British Journal for the History of Science最新文献

Linen, genotrophs and a mid-century bridge to Eastern genetics. 亚麻布，基因营养体和本世纪中叶通往东方遗传学的桥梁。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-05-05 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087426101940

Eric J Richards

{"title":"Linen, genotrophs and a mid-century bridge to Eastern genetics.","authors":"Eric J Richards","doi":"10.1017/S0007087426101940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087426101940","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1950s, Alan Durrant of the University College Wales began a series of experiments to investigate the inheritance of environmental effects in plants, forging an unexpected connection to the controversial hereditary theories of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Durrant's work relied heavily on a specific fibre flax variety, Stormont Cirrus, developed in the interwar period in the UK for linen production. I investigate how the exigencies of the UK linen industry, along with Durrant's training and institutional setting, formed the milieu that generated an unexpected outlier in British genetic scholarship during the Cold War. I supplement my text-based historical analysis by conducting experiments to re-examine the genetic constitution of the original Stormont Cirrus cultivar. These findings suggest that Durrant's creation of alternative 'genotroph' derivatives by treating Stormont Cirrus plants with different soil nutrient regimes likely resulted from selection of pre-existing genetic variation present in the incompletely inbred parental strain, rather than being an example of inherited environmental effects. Inverting Durrant's intention to interpret his results in the context of Lysenko's work, my historical analysis of Durrant's flax genotroph findings informs a reappraisal of one of the key experimental claims supporting Lysenko's environmentalist concepts of inheritance.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147844430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The politics of 'the politics of display': a nuclear-energy gallery, a science museum in the 1980s and a debate about patronage. “展示政治”的政治：20世纪80年代的核能画廊、科学博物馆和关于赞助的辩论。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-04-29 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087426101952

Harry Parker

{"title":"The politics of 'the politics of display': a nuclear-energy gallery, a science museum in the 1980s and a debate about patronage.","authors":"Harry Parker","doi":"10.1017/S0007087426101952","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087426101952","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines a controversy over a nuclear-energy gallery at the Science Museum, London, in the early 1980s. It uses this case to explore the wider politicization of museums at this time, and thus the politicization of the display of science and technology. It argues that cultural changes in train since the 1960s, coupled with a museological turn towards 'social history' as the proper vehicle for exhibiting science and technology, led to the museum becoming newly subject to widespread critical scrutiny. That scrutiny had contradictory effects. On the one hand, it reinforced the image of the museum as a bastion of official culture and knowledge. On the other, it undermined this image, by exposing the ideological nature of the museum's authority. This double movement laid the groundwork for the crisis of confidence that culminated in the 'New Museology' of the later part of the decade. Attending to this controversy thus suggests a need to revise prevailing scholarship on the 'politics of display', which often takes for granted an overly straightforward connection between museums and power.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147785155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

A science museum 'to rival South Kensington': historicizing the industrial city and galvanizing 'modern' science in post-war Manchester. 一座“与南肯辛顿相媲美”的科学博物馆：使这座工业城市历史化，并在战后的曼彻斯特激发“现代”科学。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-04-29 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087426101939

Erin Beeston

{"title":"A science museum 'to rival South Kensington': historicizing the industrial city and galvanizing 'modern' science in post-war Manchester.","authors":"Erin Beeston","doi":"10.1017/S0007087426101939","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087426101939","url":null,"abstract":"This paper shows how the Greater Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (GMMSI) was shaped by actors' experiences with the history of science and technology. The museum began under the leadership of scientist-historians at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) in the 1960s, where it was uniquely positioned to reflect contemporary histories of science, particularly framed around the concept of revolutions. This academic framing converged with long-held civic aspirations for a science museum in the city and cemented Manchester's historiographic position as the 'first industrial city'. Vivian Bowden, UMIST's principal, also explicitly aimed to educate future scientists whom he believed were key to overcoming the region's economic challenges. What is striking in this process is how perceptions of the past and contemporary views were integrated with vehement northern independence and determination to form a 'museum to rival South Kensington'. This paper concludes with the GMMSI's early 1980s relocation to Liverpool Road Station, where the museum became a wholly civic affair, beyond academia. Despite these changes, the belief that the past had a place in the education of future scientists laid the foundations for the later integration of an interactive science centre gallery in the 1980s.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147785161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Science and the city: reviewing Naples, London and Lisbon. 科学与城市：回顾那不勒斯、伦敦和里斯本。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-04-24 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087425101593

Alexander Stoeger

引用次数: 0

Redcliffe Salaman's Scheme for Raising Virus-Free Potato Stocks: professionalization, institutionalization and regulation in interwar Britain's plant virus research. 雷德克里夫·萨拉曼的无病毒马铃薯种植计划：两次世界大战之间英国植物病毒研究的专业化、制度化和规范化。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-02-19 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087426101873

