Stephen Johnston, Museum of the History of Science, Oxford
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
Information: 215-873-8289 or bbl@chemheritage.org
Free and open to the public.
Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science occupies the Ashmolean Museum’s original building. Opened in 1683, the Ashmolean was equipped with Britain’s first university laboratory for chemistry, which served for both teaching and research and as a dispensary. Recent archaeological work has unearthed vessels discarded from the laboratory. This setting provides an ideal location for an exhibition focused on the substances and material culture of early-modern chymistry. This talk outlines the museological and historiographical context for such a project and invites discussion of some early plans.
Stephen Johnston joined the Science Museum London as a curator in 1987 and has been at the Museum of the History of Science since 1995. Much of his research and curatorship has been on the history of the mathematical arts, and his most recent exhibition was "Compass and Rule: Architecture as Mathematical Practice in England, 1500–1750" (Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford, 2009; Yale Center for British Art, February–May 2010).
CHF's Brown Bag Lectures are a series of weekly, informal talks by CHF fellows on their current research, and members of the academic and business communities on topics involving the history of chemistry, political and social issues of importance to chemists and chemical engineers, and issues affecting the future of chemical research.