Brown Bag Lecture Series
This series offers frequent informal talks by members of the academic and business communities on topics involving the history of chemistry, political and social issues of importance to chemists and chemical engineers, and issues affecting the future of chemical research.

The talks are free and open to all who are interested!

The Brown Bag Lecture Series is a project of the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry and the Othmer Library of Chemical History. For more information, please contact bbl@chemheritage.org.

Upcoming Brown Bag Lectures
(Click on the speaker's name for details.)

6 May 2008		Gwen Ottinger, "Environmental Justice as a Design Criterion: The Evolution of Community-Friendly Air Monitors"
13 May 2008		Ann E. Robinson, " The Transfermium Wars: Chemistry, Physics, and the Politics of Naming"

Recent Brown Bag Lectures
(Click on the speaker's name for details.)

1 May 2007		Neil Gussman, "Generals Prefer Bombs: Chemical Warfare Has Not Been Used Extensively since World War I: Here's Why"
8 May 2007		Cyrus Mody, "Conferences and the Development of Nanotechnology: Two Case Studies"
15 May 2007		Brigitte Van Tiggelen, "Nicotine: A Tale of Poisoning Priority"
29 May 2007		Catharine Jackson, "Grand Tours and Institutional Chemical Laboratories"
12 June 2007		Rich Hamerla, "The Impact of Impact: Packaging the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II"
18 September 2007		Jacqueline Wernimont, "Margaret Cavendish's Literary Mathematics"
25 September 2007		Audra Wolfe, "Learning from Lysenko"
2 October 2007		Augustin Cerveaux, "Nanotechnology's History: The Missing Link"
9 October 2007		Regina Blaszczyk, "Chemistry Meets the Creative Economy: DuPont and Postwar Interior Design"
16 October 2007		Mary Ellen Bowden, "Messages from Dye Sample Books in the CHF Collections"
23 October 2007		Sanford Moskowitz, "Jockeying for Position—Global Technology and Economic Power in the U.S. and E.U.: The Case of International Advanced Materials "
30 October 2007		Ronald Smeltzer, "Illustration of the Scientific Text"
6 November 2007		David Schleifer, "Where Did All the Trans Fats Come From?"
13 November 2007		John Theibault, "Lazarus Ercker and the Spread of German Metallurgy in the 16th and 17th Centuries"
27 November 2007		Slawomir Lotysz, "Casimir Zeglen: Pioneer of Bulletproof Vests"
4 December 2007		Doogab Yi, "From Laboratory to Factory and vice versa: Gift and Commodity in Biomedical Materials Exchange and Production at the New England Enzyme Center, 1962–1980"
22 January 2008		Pamela S. Lottero-Perdue, "Critical Scientific Literacy: Examples from a Breastfeeding Information, Support, and Advocacy Group"
29 January 2008		Brigitte Van Tiggelen and Annette Lykknes, "Ida Noddack-Tacke: Woman in Chemistry"
5 February 2008		Heather Ewing, "The Lost World of James Smithson"
12 February 2008		Jeffrey Johnson, "Chemicals in the Hindenburg Munitions Program: The Limits of 'Total War' in Germany, 1916–1918"
19 February 2008		Sylwester Ratowt, "Technologies for Maintaining a Scientific Dialog: Age of the Earth in American Science, Civil War to World War II"
26 February 2008		Dominique Tobbell, "Defeating Pharmaceutical Reform: The Political Strategies of the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry after World War II"
4 March 2008		Emily Pawley, "Farming with Figures: Foods, Atoms, and Value in American Agricultural Improvement, 1840–1860"
11 March 2008		Jeffrey I. Seeman, "Myth or Fact? The Woodward-Doering Total Synthesis of Quinine. A Story of the Human Side of Science"
18 March 2008		Gabriele Ferrario, "Alchemy in Motion: The Trilingual Tradition of the Liber de aluminibus et salibus"
25 March 2008		Vera Keller, "Artificial Suns from Drebbel to Balduin and the Discovery of Phosphorus"
1 April 2008		David Caruso, "Sustaining Biomedical Science: Government Funding, Private Foundations, and the Lives of Scientists in the Late Twentieth Century"
15 April 2008		Ben Cohen, "Science and Farming and Satire, Oh My!"
22 April 2008		Maria del Pilar Zazueta, "Mexi-Cola versus Coca-Cola: The Soft Drink Industry and Local Business Innovation in Twentieth-Century Mexico"