The Rohm and Haas Fellow in Focus Lecture Series gives our scholars an opportunity to present their work to a broad audience interested in history, science, and culture.
Fellow in Focus lectures are presented by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry.
For more information about this series please contact fellowships@sciencehistory.org.
Past Lectures
2022
Why Gather? Reflections on the History and Future of Scientific Conferences
Geert Somsen, Maastricht University and the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Nylon and “The Test Tube Girl”: Reimagining Plastic Futures
Isabelle Marina Held, Price-Doan Postdoctoral Fellow
2021
Humphry Davy: Enlightenment Chemist, Poet, Social Climber
Frank James, Cain Senior Fellow
The Thing about Alchemy . . . Secrets, Mixtures, and Discerning the Alchemical in the Potter’s Art
Bruce Moran, Cultural Historian
2020
Furnace and Fugue: An Alchemical Happy Hour
Donna Bilak, Historian of Early Modern Science
Tara Nummedal, Brown University
2019
Wasted Space: The History of Orbiting Junk
Lisa Ruth Rand, Haas Fellow
Milk Safety in the 20th Century: Eradicating Brucellosis in the United States
Rebecca Kaplan, ACLS Public Fellow/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
2018
An Electric Education: How to Teach Science on Television
Ingrid Ockert, Princeton University
Technology and Society: Engineering Cultures, Chemistry, and Social Order in the Second Industrial Revolution (1890 to 1930)
Adelheid Voskuhl, University of Pennsylvania
2017
Fresh Air, Foul Odors, and the Growth of American Cities
Melanie A. Kiechle, Virginia Tech University
“Trust Me!” The Problem of Insincerity in Early Modern Medicine
Mark Waddell, Michigan State University
2016
Searching for Meaning in the History of Planetary Science
Matthew Shindell, Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum
Bewitching Chemistry: Art, Alchemy, and the Making of Color
Elisabeth Berry Drago, University of Delaware and Science History Institute
2015
New Light on Isaac Newton’s Alchemy
William R. Newman, Indiana University
Making It Delicious: The Science of Flavor and the Industrialization of Food in the United States, 1900–1960
Nadia Berenstein, University of Pennsylvania
2014
Genuine Atonement and Sincere Performance: Living with Alchemy, Murder, and Marketing in Early Modern Europe
Bruce T. Moran, University of Nevada, Reno
The Invention of Peer Review
Alex Csiszar, Harvard University
2013
Mapping the Universe of Knowledge: Internationalism and National Interest in Modern Science
Robert Fox, University of Oxford
Michel-Eugène Chevreul and the Material Cultures of Color in 19th-Century France
Laura Anne Kalba, Smith College
2012
Humphry Davy’s Consolations in Travel: Last Thoughts of a Chemical Philosopher
Jan Golinski, University of New Hampshire
Beyond Genius, Before Theory: Recovering the Lost World of Practice in 19th-Century Chemistry
Catherine Jackson, University College London
2010
The Chemistry of Kosher
Roger Horowitz, Hagley Museum and Library