SHAC Spring meeting - Remembering Bill Brock: Chemistry and Culture

Bill Brock © Christoph Meinel

Convened by Frank A.J.L. James (UCL)

This meeting is being held to commemorate the life, work and legacy of William Hodgson Brock (1936-2025), who spent his entire career at the University of Leicester. Sometime chair of SHAC and editor of its journal Ambix, Brock was one of the leading historians of chemistry in his time, writing the Fontana/Norton History of Chemistry, as well as biographies of William Crookes, Justus von Liebig and Henry Edward Armstrong. (An extended obituary can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2025.2489298). The papers to be presented at this meeting take their starting point from Brock’s work and historical interests.

There is no charge for this meeting, but please let Frank James, frank.james@ucl.ac.uk, know if you wish to attend.

Programme

9.30am Welcome: Stéphane Van Damme, MFO, and Frank James, SHAC

10.00am First Brock Award Lecture: 
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne
'The history of chemistry through the lens of materials. A very short introduction'

10.45am Session 1: 
Alan Rocke, Case Western Reserve University:
The Best of Frenemies: Liebig and Dumas (A Tribute to William H. Brock)

11.15 Coffee

Session 2:
Eira H. Betthell (Booth), University of Essex: 
'From Laboratory to Library: Bill Brock’s Prolific Writing as Chemical Practice'
Matthew Daniel Eddy, Durham University:
'A Context for Colonial Chemistry: Thinking with Bill Brock     about the Biomedical Relevance of Dr J. A. B. Horton's Experiments on the Soil of Sierra Leone'
Georgiana D. Hedesan, University of Oxford:
'The Foundation of the Society for the Study of Alchemy and Early Chemistry in 1935: Between Historical Research and the Transmutational Paradigm'
Michael Jewess, Independent Scholar:
'Working with Bill: Robert Fergus Hunter (1904-1963)'

13.15 Lunch

14.30 Tribute from the Brock family: Susannah Ahluwalia, Gareth Brock and Benjamin Brock

14.50 Session 3: 
Julia Carr-Trebelhorn, University of Cincinnati:
'Burning Diamonds: Lavoisier, Guettard, and the 1771 Development of Reduction Firing and Hard-Paste Porcelain in Paris'
John R.R. Christie, University of Oxford
'Commerce, Manufacture and Practical Chemistry in 18th-Century Britain'
Robert Bud, Science Museum/UCL:
'Poison gas and Art Deco: analysing early 20th century ambivalence about chemistry'

16.00 Coffee

16.20 Session 4:
Robin Mackie (Open University and Gerrylynn K Roberts, Independent Scholar)
'Counting the British Chemical Community, 1881-1971: Opening the ‘Black Box''
Annette Lykknes, Norwegian University of Science and Technology:
'Crookes’ Vis Generatrix in teaching and learning'

17.15 Closing remarks