Brown Bag Lecture: “In the Air or on the Page? Making Argon Public”
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Date:
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April 17, 2012
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Time:
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12:00 to 1:00 p.m.
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Location:
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CHF
315 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106 |
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Open to the Public |
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Fee:
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Free
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A talk by Alex Csiszar
When Lord Rayleigh and William Ramsay announced in early 1895 that an element in the air existed that had escaped anyoneʼs notice, their work was hailed as a triumph not simply by chemists and physicists but also by the wider Victorian press. The discovery of argon was also, however, a locus of controversy over propriety and property in making scientific claims that dragged on for several years, as a host of new gases were put forward as pretenders to elemental status. At issue were not simply matters of scientific priority but rather of the appropriate means by which scientific discoveries were transformed into public knowledge claims, of the nature and the rights of the relevant publics for those claims, and of the rights and responsibilities of researchers and others to follow up on and extend their substantive findings.
Alex Csiszarʼs research interests include the history of 19th-century scientific publishing in France and Britain. His current book project, Broken Pieces of Fact: The Rise of the Scientific Journal, examines the circumstances in which the scientific journal emerged to become the principal institutional site for the representation, certification, and registration of authoritative natural knowledge. He is assistant professor of the history of science at Harvard University.
About Brown Bag Lectures
Brown Bag Lectures (BBLs) are a series of weekly informal talks on the history of chemistry or related subjects, including the history and social studies of science, technology, and medicine. Based on original research (sometimes still in progress), these talks are given by local scholars for an audience of CHF staff and fellows and interested members of the public.
For more information, please call 215.873.8289, or e-mail bbl@chemheritage.org.
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