currently preparing his second book, Senior Medicine and Philosophy in the Renaissance.
October 21, 2008
John Zarobell, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
“How I See Is What I Know: Technology and Vision in the Nineteenth Century”
Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Library | Visit site »
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Place: Rhys Carpenter Library 21, Bryn Mawr College
John Zarobell is the Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and was formerly the Associate Curator of European Painting Before 1900 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum. While at the Philadelphia Museum of Art he curated a number of exhibitions including Manet and the Sea; African Art, African Voices: Long Steps Never Broke a Back and Renoir Landscapes. Currently the coordinating curator of Frida Kahlo, John is working on Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook and an upcoming atrium commission with Kerry James Marshall. He received his PhD in the History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley. His book, Empire of Landscape, will be published in 2009.
This lecture marks the opening of the exhibition “Educating the Eye: Nineteenth-Century Optical Toys and Devices” (see Exhibits).
October 22, 2008
Deb Sampson, University of Michigan
“Exploring Mixed Methods in Historical Inquiry: Analysis of National Health Policy Implementation at the State Level, 1970-2000, as Exemplar”
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Location: 2U Conference Room, Claire Fagin Hall
Information: ehweiss@nursing.upenn.edu or 215.898.4502
Understanding the translation of national health policy at the state level is a complex process that requires historical analysis of interrelated factors such as state demographics, racial health disparities, health outcomes, health care workforce, nurse practice law analysis, economic indicators and the political culture within each state. In this presentation, I propose a plan to use mixed methods for historical research concerning nurse practitioner practice act legislation negotiations and state level data to compare factors within and between three states--Texas, Michigan and New Hampshire--that affected implementation of national policies from the 1960s and 1970s aimed at using nurses to provide primary care due to physician shortages. I explore current statistical models for quantitative historical research and the application of historical inquiry for longitudinal data analysis of large data sets. Deb Sampson, PhD, ARNP, is Assistant Professor, University of Michigan, School of Nursing.
October 22, 2008
Ryan K. Kashanipour, University of Arizona
“Trading Cures: Indigenous and European Medicine in Eighteenth Century Yucatan”
The McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 12:30 - 1:45 p.m.
Location: Seminar Rm 105 at the McNeil Center, 3355 Woodland Walk (34th & Sansom Streets)
Papers are circulated in advance. For copies, please contact mceas@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
October 24, 2008
John Carson, University of Michigan
“Between Medical Authority and Legal Precedent: Adjudicating ‘Unsoundness of Mind’ in Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Jurisprudence”
Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University | Visit site »
Time: 10:15 a.m.
Location: 211 Dickinson Hall
Commentator: Michael Gordin, Princeton University
Copies of the paper are available by contacting Jennifer House at jhoule@princeton.edu.
October 24, 2008
William Noel, The Walters Art Museum
Archimedes in Bits: The Digital Presentation of a Write-Off
Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science, Chemical Heritage Foundation, and University of Pennsylvania Libraries
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Copyright: The owner of the Archimedes Palimpsest.
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation,
315 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia
The Archimedes Palimpsest is considered by many to be the most important scientific manuscript ever sold at auction. It was purchased at a Christie’s sale on October 1998, by an anonymous collector for $2,000,000. The collector deposited the Palimpsest at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, for exhibition, conservation, imaging and scholarly study in 1999. Work has been ongoing ever since. The Archimedes Palimpsest contains seven of the Greek mathematician’s treatises. The manuscript was written in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) in the 10th century. In the 13th century, the manuscript was taken apart, and the Archimedes text was scraped off. The parchment was reused by a monk who created a prayer book. The Archimedes manuscript then effectively disappeared. Since 1999, intense efforts have been made to retrieve the Archimedes text. Many techniques have been employed, including multispectral imaging, x-ray flourescence imaging and synchrotron x-ray scanning at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California. The imaging efforts have led to a re-evaluation of the work of Archimedes, and to the retrieval of entirely new texts from the ancient world.
William Noel is curator of manuscripts and rare books at the Walters Art Museum, and has been director of the The Archimedes Palimpsest Project since its inception.
