Lunchtime Lectures

The Lunchtime Lecture Series is a virtual weekly talk series on the history of science, technology, and medicine. We invite historians and speakers from the sciences, arts, and humanities to cover intriguing topics followed by a Q&A.

Now combined with our Saturday Speaker Series, Lunchtime Lectures take a rigorous and entertaining approach to exploring topics for scholars and anyone interested in stories about the history of science. The talks help expand perceptions of the nature of science and how it’s done.

This season, we’re showcasing historians and scientists whose work analyzes the past, present, and future of environmental science.

The Lunchtime Lecture Series is a project of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry at the Science History Institute. For more information about this series, please contact lunchtimelectures@sciencehistory.org.

Upcoming Events

May

Amazing Adaptations of Aquatic Insects

Learn about caddisfly art, mayfly mating rituals, and scuba diving beetles, along with a surprising Guinness Book world record held by a tiny, tiny bug!

Jun

Harnessing the Earth’s Heat and Power: Oil Spillovers and the Development of Iceland’s Geothermal Resources, 1930s–1970s

Postdoctoral researcher Odinn Melsted will trace adopted geophysical exploration techniques in Iceland.

Jun

Governing Nitrogen Species: Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Inequalities, and the Rise of Earth-System Governance

This virtual talk features Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s William San Martín.

Recorded Lunchtime Lectures

The following Lunchtime Lectures are now available to view. Click on the title to access the video.

Hannah Pell
Three Mile Island: On the Closure and Decommissioning of a Nuclear Power Plant

Megan Raby
Working Naturalist: Episodes in the Life of Marston Bates, Life Scientist for Hire

D. O. McCullough
From Collections to Curriculums: Object Loans for Schools at the American Museum of Natural History, 1903–1919

Emily Herring
Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution and 20th-Century Biology

Robin Wolfe Scheffler
Brightening Biochemistry: The Role of Humor in Scientific Research

Beans Velocci
Sex and the Species: Making Human Meaning of Animal Bodies at Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics Laboratories

Tiffany Nichols
Beyond the Lab: The Role of Experimental and Theoretical Physicists in the Site Selection of the LIGO

Allison Bigelow
Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World

Patrícia Martins Marcos
Bridging Divides: Inscribing Racialized Bodies into the Narratives of Science, Medicine, and Beyond

Sabine Clarke
The Chemical Empire: Insecticides and Locust Control in East Africa after 1940

Allen Driggers
Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests: Botany, the American Civil War, and the Limits of Regional Analysis

Roger Turner
Untold Stories: Making Exhibitions More Inclusive

Hiro Hirai
Forgery and Early Modern Science: The Case of Pseudo-Paracelsus

George Elliott
Colonial Chymistry: Gershom Bulkeley and the 17th-Century Connecticut Alchemical Laboratory

Science, Incorporated: Constructing the Natures of American Modernization

This series of Lunchtime Lectures, held in May and June 2020, unpicked the diverse ways in which nature—and the study of nature—became entangled with the modernization of America, from the early origins of laboratory pedagogy to mineral prospecting by satellite. Drawing on their own original historical research, our speakers interrogated how the government department, virtuoso scientist, electronics corporation, and other contemporary agents mobilized scientific knowledge in pursuit of technological, social, and political objectives. Together they showed how these actions not only constructed knowledge of nature but also the multiple natures of American modernization.

Douglas O’Reagan
American Intellectual Reparations from the Nazis and the Myth of German Technological Superiority

Michael Rossi
Talking about Colors: Language, Perception, and American Modernity

Sarah Reynolds
Engaging Experiments: The Origins of Laboratory Instruction in the United States

Matthew Shindell
The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey: A Biography of 20th-Century Science

Benjamin Gross
A Window to the Future: LCD Manufacturing at RCA, 1968–1976

Megan Black
The Global Interior: Prospecting Mineral Frontiers from U.S. Settler Colonialism to the Space Race