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| Brown Bag Lecture: Matthew Shindell, "The Citizen Chemist at War: World War I and Harold C. Urey"
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| Date: |
3 February 2009 |
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| Time: |
12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. |
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| Location: |
6th Floor Conference Room
Chemical Heritage Foundation
315 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106 |
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| Free and open to the public.
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| Description:
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During World War I, American chemists and chemical engineers came to the aid of their country and the Allies by going to work for then-expanding American chemical companies. One such chemist was a young and as yet undistinguished Harold C. Urey. Urey’s papers are relatively silent about his wartime work at the Barrett Company or how this work might have influenced his ideas of the science/society relationship. However, a look at chemical journals from the time shows that chemists were actively interpreting the social and political meanings of their wartime work. This talk attempts to summarize some published discussions from 1917-18 and argue how they might have influenced Urey’s later positions.
Matthew Shindell is a Ph.D. student in history of science and science studies at the University of California, San Diego. Shindell is currently working on a biographical dissertation about the American physical chemist Harold C. Urey. Shindell’s work focuses on Urey’s role as a public scientist—particularly the work Urey did in public lectures to negotiate the relative roles of science and religion in society, and how Urey’s positions changed in different social and political contexts.
Learn more about CHF's Brown Bag Lecture series. |
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