Ship of Fools (1506), from the Othmer Library

Man overboard! Alexis Smets left the Ship of Fellows after finishing his short-term fellowship at the end of October. Otherwise, however, the Ship is sailing along smoothly, and the crew is busy scrubbing the decks (i.e., reading everything in sight at the Othmer Library), scouting the horizon (applying for jobs for next year), and walking the plank (presenting conference papers).

Now that it is getting cooler outside and tea and coffee taste ever so slightly better than in the summer, and now that the days are getting shorter and it is so cozy to snuggle up with a book, the Fearless Fellowship Leader has had fellowship-related books and movies on her mind. Here are some of her favorites:

David Lodge, Changing Places (1975). An exchange of professors between the English red-brick university of Rummidge (eerily reminiscent of Birmingham) and the University of Euphoria, aka “Euphoric State” (cp. Berkeley [California], on oh so many levels), which uses humor to point out the cultural differences between British and American academia. In a way this is The Office for academics—and quite appropriately, in book form.

Tom Sharpe, Porterhouse Blue (1974). A satire that takes the University of Cambridge by its gowns and runs with it. The fictional Porterhouse college abounds with foppish fellows, a heated debate about the admission of women to the college, and balloons of a, ahem, different nature. If you have never been to Cambridge, do check out the TV series of the same name, which features the fabulous Ian Richardson: taken with a large grain of salt, it makes for good academic entertainment.

Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim (1954). Another satire that was made into a movie. It tells the story of a young lecturer, Jim, who tries (and fails, again and again) to impress his professor in the hopes of saving his job at an English university. Why should you read (or see) this one? For many reasons, but above all for the anti-hero’s rather alcohol-fueled lecture on “Merrie England”: instead of just calming his nerves, Jim mocks academia, England, and his professor. Borrow and adapt his rant and lecturing techniques for private performances as needed.

Alexander McCall Smith, The 2 ½ Pillars of Wisdom (2003). This time, a satirical look at German academia and the disillusionment of German academics. It comprises three novels: Portugese Irregular Verbs (the title of one character’s monumental book), The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs (supposedly something German academics ponder every once in a while), and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances. Like the other novels mentioned above, this one hits rather close to home for anyone who has experienced German professors and their universities . . .

All of the above are to be enjoyed with a hot chocolate—and with a fellow of your choice.

What is your favorite campus novel? Feel free to add to the list in the comments!

The art of bending oneself into unbelievable and sometimes even unmentionable shapes, also known as yoga, seems to be everywhere these days. Correction: it is everywhere, including the Chemical Heritage Foundation! For our fellows, young minds striving to untangle the chaos of chemical history, the practice of yoga is particularly useful: it teaches the mind to look at things from a different angle.

Many fellows and travel scholars arrive with a perfect technique when it comes to their asanas. And we can all learn from them! Today’s pose: 

The Writer - in action at the Othmer Library

The writer (scriptasana).

Props (compulsory): 1 chair, 1 desk, 1 researcher, 1 book/pen & paper/laptop

Props (optional): desk lamp, book pillow

Step by Step:

1. Sit on the chair in front of the desk. Feet parallel and hips distance apart, knees and hips at a right angle, back straight, then rest your forearms on the desk beside your reading or writing material. Imagine the spirit of your most revered historian floating up your spine and swirling around your brain.

2. Exhale and slump your torso forward. Broaden the small of your back and narrow your hip points toward the navel so that they get closer to your thighs. Shuffle feet underneath the chair. Option: wrap ankles around the legs of the chair. Breathe unevenly yet steadily.

3. Twist your neck into the direction of your reading material and round your shoulders. Adjust arm position to accommodate the forward position of the torso. Feel how the weight of your thoughts pulls you deeper.

4. Apply pen to paper/fingertips to keyboard and write smoothly.

Scriptasana is a working pose. Stay anywhere from 8 to 15 hours. Beginners may break to shake out thoughts and wrists as needed. To come out of the pose, submit an article or other piece of writing to a journal, publisher, or supervisor.

The Writer - with props

Watch a video of the Othmer Library and researchers in action on our new Research and Fellowships Web page!