João P R Joaquim

{"title":"Redcliffe Salaman's Scheme for Raising Virus-Free Potato Stocks: professionalization, institutionalization and regulation in interwar Britain's plant virus research.","authors":"João P R Joaquim","doi":"10.1017/S0007087426101873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087426101873","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines Redcliffe N. Salaman's (1874-1955) efforts to establish a national system for producing virus-free seed potatoes in 1930s Britain. It explores how scientific authority was mobilized to reshape agricultural practices and assert regulatory control over seed production. Although Salaman's proposals were never fully realized, they laid the groundwork for enduring strategies to improve potato crop health by protecting seed from infectious agents and their insect vectors. Salaman's work drew on both traditional horticultural knowledge and emerging microbiological techniques, spanning field and laboratory settings. He exemplifies how diverse modes of science making shaped a period of increasing professionalization and institutionalization in the biological sciences. By tracing interactions between scientists and other actors - including growers, seedsmen and government officials - the article shows how plant virus control was gradually redefined from a craft-based practice to a scientific domain. This article contributes to the early history of virology from an agricultural perspective, as well as to broader historiographical debates on the role of science in agriculture, the professionalization of expertise and the construction of regulatory authority in twentieth-century Britain.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-20"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146221154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Imperialism in the academy: the Royal Society, C.V. Raman and the Indian Academy of Sciences (1934-1970). 帝国主义在科学院：皇家学会，C.V.拉曼和印度科学院（1934-1970）。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-01-22 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087425101830

George Bailey

引用次数: 0

Prognosis and scientific imagination in the work of Jane Webb Loudon (1800-1858). 简·韦伯·劳登（1800-1858）作品中的预测和科学想象。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-01-13 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087425101866

John Lidwell-Durnin

{"title":"Prognosis and scientific imagination in the work of Jane Webb Loudon (1800-1858).","authors":"John Lidwell-Durnin","doi":"10.1017/S0007087425101866","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087425101866","url":null,"abstract":"Prognosis is an important aspect of any scientific culture. Speculation and imagination about future knowledge, social organization and technology pervade the practice of science and lend it aim and direction (or at least the appearance of direction). This article is about the development of prognosis in the fiction and popular-scientific writing of Jane Webb Loudon (1800-58), a writer familiar within the history of science for her publications in botany and gardening, if not for her romantic novel The Mummy!, one of the earliest examples of the genre later known as science fiction. I argue that Webb Loudon viewed scientific activity as declining and flourishing throughout human history, and that she anticipated the science of her time would 'resuscitate' knowledge and even political structures of past eras (like ancient Egypt). Following the work of Jim Endersby and other historians of science who have worked to reintegrate the role of fiction in our understanding of science culture, I argue that Webb Loudon's efforts to promote and diffuse her understanding of science and its relation to the future (and past) ought be viewed as informing the cultural meaning of science in the nineteenth century.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-20"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145960337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Capturing colour on HMS Beagle: Charles Darwin and Werner's Nomenclature of Colours (1821). 在贝格尔号上捕捉色彩：查尔斯·达尔文和维尔纳的《颜色命名法》（1821年）。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2025-11-26 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087425101726

Joyce Dixon

引用次数: 0

Museum film as a means of making museums: the Exploratorium's early years through the intermedial lens. 博物馆电影作为制作博物馆的一种手段：通过中间镜头探索博物馆的早期。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2025-10-30 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087425101635

Arne Schirrmacher

{"title":"Museum film as a means of making museums: the Exploratorium's early years through the intermedial lens.","authors":"Arne Schirrmacher","doi":"10.1017/S0007087425101635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087425101635","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the potential offered by a cinematographic approach to the study of museums, particularly science centres. By setting up an intermedial lens that maps between the museum medium and film - particularly the visitor experiences in museums onto a specific genre of museum film - correspondences between these media and their respective 'grammars' are analysed. After a brief overview of the relationship between museums and film in the twentieth century, a language of documentary film suitable for museum film is introduced based on the film theory of Jon Boorstin, who also directed a film on the Exploratorium in San Fancisco, which adapted post-war insights in communication design as developed by the Eames Office. Reviewing five documentaries about the Exploratorium shows that only Boorstin's museum film could adequately convey the museum experience to others, thus going beyond intermediality to enable a transmedial transfer. How this film emerged through the cooperation of the Exploratorium with the Eames Office and national funding agencies is presented in some detail in order to show that the intermedial lens can work both ways, allowing for the transmedial application of film analysis to the museums themselves.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145402412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Liaisons dangereuses: Britain, the US, the Soviet Union and the circulation of knowledge about penicillin (1943-1950). 危险关系：英国、美国、苏联和青霉素知识的传播（1943-1950）。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2025-10-28 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087425101647

Daniele Cozzoli

{"title":"Liaisons dangereuses: Britain, the US, the Soviet Union and the circulation of knowledge about penicillin (1943-1950).","authors":"Daniele Cozzoli","doi":"10.1017/S0007087425101647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087425101647","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the complex role penicillin played in the relations between Britain, the USA and the USSR between the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War through the lens of science diplomacy and the category of negotiation. In the post-war years the Soviets tried to acquire know-how on large-scale penicillin production from Britain and the USA. While the USA refused to collaborate, the British strategy was more complex. The British government allowed the Oxford team, which had discovered the antibacterial properties of penicillin, to disclose all the technology and know-how concerning large-scale penicillin production of which they were aware to the Soviets, while simultaneously trying to slow down penicillin research and production in the Soviet Union by controlling the export of certain industrial machinery, Podbielniak extractors, to Eastern Europe. By contrast, the USA put a stop to scientific and technological collaboration with the Soviets, but were less strict about the export of industrial machinery. The different strategies generated tensions between Britain and the USA, and ultimately mirrored both the British fear of an American disengagement from Europe and the American will to protect the interests of their national industry.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-18"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145379206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0