Chemical 'canaries': Munitions workers in the First World War.

In the early twentieth century, scientific innovations permanently changed international warfare. As chemicals traveled out of laboratories into factories and military locations, war became waged at home as well as overseas. Large numbers of women were employed in munitions factories during the First World War, but their public memories have been overshadowed by men who died on battlefields abroad; they have also been ignored in traditional histories of chemistry that focus on laboratory-based research. Mostly young and poorly educated, but crucial for Britain's military success, these female workers were subjected to procedures of social regulation and consigned to carrying out dangerous chemical procedures causing chronic illness or death; in particular, when TNT died their skin yellow, they were colloquially known as 'canaries.'

The past as a work in progress.

Originating as a presidential address during the seventieth birthday celebrations of the British Society for the History of Science, this essay reiterates the society's long-standing commitment to academic autonomy and international cooperation. Drawing examples from my own research into female scientists and doctors during the First World War, I explore how narratives written by historians are related to their own lives, both past and present. In particular, I consider the influences on me of my childhood reading, my experiences as a physics graduate who deliberately left the world of science, and my involvement in programmes to improve the position of women in science. In my opinion, being a historian implies being socially engaged: the BSHS and its members have a responsibility towards the future as well as the past. Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 1843.

Pluralism versus Periodization.

In his ingenious bid to restore grand narratives, Frans van Lunteren misleadingly implies that there is a single story to tell about the past. In its favor, his nontrumphalist and metaphorical scheme encourages contextualization and emphasizes objects rather than theories or individuals. Unfortunately, he has selected an arbitrary starting point, and his four emblematic machines­the clock, the balance, the steam engine, the computer­do not bear equivalent relationships to the particular period they are held to represent. This is important because metaphors readily solidify into reality, so that this model risks being interpreted as a progressive sequence of increasing precision and complexity that leaves little room for the biological sciences. Van Lunteren's initiative might be extended by changing the time structure or by focusing on concepts rather than specific artifacts.

WOMEN, SCIENCE AND SUFFRAGE IN WORLD WAR I.

World War I is often said to have benefited British women by giving them the vote and by enabling them to take on traditionally male roles, including ones in science, engineering and medicine. In reality, conventional hierarchies were rapidly re-established after the Armistice. Concentrating mainly on a small group of well-qualified scientific and medical women, marginalized at the time and also in the secondary literature, I review the attitudes they experienced and the work they undertook during and immediately after the war. The effects of century-old prejudices are still felt today.

Newton shows the light: a commentary on Newton (1672) 'A letter containing his new theory about light and colours '.

Isaac Newton's reputation was initially established by his 1672 paper on the refraction of light through a prism; this is now seen as a ground-breaking account and the foundation of modern optics. In it, he claimed to refute Cartesian ideas of light modification by definitively demonstrating that the refrangibility of a ray is linked to its colour, hence arguing that colour is an intrinsic property of light and does not arise from passing through a medium. Newton's later significance as a world-famous scientific genius and the apparent confirmation of his experimental results have tended to obscure the realities of his reception at the time. This paper explores the rhetorical strategies Newton deployed to convince his audience that his conclusions were certain and unchallengeable. This commentary was written to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Rulers of the zodiac.

Everybody thinks they know what science is, but pinning down a definite time and place for its origins is more problematic.

Spying for the enlightenment.

According to Enlightenment ideology, knowledge was shared openly in the international Republic of Letters. In reality, the owners of lucrative new technologies were determined to keep their discoveries hidden from industrial spies.

Versions of vesalius.

Andreas Vesalius reformed anatomical knowledge and teaching in the Renaissance by adopting Galenic methods from the classical past. His careful drawings revealed the human body in unprecedented and realistic detail, but the images of himself were more ambiguous.

Of moas and men: Richard Owen's dinosaur dinner.

Victorian scientists boasted about their commitment to progress, cooperation and public education, but paleontology risked being torn apart by personal rivalries.

Joseph Priestley: Docter Phlogiston or Reverend Oxygen?

In propaganda material, people are often presented in black-and-white terms as either a villain or a hero. Although Joseph Priestley is denigrated for believing in the discredited substance phlogiston, he is also celebrated for discovering oxygen.

Minerva/Athene.

Minerva was the goddess of wisdom and war, the Roman equivalent of the Greek Pallas Athene. Like all mythical figures, she was repeatedly reinterpreted to carry different rhetorical messages.

Alessandro Volta and the politics of pictures.

An astute diplomat, Alessandro Volta secured the patronage of Napoleon Bonaparte to promote his rise to fame as an electrical expert. Reciprocally, politicians helped their own causes by presenting him as a national as well as a scientific figurehead.

Mathematical figures.

Renaissance philosophers believed that God had created a harmonious cosmos bonded together mathematically. This intellectual approach was also embraced by some artists, who incorporated complex numerical and geometrical symbolism within their portraits.

Cartesian visions.

Few original portraits exist of René Descartes, yet his theories of vision were central to Enlightenment thought. French philosophers combined his emphasis on sight with the English approach of insisting that ideas are not innate, but must be built up from experience. In particular, Denis Diderot criticised Descartes's views by describing how Nicholas Saunderson--a blind physics professor at Cambridge--relied on touch. Diderot also made Saunderson the mouthpiece for some heretical arguments against the existence of God.