And in case the irony of this pose is just too painful to behold, rest assured: yoga of the traditional kind happens at CHF at regular intervals and counteracts the effects of the pose demonstrated here quite well, if I may say so myself.

Like any institution worth its sodium chloride, →CHF is awash with acronyms and backronyms* that confuse outsiders and insiders alike. In order to add to the confusion and unlock hitherto unsourced potential for further puzzlement, here is a short glossary to terms our fellows encounter and master in their everyday lives.

CHF: Contrary to Google results and general public knowledge, this is not just Congestive Heart Failure, the Swiss Franc or the Children’s Hunger Fund, but also the Chemical Heritage Foundation: Library · Museum · Center for Scholars; aka Home of the Fellows.

CHF: Center for Scholars

BBL: Brown Bag Lunch or Brown Bag Lecture. A well-established forum for munching one’s way through another researcher’s work in progress. At →CHF in particular, BBLs are opportunities for our fellows and invited speakers to present their work to a wonderfully eclectic audience (CHF staff members, →PACHS fellows, →Penn students and the odd museum visitor). And while the audience’s brown bags do not contain anything more exciting than sandwiches and yoghurts, our speakers always have a bag of tricks to amaze their listeners. Every Tuesday during term time, 12 noon.

Penn: The University of Pennsylvania, one of the educational facilities whence we may source our fellows. Hosts of the HSS (History and Sociology of Science) Monday Workshops, which are a welcome opportunity for CHF fellows to mingle with other fellowy folk and get out of Old City.

PACHS: The Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science, better explained as the organization that brings all history of science institutions in the greater Philadelphia** area together on one handy Web site. IRL (“in real life”), PACHS also organizes colloquia, offers fellowships, and does many good deeds to keep the conversation between member institutions going. PACHS fellows like to attend CHF →Yoga and →CALCIUM.

The American Philosophical Society, home of the PACHS fellows. Photo courtesy of the APS website.

Yoga: Not the Yukon Oil and Gas Act in this context, but a reference to a practice that keeps us Young, Original, Graceful & Awesome! An exercise of bending mind and body into new shapes, practiced weekly at →CHF.

CALCIUM: Conversations And Literature about Chemistry (Including Unusual Materials): the work-in-progress seminar we offer for our fellows every other week. It has been proven to be good for the brains. We recommend taking CALCIUM with a cup of coffee and a cookie.

T&B: Tea & Biscuits, CHF’s weekly “tea party” with sweets and conversation for and by CHF staff. Every week, someone brings homemade cookies or goodies otherwise procured; most of the time, there is no tea provided. But we are always happy to catch up with our real and imaginary colleagues in this popular social hour! Curiously, “TNB” otherwise refers to Trinitrobenzene in the chemical world.

T&B at CHF

Do you have unique acronyms to share? That’s why the creator of this Web site invented the comment box below. Good-bye!***

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* A backronym, as my old friend Wiki Pedia informs me, “is a phrase that is constructed ‘after the fact’ from a previously existing word. For example, the novelist and critic Anthony Burgess once proposed that the word ‘book’ ought to stand for ‘Box Of Organised Knowledge.’”

** PACHS currently includes the Academy of Natural Sciences; American Philosophical Society; CHF; the College of Physicians of Philadelphia; the Franklin Institute; Hagley Museum and Library; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Library Company of Philadelphia; Princeton University; University of Pennsylvania; and the Wagner Free Institute of Science.

*** Getting Out Our Dreams, Between Your Ears. QED, not all short words are acronyms . . .

Once upon a time, a Fearless Fellowship Leader and her 7 merry long-term fellows went, hi-ho, off to work. They wrote, thought, cogitated, wrote some more, followed their minds, and then wrote even more lovely academic prose. They had almost nothing in common, except for a  passion for the history of chemistry. And thus, driven by intoxicating thoughts about all things atomic and alchemical, they led a pleasant if somewhat busy life. The days were long, and their fingers soon became sore from their tireless (yet strangely tiring) dance on the computer keyboard. But then, something wonderful happened . . .

