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Erratum
An error occurred in the previous version. EuCHems has 51 members in 2020.
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Disclaimer
You are receiving this newsletter because you have attended the 11ICHC in Trondheim and/or the 12ICHC in Maastricht, and we would like to keep you informed on the activities of the Working Party of the History of Chemistry. If you'd rather not hear from the WPHC anymore please use the unsubscribe button at the end of the Newsletter.
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The WPHC hopes you are doing well, as well as your family and colleagues.
The Covid19 pandemic has disrupted our pace of life, both private and professional. It uncovered many tensions hidden in our societies and ways of living, one of them being the “re-materializing“ of borders, which we thought were a thing of the past, and, at the same time, paradoxically, the crucial role of the global connections we depend on.
We also experienced a supsension of our activities, and many plans have been cancelled or postponed, such as the ECC8 as you will find out by reading this edition of the newsletter. Despite the circumstances, the planning for the 13ICHC goes on and we hope to meet as many of you as possible in Vilnius in May 2021.
Keep taking care of yourself until we meet again.
Keep safe!
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13ICHC - Proposal Opening
It is our pleasure to inform you that the call for papers of the 13rd International Conference on History of Chemistry (13ICHC) is already opened. The conference will be held in Vilnius (Lithuania), from the 18th to the 22nd of May 2021.
The ICHC aims to bring together historically interested chemists, chemistry educators and historians of chemistry from all over Europe and beyond. It will include scientific sessions, key-note lectures, the WP business meeting, a poster session as well as social events such as excursions, receptions, and a conference dinner banquet.
It is a pleasure to announce that the plenary lectures by Marta Lourenço (Director of the National Museum of Natural History and Science in Lisbon), Rimantas Vaitkus (President of the Lithuanian Chemical Society), and Rimvydas Baranauskas (Prime Partners) are already approved. Other keynote speakers will be announced soon.
Important Dates*:
- Deadline for submitting proposals: 1 December 2020
- Notification of acceptance: January 2021
- Provisional program: Early February 2021
- Final program: April 2021
- Conference dates: 18th to the 22nd of May 2021.
*Due to the worldwide sanitary crisis, it might be necessary to alter some of these dates at a later stage.
Proposal guidelines:
The Steering Committee encourages the submission of panel/session proposals, but also accepts the submission of stand-alone papers. The 13ICHC welcomes proposals on any topic on the history of chemistry, broadly understood, including historical works on molecular sciences, life sciences, industry, technology, and education. We will also welcome papers on the teaching of history of chemistry, in order to reach out to the wider community and to the younger generation.
All proposals must be in English, the language of the conference. Submitted abstracts and session proposals (max. 200 words) will be subject to review by an international Advisory Committee. Sessions should include about 3–5 papers, and no more than one session can be proposed by the same organizer. There is a limit of one paper per presenter (including the papers listed inside a panel or a session). All paper proposals must use the templates provided on the conference website.
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As in previous years, the new edition of the Annual reports of member societies to the WP has been compiled. The 35 pages report puts together a large variety of activities done by the different member societies, from symposia, conferences, seminar series, exhibitions, publication of books or courses (both virtual and on-site class). It includes information from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The Working Party is extremely grateful to all the delegates who have contributed to this report.
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ECC8 is postponed to 2022
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Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been decided that the 8th EuChemS Chemistry Congress (ECC8) initially scheduled for 30 August to 3 September, 2020, is postponed to 2022. ECC8 will still be held in Lisbon, Portugal from 28 August to 1 September, 2022
More information is available on the ECC8 website. As a consequence, the ECC9 planned to take place in Dublin will be held in that same city but in 2024.024.
For the ECC8 in Lisbon, the WPHC had offered to set up a public session on the topic "Reconnecting chemists with their heritage" in the beautiful Laboratorio Chimico. (see https://museus.ulisboa.pt/pt-pt/amphiteatro-e-laboratorio-chimico).
The afternoon organized by Brigitte Van Tiggelen, Marta Lourenço and Isabel Malaquias was meant to provide short presentation of important sites of chemistry where chemists and the general public alike can get a material experience of chemistry’s past. The plans for 2022 will be reworked, as we await the local organizers’ instructions.
Would you have any interest, please contact members of the board, Isabel Malaquias (imalaquias@ua.pt) or Brigitte Van Tiggelen (vantiggelen@memosciences.be).
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On July 3, 1970, at a time Europe was split by an iron curtain, chemists from East and West came together in Prague, and representatives of 19 chemical societies from 14 countries attended an inaugural meeting that led to the formation of FECS, the Federation of European Chemical Societies. FECS was renamed EuCheMS in 2004 and since 2018, it is EuChemS, the European Chemical Society. 2020 will thus see the European Chemical Society celebrate 50 years since its conception, representing now 51 societies, and by extension some 150,000 chemists eager to play their part in sharing knowledge and advice with the European Union institutions.
