Listing of Sessions and Abstracts of Papers - History of Science ...

more specifically "cold war" version. I will also discuss the role of the Atomic Energy Commission in
the patronage of genetics and population genetics, partly motivated by explicitly "eugenic" concerns.
Bellon, Richard
E-mail Address: rbellon@u.washington.edu
George Bentham Visits the Crystal Palace
Over 25,000 people descended on Hyde Park on May Day of 1851 for the opening of the Great
Exhibition. The distinguished systematic botanist George Bentham was among the crowd. He had
traveled from his home in Herefordshire for the event and remained in London for the next three weeks,
visiting the Exhibition most days. This paper will demonstrate that Bentham's ties to the Exhibition ran
much deeper than those of a mere tourist. He long insisted that only those botanists with a global perspective
could properly classify plants. Examining specimens from all corners of the planet allowed him
to recognize connections missed by purely local studies, carried out by those he contemptuously dismissed
as "mere Botanicoes." His intellectual authority, therefore, came not only from his theoretical
approach but from his practice in a vast herbarium of more than 50,000 specimens accumulated with a
global perspective. The rationale of the Great Exhibition rested on the same foundation: like Bentham's
herbarium, the collection of the "industry of all nations" allowed spectators to make informed comparative
judgments impossible when viewing the materials, machinery, and manufactures in their local
contexts. Benthamite systematic botany and the Great Exhibition were reflections of the nineteenthcentury
preoccupation with replacing the static eye with the panoramic vision. His experience at the
Great Exhibition thus allows a close examination of the intersection between the theory and practice of
expert gentlemanly natural history and a prevalent way of ordering knowledge and authority in the
broader Victorian culture.
Bigg, Charlotte
E-mail Address: bigg@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
Constructing space for the new astronomy: the public science of J. Norman Lockyer
The development in the late nineteenth century of a set of instrumental techniques including photometry,
spectroscopy and photography signified a new beginning for astronomy, making it possible to study
the chemical and physical properties of astronomical bodies. In Europe, this type of research was taken
up to an extent in established astronomical observatories, but it was mostly the work of atypical, isolated
enthusiasts operating initially without consistent institutional affiliation or legitimacy. In seeking support
for their activities, these individuals developed a number of strategies to obtain recognition and financial
security. The paper focuses on J. Norman Lockyer, the most vocal of this new breed of astronomers in
Britain, as he deployed such strategies from the 1860s to the 1910s, in his various capacities as founder
and editor of Nature, secretary of the Devonshire Commission, lecturer at the South Kensington Museum,
leader of eclipse expeditions, populariser of science and director of the Solar Physics Observatory.
Throughout, he worked to foster an identity for the new practice, distinct from positional astronomy, by
emphasising different forms of utility, appealing to different audiences, and seeking the support of the
State, playing on national prestige and rivalry. Lockyer enrolled astrophysical technologies to produce
and convey spectacular images of the new astronomy he drew upon the new visual and literary conventions
created within the expanding popular press and scientific educational literature, but was also
inspired by British Association gatherings and international exhibitions as he helped construct a distinctive
conceptual, institutional and public space for astrophysics.
Bogaard, van den, Adrienne
E-mail Address: a.a.vandenbogaard@tbm.tudelft.nl