11th ICHC
11th International Conference on the History of Chemistry
Trondheim, Norway, 29 August-2nd September 2017
 
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
 
Session organized by Danielle Fauque and Brigitte Van Tiggelen
 
Chemists and the IUPAC:
Taking Responsibility and Taking Actions

Since its foundation in 1919, many famous chemists have contributed to the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), with the drive to improve standardisation of methods, nomenclature, units and standards, among other things. Without a doubt, progress was made, despite power struggles, uncompleted projects and unproductive commissions.

The session aims at shedding light on the activity of chemists invested with responsibilities in the IUPAC, whose actions are often overlooked in national biographical dictionaries. This session falls into the broader project on the centennial of the IUPAC, in 2019. Each paper will focus on the responsibilities and actions of individual chemists, alone or combined in a small national or disciplinary group, inside IUPAC.  The case study can however expand on roles in other international organisations (IRC, ICSU, SDN or UNESCO to name but a few). A first survey is provided by the books of R. Fennell (1994) and S. S. Brown (2001).

By focusing on individual actions, the aim is to get a better sense of articulation between the local and the international, and how this articulation was constructed through the work and actions of chemists dispersed across the world.
 
Please send your abstract (200 words max, with short CV) to:
Danielle Fauque ([log in to unmask])
and Brigitte Van Tiggelen ([log in to unmask]) by 1st January 2017.
 
Proposal guidelines:
Proposals must be in English, the language of the conference. Although the 11ICHC conference is open to individual paper submissions, preference will be given to organised sessions with three or more papers. Submitted abstracts and session proposals will be subject to review by a scientific committee.
 
What is the Working Party (WP) on History of Chemistry (EUCHEMS)?
 
In summer 2017, the fortieth anniversary of the creation of the Working Party (WP) on History of Chemistry of the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS) will be celebrated. The general aim of the conferences organised by the WP is to facilitate communication between historically interested chemists and historians of chemistry, and to gather the community on a regular basis. Previous conferences organised by the WP were held in Rostock 2011 (Pathways of Knowledge), Uppsala 2013 (Chemistry in Material Culture), and Aveiro 2015 (Chemical Biography in the 21st Century).

The 11th International Conference on the History of Chemistry (11th ICHC) will take place from 29th August to 2nd September, 2017 in Trondheim, a city founded in 997 which served as Norway’s capital during the Viking Age. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), which has been the country’s centre for technology education since 1910, will host the conference. The conference is sponsored by NTNU, the Research Council of Norway, the Norwegian Chemical Society and the Chemical Heritage Foundation.
 
The conference programme will include scientific sessions, key-note lectures, the WP business meeting, as well as social events such as excursions, receptions, and a banquet. The key-note lectures will be given by:

•                Hasok Chang (University of Cambridge): "What history tells us about the nature of chemistry"
•                Maria Rentetzi (National Technical University of Athens): “Revising the concept of safety culture in nuclear settings”
•                Anders Lundgren (Uppsala Universitet): “Science in chemical industry – what did it do?”

The programme committee especially encourages the submission of panel/session proposals, but also welcomes the submission of stand-alone papers. Session organisers and contributors are free to send their proposals on any topic on the history of chemistry, broadly constructed as the cluster of molecular sciences, industry, technology and engineering. A non-exhaustive list of possible sessions could include historical papers on the historical development of all aspects of material and life sciences, such as:

•       -   Chemistry, professors, textbooks and classrooms
•       -   Teaching and didactics of history of chemistry
•       -   Chemistry and law: controversies, expertise, counter-expertise, fraud and activism
•       -   Toxics regulation, risk assessment and public health
•       -   Environmental chemistry, energy and regulation
•       -   Chemistry, industry, and economy
•       -   Spaces and sites of chemistry
•       -   Instruments, collections and material culture
•       -   Biographies and prosopographies, and databases
•       -   Chemistry, war and exile
•       -   Representation of chemistry, and visual cultures
•       -   Alchemy, Chemistry and Early Modern Science and Medicine
•       -   Gender and chemistry

Contact information for practical questions: [log in to unmask]
 
Conference web site: http://www.ntnu.edu/11ichc
Danielle FAUQUE
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