Events for January 2009
January 14, 2009
Jean C. Whelan, Ph.D., R.N.
University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
History of Nursing Seminar Series: “Historical Census Data and Understanding the Past, Present and Future of Nursing”
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Place: 2U Conference Room, Room 2019, Claire Fagin Hall
University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
Information: Betsy Weiss, ehweiss@nursing.upenn.edu or 215-898-4502
Recent advances in accessibility and analysis of historical U.S. Census data enable more accurate examination of professional nurse populations and are useful for identifying data on groups traditionally undercounted in historical studies of nursing such as minority nurses and nurses who are men. This paper will discuss methods used to create a more precise portrait of the early 20th century U.S. nurse population identifying pertinent patterns of change over time.
January 15, 2009
Yibao Xu, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York
“Mathematicians and Mathematics in China during the Cultural Revolution”
Philadelphia Area Seminar on the History of Mathematics (PASHoM) | Visit site »
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: Villanova University
Abstract: The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was the most destructive political movement in modern China. During that tumultuous ten-year period millions died as a direct consequence of political struggles and tens of millions were dislocated. Higher education was abandoned for the first five years. Leading experts in virtually all academic areas were deprived their rights of conducting research of their own interest. The promise of mathematical research during the first 15 years of the newly created Communist China came to a halt, and then faded away. After briefly describing the status of mathematical research in Communist China before 1966, the speaker will provide a setting for the Cultural Revolution by showing a 10-minute documentary film. He will then take two leading Chinese mathematicians, Wu Wenjun, better known in the West as Wen- tsun Wu, and Gong Sheng, as examples, to discuss how the Cultural Revolution affected mathematicians’ personal lives and research. In order to show how politics and Marxist ideology determined mathematical research in mainland China during this period, the talk will also discuss Chinese translations of Karl Marx’s Mathematical Manuscripts and the nation-wide discussion of the Manuscripts.
January 16, 2009
P. Roy Vagelos, John C. Bogle, John C. Pottage, Kenneth C. Frazier
Celebration of Benjamin Franklin’s Birthday
Celebration! Benjamin Franklin, Founder | Visit site »
Times and Locations
Seminar: 9:00 - 10:30 a.m., Franklin Hall, 427 Chestnut Street
Procession to Franklin’s Grave: 11:00 - 11:45 a.m., from the American Philosophical Society’s Library Hall to Christ Church Burial Ground, corner of Fifth and Arch Streets
Lunch: Registration required.
“Franklin’s Legacy: Achievements After Retirement”
Franklin’s birthday is honored each year with a themed program related to different facets of his many lifelong interests. The day includes a seminar, public procession and ceremony at Franklin’s grave followed by a luncheon with guest speakers and presentation of the Franklin Founder Bowl to honoree P. Roy M. Vagelos, M.D., Retired Chairman and CEO, Merck & Co., Inc.
Many of Benjamin Franklin’s greatest achievements occurred after his retirement from his professed career, printing, at the age of 46. Having built the capital he needed to devote his time and talents to specific interests, he reveled in the opportunity to pursue his scientific experiments, to serve as Governor of Pennsylvania, to work for the interests of the colonies in London, to craft the founding documents of a new nation, compromises amongst his fellow Americans and treaties amongst foreign nations. All this accomplished as he also dabbled with wine, music and friends, the rewards of a successful life. This year’s birthday celebration, which pays tribute to Dr. Franklin, explores the ways in which contemporary Americans are choosing to spend their retirement in ways which enhance local, national and global interests.
January 16, 2009
Grover Silcox, PBS 39, and Michael Cirigliano, M.D., Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
“The Medicine of Poe”
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Mütter Museum | Visit site »
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Registration required.
Celebrate the 200th Birthday of America’s “Author of the Macabre,” Edgar Allen Poe, with the Mütter Museum. PBS 39’s Grover Silcox revives the legendary author as we explore “The Medicine of Poe.” Michael Cirigliano, M.D., from the Department of Internal Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, will discuss how medicine in the mid-19th century affected Poe and influenced the dark stories that made him a legend. Then join Mr. Poe for a reception with the opportunity to ask the questions you always wanted to ask.