From Lucy Rider Meyer, Real Fairy Folks: Explorations in the World of Atoms (1887). Photo by Gregory Tobias.

All right, the fellowships at CHF may be considered enchanting by some—but, my dear readers, the reality—What do you say? Continue with the story? All right then, here goes.

A long, long time ago, each of the fellows had decided to make his or her way toward Academia, a fair city in a land far, far away. In Academia, the trees brought forth prizes and medals, the rivers overflowed with peer praise, and the roads were paved with clever students. The local railroad in Academia went straight down the tenure track. So, when the fellows met at CHF, they were happy to share part of the way with fellow-fellows. Their tea parties were punctuated by laughter, chemical stories, and ever more wonderful accounts of Academia and its perks.

And it goes on like that. You know the drill: Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True love. Miracles.

The fellows encountered many fabulous people and creatures on their journey: there was Goldiprof, the professor who could never find a graduate student who was smart enough but not too smart. Another time they met Hinderella, the lady professor who would not let her doctoral student finish (and somehow always wore mismatched shoes). Among the students they came across was Singrad the Sailor who traveled from conference to conference (his audience fell asleep with his 1,001st slide). And Weeping Beauty, the girl who realized she was not cut out for Academia, but married a prince who owned a house in one of its suburbs, and they lived happily ever after.

Will our fellows make it to Academia?

Time will tell. And if time is out, I will. Or maybe not: there is a time for bad puns, and a time to be serious. Seriously: if you would like to live happily ever after, and to be a CHF fellow, then check out our fellowship competition. Deadline: 15 February. Sprinkling fairy dust or eating fairy cakes will not influence the outcome of the competition.

Predoctoral Price Fellow Benjamin Gross (Princeton University) works on the history of LCDs (liquid crystal displays). The Ship of Fellows sailed across the corridor to ask him a few provocative questions. The following interview is reconstructed from the Fearless Fellowship Leader’s memory. . . .

Ben Gross

Why should we care about LCDs?

Ben: LCDs are everywhere today: flat-panel TVs, laptops, watches, cell phones, parking meters . . . basically anywhere there is a display of visual information. But even though LCDs are ubiquitous, not much has been written on their history. The only book devoted to the subject so far was written by an insider, one of the scientists who was involved in the development of LCDs, Joseph A. Castellano. But there is much more to be discovered about the subject.

Wait, wait, so how do you go about your research to make the story of LCDs multifaceted?

Ben: Well, I am in the lucky position that many of my research objects, the group of  chemists, physicists, and engineers who worked at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and created the first LCDs, are alive. So, in addition to other scholarly work, I ask them to reflect upon this part of their professional lives and compile oral histories. My work also involves going through their LCD-related lab notebooks, which have, for the most part, survived. And then I look at technical reports, engineering memos . . . [For an impression of the sheer bulk of materials Ben is working with, check out the photo Hyungsub Choi took of Ben in action at the Sarnoff Library (Princeton, New Jersey) for the blog The Center.]

And the gist of your work so far?

Ben: Well, it turns out that the invention of LCDs is not a tale that can be told by focusing on the life of one person or one brain behind the product. And also, although RCA’s role in LCD development is not really a success story, it is not one of failed innovation either. I aim to reconstruct the internal dynamics of the company’s research and manufacturing efforts.

Tell me more!

Ben: I will! At my Brown Bag Lunch lecture, 17 November.

And while interviewess and interviewee thank each other for the chat, we would just like to mention that this is the last installment of the fellows’ introductions for now. We shall resume this strand with the spring fellows in a few months’ time.

You will have to excuse the Fearless Fellowship Leader when she states that Dr. Martelli’s research is Greek to her: he does research on ancient Greek alchemy. In fact, Matteo Martelli’s work is a truly international affair. The object of Matteo’s reflection is the 1st-century writer now known as pseudo-Democritus, a cunning man who used the fame of the philosopher Democritus to write on precious stones, metals, and other materials. His marketing strategy clearly worked out: Egyptian alchemists were intrigued by these writings; Islamic scholars produced translations into Syriac and Arabic; and Western medieval alchemists would think of pseudo-Democritus as one of the fathers of alchemy. Matteo, who joins us from the Universities of Bologna and Pisa in Italy, is therefore able to trace the story of alchemy through its different phases and contexts by looking at one author, with one linguistically gifted brain.

