Fall 2025 Meeting of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
The Science History Institute is pleased to cohost the Fall 2025 meeting of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC). Invited speakers will present papers for discussion on topics ranging from medieval medicine to modern climate science.
Please contact fellowships@sciencehistory.org with any questions about the event.
The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC), founded in 1935, has a long-standing tradition in the fields of alchemy and chemistry, organizing colloquia, publications and promoting the interdisciplinary study of the field from its early beginnings to the present. It brings together members interested in the history of chemistry and alchemy from across the world. SHAC holds meetings and webinars, offers scholarly prizes and grants, and publishes the journal Ambix. The Society’s newsletter, Chemical Intelligence, is published twice a year.
Conference Program
Thursday, October 16
| 1:30pm | Registration and coffee | |
| 2:00pm | Meagan Allen Johns Hopkins University | Roger Bacon’s medical analogies in the Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae et de nullitate magiae |
| 2:40pm | Matteo Soranzo McGill University | Searching for the Philosophers’ Stone in Quattrocento Venice: Cristoforo da Parigi’s Summetta, a Forgotten Bestseller |
| 3:20pm | Claire Litt Tufts University | A Missing Link in Medicean Alchemy: The Book of C.P. |
| 4pm | Tea/Coffee | |
| 4:30pm | Stefania S. Buosi-Moncunill University of Barcelona | Alchemy of the Forest: Sacred Plants, Golden Wine, and Healing Powers Across Continents |
| 5:10pm | Brian Li University of Cambridge | White Stones vs. Jade: The Aesthetics of Bodily Alchemy in Early Modern China |
| 5:40pm | Sarah Lang University of Graz Farzad Mahootian New York University | Computational Studies of Martin Ruland’s Lexicon Alchemiae |
| 6pm | Short break | |
| 6:15pm | Alan Rocke Case Western Reserve University | Gay-Lussac Aeronaute: Constructing a Career in the Napoleonic Era |
| 7pm | Reception sponsored by Taylor & Francis |
Friday, October 17
| 9:30am | Coffee | |
| 10am | Sarah Lowengard Independent Scholar | Vegetable–Animal Transformations |
| 10:40am | John Powers Virginia Commonwealth University | John Redman Coxe and the New Chemistry in Early 19th-Century America |
| 11:20am | George Borg University of Pennsylvania | Modelling the Carbon Cycle, 1953-1981: A Foundational Debate in Modern Climate Science |
| 12pm | Lunch | |
| 1:30pm | Stephen Weininger Worcester Polytechnic Institute | Air Power and Pure Chemistry: Bartlett, Ingold, and the Diffusion of Physical Organic Chemistry |
| 2:10pm | Patrick Charbonneau Duke University | From Göttingen to Bristol to Cambridge: Lennard-Jones and the Emergence of Computational Quantum Chemistry |
| 2:50pm | Tea/Coffee | |
| 3:30pm | Christopher Helm Deutsches Museum | Escaping Earth, Sustaining the Moon: Chemistry and the West’s Narrative Redemption—Once from World War II, Now from the Climate Crisis |
| 4:10pm | Jeffrey I. Seeman University of Richmond | Recent Advances in the History of Modern Chemistry |
| 4:40pm | Departure |
Featured Image: Plate III: The Modern Chemical Apparatus. No.3 from Volume 4 of the Encyclopaedia Londinensis; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature, 1800
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