Making Waves: Oliver Lodge and the Cultures of Science, 1875-1940

An AHRC-funded research network

Workshop 4:  Scientific Lives: Oliver Lodge and the History of Science in the Digital Age

Date: 6 March 2015         Location: Leeds Art Gallery, Henry Moore Room.

Registration for the event is essential, but there is no charge.

To register, please email [log in to unmask]  giving your name, any institution affliation and any dietary requirements.   

Registration will close on the 20 February 2015.

Workshop Details

Lodge has been a difficult person to situate in both the history of science and the period more broadly. His spiritualism and strident defence of the ether meant that his scientific reputation became tarnished as he was associated with the ‘losing’ side.

His long life makes him difficult to situate in terms of period: born in 1851 and dying in 1940, Lodge became seen as a Victorian who had outlived his era.

This workshop asks what a life like Lodge’s reveals about our historiography and our curatorial and archival practices, while also considering how digital technology might allow us to recount Lodge’s life in new ways.

This workshop features a range of papers from people interested in life writing, the history of science and the digital humanities.

Our keynote speaker is Professor Bernard Lightman (York University, Toronto) and the workshop will be followed by a public lecture from Professor Graeme Gooday (University of Leeds).

The full programme is below.

9.00-9:30  Registration, tea / coffee

9:30-10:00  Welcome and introduction   James Mussell and Graeme Gooday (University of Leeds)

10:00-11:00   Session one: lecture (Chair: James Mussell)

David Amigoni (Keele) ‘Writing the Life Scientific in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’.

11:00-12:30  Session two: panel (Chair: tbc)   

Berris Charnley (St Anne’s, Oxford) ‘Crowd-Sourced Science in the Nineteenth Century: Eleanor Ormerod’s Injurious Insects';

Rebekah Higgitt (University of Kent) ‘Hero Narratives and the Public that Wants Them';

James Mussell (University of Leeds) ‘”Matter moves, but ether is strained” Oliver Lodge, materiality and media’.

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:00  Session three: panel (Chair: tbc)

Jamie Elwick (York University, Toronto) ‘A correspondence project’s struggle with email';

Cassie Newland (King’s College London) ‘Sir Charles Wheatstone’s Junk Mail and the Analogue Archive';

Kris Grint (St Andrews) ‘Back in business: crowdsourcing, discovery, and public engagement with Jeremy Bentham’.

15:00-15:30  Tea / coffee

15:30-16:30  Session four: keynote lecture (Chair: Graeme Gooday)

Bernard Lightman (York University, Toronto) ‘Lodge and the New Physics, 1919-1933′

16:30-17:30  Session five: roundtable (Chair: James Mussell)

Imogen Clarke, Di Drummond, Graeme Gooday, Peter Rowlands

17:30-18:15  Break

18:15-19:15 Public Lecture - Graeme Gooday (University of Leeds) ‘Why did scientists come to write autobiographies?’

7:15-8:00 Wine reception