This event is free and open to the public, but a response is required.
October 25, 2008
On the Nature of Things: Modern Perspectives on Scientific Manuscripts
University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Penn's Department of History & Sociology of Science, Chemical Heritage Foundation, and Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science | Visit site »
First Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium
on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age
Time:
8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Location:
Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
University of Pennsylvania, 3420 Walnut St., Philadelphia
This year’s symposium examines scientific manuscript book production in Western Europe, Asia, and the Arabic world before the year 1600. It consists of two events: a public lecture hosted by PACHS and the Chemical Heritage Foundation on Friday, October 24 and a day-long symposium hosted by the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Penn.
On Saturday, October 25, six scholars will present papers on various topics ranging from medieval astronomy, alchemy, chiromancy, scientific writing in the Near East, to the influence of Arabic scientific manuscript production on the medieval West. The symposium will conclude with a panel of digital humanities scholars who will discuss the role of new technologies in advancing our understanding of this period in the history of science. A related exhibition in the Rosenwald Gallery will include scientific manuscripts selected from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Schoenberg Collection.
Registration for this event is now closed.
October 27, 2008
Paul Forman, National Museum of American History
“What Accounts for the Loss of Trust in Science?”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2008 Workshop | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Place: 337 Claudia Cohen Hall
October 27, 2008
Renate Lunde, University of Bergen, Norway
“British Missionary Nurses Meet Egyptian Mothers: Daily Work and Encounters in the Slums of Cairo, 1900-1950”
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Place: 2U Conference Room, Clair Fagin Hall, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
* Please note that this day and time is a departure from the usual schedule.
British nurses in the Church Missionary Society’s (CMS) Medical Mission in Egypt came in close contact with very poor people and communities in the urban slums and villages surrounding Cairo. The high infant mortality and maternity issues brought them particularly close to mothers and children, and at the CMS Women’s hospital, the Infant Welfare Centre, and through their visiting in the homes, the nurses not only encountered poor women and children, customs and popular beliefs, poverty and philanthropy, but also their own prejudices and religious and medical practices that challenged and changed their daily work.
Renate Lunde is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Archeology, History, Cultural and Religious Studies, University of Bergen, Norway.
October 28, 2008
Sarah Bridger, Columbia University
PACHS 2008 Dissertation Research Fellow
Scientists and the Ethics of Cold War Weapons Research
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
The success of the Manhattan Project and the devastation caused by the atomic bomb raised complicated ethical problems for physicists and chemists whose work had military applications. This talk tracks the political and ethical debates that accompanied the development of cold war weapons systems, as well as the political and economic factors that shaped weapons research itself. Key topics that arose after the Soviet launch of Sputnik include the expansion of presidential science advising and science education in the late 1950s, scientists and nuclear proliferation during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, biochemical weapons and the Vietnam War, scientists and the “military-academic complex” in the late 1960s and early 1970s, command-and-control technology and the Massachusetts defense industry in the 1970s and early 1980s, and the growth of defense research during the Reagan years.
Sarah Bridger is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. history at Columbia University. She holds a one-month Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Philadelphia Center for History of Science. She received her B.A. in history from Brown University and her M.A. and M.Phil. from Columbia. Her interests include cold war political and intellectual history and labor history. Prior to graduate school, Sarah investigated police misconduct cases in New York City.
October 29, 2008
Giuseppa Testa, European Institute of Oncology
“Indexing Life: The Scientific and Political Production of Lineages”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Location: 402 Claudia Cohen Hall, University of Pennsylvania
Giuseppe Testa, the Provost’s Distinguished International Scholar, will discuss how genetic knowledge and technology are co-produced by the laboratory and society. Dr. Testa is an Italian M.D./Ph.D. who runs a cloning/epigenetics laboratory and who also has been trained and does research in science studies. A few years ago he was awarded the Branca Weiss fellowship, which allowed him to pursue an interdisciplinary approach to life sciences and their place in society. In Milan, he started a Ph.D. Program in the Foundations of Life Sciences and their Ethical Consequences. He describes the main focus of his STS research as “how genes and cell lineages become visible, mobile and political elements in the public sphere.”