January 18, 2009
Karen Reeds, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar, History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania
“Linnaeus: The Naturalist as Book Collector”
Friends of the Princeton University Library | Visit site »
Time: 2:30 p.m.
Place: West Classroom, Firestone Library, Princeton University
Information: Ronald Smeltzer, 609.924.4789 or rksmeltzer@verizon.net
The great 18th-century scientist Carl Linnaeus collected and classified books almost as passionately as he did natural history specimens. This presentation will describe and discuss Linnaeus’s library, today preserved at the Linnean Society of London. Karen Reeds, Fellow of the Linnean Society, is a historian of science and medicine who has written extensively about natural history books and illustration from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. She recently curated two exhibitions about Linnaeus and his work.
January 21, 2009
Mary Lagerwey, Ph.D., R.N.
Bronson School of Nursing, Western Michigan University
History of Nursing Seminar Series: “Dangerous Memories and the Moral Image of Nursing”
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania, History of Nursing Seminar Series | Visit site »
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Place: 2U Conference Room, Room 2019, Claire Fagin Hall
University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
Information: Betsy Weiss, ehweiss@nursing.upenn.edu or 215-898-4502
A growing body of nursing research on nursing in the Third Reich demonstrates that passivity in the face of evil, complicity, and even murder were not isolated events, but involved significant segments of the nursing profession on an international scale. Using stories of nurses and nursing in the Third Reich as exemplars, the presentation will focus on potential responses to “dangerous memories” that challenge and disrupt collective memories and the moral identity of the profession as one of caring and advocacy. Options that will be discussed include defining such events as total aberrations, marginalization of unethical behavior in transmission of memories, and a more complex and cautious sense of moral identity.
January 23, 2009
Sharon Kingsland, Johns Hopkins University
Caltech’s Atomic-Age Greenhouse: Exploring the Laboratory Side of the Lab-Field Borderland
Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science
Log in to RSVP for this event.
Time: Discussion, 4:00 - 5:30 p.m.,
followed by social hour and light dinner
Location: Ewell Sale Stewart Library,
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
(directions)
Please download the paper and read it in advance of the colloquium.
Abstract. In Landscapes and Labscapes Robert Kohler focused on the dynamic relationship between laboratory and field cultures, arguing that there was a move away from laboratory ideals of science and the creation of new “hybrid” or mixed practices in field research as the field sciences matured. This article explores related changes occurring in the laboratory, especially the use of novel designs and practices aimed at the analysis of organism-environment relations in the mid-twentieth century. Victor Shelford envisioned a new kind of climate simulation laboratory for ecological research in 1929, but his ideas were too ambitious for the time. In the postwar period Frits W. Went, plant physiologist at the California Institute of Technology, created a new high-tech laboratory, dubbed a “phytotron,” in the hope that it would transform plant sciences by allowing for unprecedented control of environmental variables. Went’s aspirations for his laboratory, the research conducted there, and its impact in initiating an international movement, are considered. Went’s laboratory can be seen as the locus of a “hybrid culture” emerging in the laboratory that complemented and intersected with some of the hybrid field practices that Kohler described. It was also a countercultural movement against the reductionist trends of molecular biology in the 1950s and 1960s. Putting the laboratory into the history of field sciences enables us to explore what Kohler referred to as the “coevolution” of field and laboratory science and raises further questions about the development of field sciences in the postwar period.
January 27, 2009
Hilary Domush, Chemical Heritage Foundation
“Chemical Instruction in Early-19th-Century Edinburgh”
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
Information: 215-873-8289 or bbl@chemheritage.org
Domush will describe the changing methods of teaching chemistry at the university level and in mechanics institutes, giving some history of these institutions. Edinburgh was the place to study chemistry in the 18th century, before other universities took its place, and this presentation will discuss those changes and why studying chemistry in the city of Edinburgh in the early 19th century is still important and not to be ignored!
Hilary Domush is program associate for the oral history program at CHF. She helps manage and conduct oral histories for the Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences project and the Women in Chemistry project. Domush completed a B.S. in chemistry at Bates College before earning an M.S. in organic chemistry and an M.A. in the history of science at the University of Wisconsin. As a graduate student, her research focused on 19th-century chemistry in Edinburgh.