Because of the present circumstances of the Covid-19, the birthday celebration will be held online on Friday 3 July 2020, from 10:00 to 11:30 (CEST – Brussels time). An on-site celebration is planned for July 3, 2021, with the award of a EuChemS Historical Landmark plaque to commemorate the founding meeting.
To mark its 50th anniversary, EuChemS has released a brochure illustrating 50 years of Chemistry in Europe.
An interview of DR Wolfgang Fritsche, Honorary President of FECS and one of the founders of FECS by EuChemS President Professor Pilar Goya GDCh managing director Dr Wolfram Koch has been released in the last Chemistry in Europe.
But plans are made for a more substantial historical work, to which the members of the WPHC will be invited to participate. Would you be interested in participating or helping to tell the story of your society’s involvement in EuChemS, please contact Brigitte Van Tiggelen (vantiggelen@memosciences.be).
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CHEM-HIST
The roots of the History of Chemistry Networks
The existing networks in our field have a twofold origin: The Working Party of EuChemS, founded in 1977 in Budapest, and the European Science Foundation (ESF) Programme "The Evolution of Chemistry in Europe (1789–1939)", which has brought together a total of 135 scholars from 24 countries in a series of 13 conferences between 1992 and 1997. While the EuChemS Working Group maintains stronger connections to the chemical community and the national chemical societies, the ESF programme was explicitly aimed at including historians of science, business and general historians alike.
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Final Conference of the ESF Programme "The Evolution of Chemistry in Europe (1789–1939)" in Delphi, Greece, September 1997).
Participants with their then localisation (from left to right): Christoph Meinel (Regensburg, chair of steering committee), Brigitte Van Tiggelen (Louvain-la-Neuve), Anders Lundgren (Uppsala), Nikos Psarros (Marburg), Matthias Dörries (München), Ulrike Fell (Paris), N.N., Ana Simões (Lisboa), Anita Kildebaek Nielsen (Aarhus), Nathan Brooks (Las Cruces/NM, USA), Gerrylynn Roberts (Milton Keynes), Gabor Pallo (Budapest), Ferdinando Abbri (Siena), Paolo Amat di San Filippo (Cagliari), Maria Zarifi (Athens), Larry Holmes' wife, Larry Holmes (New Haven, USA), Anne-Claire Déré (Nantes), Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (Paris), Raffaella Seligardi (Bologna), Helge Kragh (Aarhus), William H. Brock (Leicester), Theodore Arabatzis (Athens ), Maria Elisa Maia (Lisboa), Ernst Homburg (Maastricht), David Knight (Durham), Danielle Fauque (Paris), Ana Luisa Janeira (Lisboa), James Donnelly (Leeds), Roman Mierzecki (Warszawa), Robert Fox (Oxford), Luigi Cerruti (Torino), Patrice Bret (Paris), Gérard Emptoz (Nantes), José Ramon Bertomeu Sanchez (Valencia), Antonio Garcia Belmar (Paris), Janie Freshwater (ESF, Strasbourg), Peter Morris (London).
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In its final conference (see picture) two follow-up projects were envisaged: the setting up of an international network devoted to the history of 20th-century chemistry, and the creation of a permanent communication hub for chemist-historians, historians of chemistry and historians of science in general.
The first aim was realised by the creation of an International Commission on the History of Modern Chemistry as a subdivision of the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Division on the History of Science and Technology (IUHPST/DHST), set up at the International Congress of History of Science in Liège, in 1997, and renamed Commission on the History of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences (CHCMS), in 2017.
The second aim was achieved by creating the mailing list CHEM-HIST, which became the official messenger of CHMC, in 1998. CHEM-HIST is nominally supported by the Fachgruppe Geschichte der Chemie der Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker,the Historical Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, the Sidney M. Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine in Jerusalem, and the EuCheMS Working Party on History of Chemistry. The list server is administered and hosted at the University of Regensburg, Germany.
CHEM-HIST is meant to be the principal means of rapid communication and exchange for information and discussion related to the history of chemistry and chemical industry. The list is open to anyone with an interest in any facet of the history of chemistry internationally. CHEM-HIST aims to announce conferences, new projects and forthcoming events; to inform about seminars, exhibitions, and museums; to advertise jobs, grants, scholarships, and prizes; and to carry inquiries of whatever colleagues feel appropriate asking the community. During the past twenty years, the number of subscribers has risen to a level of 380-400 throughout the world. Since 2006 all postings are stored in a publicly accessible list archive.
To join the mailing list simply send an email with nothing but the line subscribe chem-hist to mailman-request@mailman.uni-regensburg.de, and share this information with colleagues interested in the history of chemistry.
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