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

universities. The crush of numbers changed dramatically what daily life was like in American physics
departments, and recast what it meant to become a physicist in the United States. With the sudden
increase of students, and the equally-sudden prestige enjoyed by physicists after the war, came fears that
the new generation's ideas about social and intellectual conformity, about the material comforts to be
expected from a life in physics, and about gender roles within the profession showed signs of a more
pervasive suburbanization. Norms, assumptions, and aspirations with which contemporary social
commentators and subsequent historians have characterized broad swathes of American society after the
war found expression, too, within the halls of American physics departments: in everything from graduate
students' questionnaires, to junior faculty skits, to department chairs' annual reports. Whether celebrated
or feared, many of these newly-fashioned cultural norms infused discussions within American
physics departments about how and why to pursue a life in physics, affecting everything from admitting
and evaluating students to organizing departmental social events. Forming and maintaining communities
of young physicists loomed menacingly large for American physicists after the war --how they
handled these challenges and instilled them with meaning reveals much about the places of American
physics within American history.
Kim, Mi-Gyung
E-mail Address: migyungkim@aol.com
Newton in the Public Sphere of Chemistry
Newton is everywhere and nowhere in Enlightenment science. The efforts to identify the main thrust
of Eighteenth century sciences under the banner of Newtonianism have proved futile due to its Protean
shape, defying efforts by historians to use it as an organizing theme. Detailed studies of Newtonian
chemistry, in particular, only led to the conclusion that it ultimately failed to develop a significant
relevance to the on-going practice of chemistry. As a consequence, the most sophisticated form of
'Newtonian' chemistry in Enlightenment France developed by Guyton de Morveau (1737-1816) fell into
disfavor in the historiography of the Chemical Revolution. If we forego the history-of-ideas tradition in
which ideas supposedly determine the development of science, however, we can find alternative ways of
discussing the presence of Newton in Enlightenment science. In this paper, I borrow Habermas' notion
of 'public sphere' (as modified by Goodman and Bell) to talk about the authority of Newton constructed
in the conversational culture of French Enlightenment. The very divide between Newtonians and anti-
Newtonians bespeaks Newton's presence as an authoritative figure in this milieu. If Newtonian natural
philosophy became an intellectual fashion that replaced Cartesianism in the public language of chemistry,
exactly how 'Newtonian' chemistry differed from 'Cartesian' chemistry is not easy to characterize.
By situating Guyton's program of affinity chemistry in the context of the French didactic tradition, I will
elucidate how the presence of Newton in the public sphere of chemistry affected the development of
theoretical chemistry during the Chemical Revolution.
Kim, Sang-Hyun
E-mail Address: s.kim-2@sms.ed.ac.uk
Computing Global Climate Change: The Early Development of General Circulation Models
(GCMs) in Britain
Until relatively recently, studies of climate and its change had been considered largely descriptive
without solid theoretical underpinning. They had been rather overlooked by meteorologists and had
quite often been left to geographers, geologists or paleobotanists. With the aids of new computing
technology, however, climate studies gradually moved towards highly mathematical endeavors. By the
late 1970s, climate research became more or less dominated by dynamical meteorologists, atmospheric
physicists and physical oceanographers armed with complex numerical modeling as a principal method-