A true philologist at heart and a happy fellow among our sundry collection of historians of chemistry, Matteo is currently learning Arabic at the University of Pennsylvania, applying his Greek to texts in the Othmer Library, and immersing himself in both the structured events and the scholarly freedom his 9-month Postdoctoral Edelstein fellowship offers. So, there you have it: Greek, Arabic, Italian, and English rolled into one fellowship experience.

We say: benvenuto! 

Matteo Martelli (left); anonymous alchemist (right)

* ricercatore = researcher in Italian.

Museum Anniversary, 2 October 2009, involving fellows . . . and the Periodic Table of Cupcakes!

The Periodic Table of Cupcakes

Nitrogen: nonmetallic goodness!

Stibium: appetizing antimony!

Mercury: alchemical alimentation?

A big thanks to Ben Gross for the images!

With his degrees in biology & society and creative writing, and a good deal of published poetry under his belt, Matthew Shindell, our Predoctoral Haas Fellow, may not seem to be an obvious candidate for a CHF fellowship. Yet his current research, which will eventually earn him a Ph.D. in history of science at the University of California, San Diego, marks him as an excellent mate on the Ship of Fellows: the subject of his scholarly affection is chemist and Nobel laureate Harold Urey—and not just his chemistry.

Urey, depicted in a children's book on his life **

“It would be tragic,” Urey said in 1956, “if science gave man the greatest view of the universe that he has ever had and destroyed the effectiveness of the teachings of our great religions.” *

Matthew is studying Urey’s attempts to keep religion in the scientific picture, a trait of the chemist that few are aware of today. These views influenced Urey’s interactions with his fellow scientists, especially the question of proper practice in science. Matthew argues that Urey’s perspective was an alternative to the more widely accepted cold war secularism.

How do science and religion go together, I hear you ask? Matthew will address this topic in his Brown Bag Lunch presentation in December, which is entitled “From the Small-Town Chapel to the Cathedrals of Cosmopolitan Science: Harold C. Urey, Religion, and Isotope Chemistry.” And in preparation, or just for the entertainment and education of it all, do cast your reading eyes over Mildred Cohn’s personal memories of working with Harold Urey in a back issue of Chemical Heritage magazine right here.

Matthew Shindell

But back to our fellow: seeing as it is October, and October (they tell me) looks like any number of other months in California, Matthew is really looking forward to seeing the seasons change while he muses about Urey and perhaps more poetry.

Here’s to many rustling autumn leaves, a few bouncy snowflakes (eventually), and nary a rainstorm in the coming months!

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* Quotation from Harold Urey, “The Intellectual Revolution,” 1956 revision, HCU Box 141, Folder 12, p. 18.

** Alvin & Virginia Silverstein, Harold Urey, the Man Who Explored From Earth to Moon (1971).

Contrary to what some might think, given that CHF emphasizes the history of chemistry rather than any other discipline, we do like sociologists. After last year’s wonderful input to the scholarly community by the 2008-09 Haas fellow David Schleifer (whose intricate thoughts on trans fats and the food industry continue to appear in various forms at CHF—let me just mention an upcoming podcast episode and a Chemical Heritage article), we welcome Annalisa Salonius among us this year.

Her account does much more than just reiterate statistics: she uses, among other things, ethnographic methods to see how these research labs fit into their university setting and how they have influenced the way biomedical researchers have been trained in the United States and Canada. Our oral history collections are key to the journey of discovery upon which Annalisa has embarked as our postdoctoral Cain fellow. And she has let me know that she considers the scholarly community at CHF not only fresh, interdisciplinary, and engaging, but also a unique opportunity for her to flex her scholarly muscles.

Annalisa: In The Office

When not curled up in her office with a good oral history, Annalisa likes to explore Philly on foot and taste the delicious food that is around not only during Restaurant Week. Here’s to a delightful fellowship year!