AmbixPub Date : 2023-08-25DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2248835
A. Milon
{"title":"From Crust to Core: A Chronicle of Deep Carbon Science","authors":"A. Milon","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2248835","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2248835","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46457369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2023-08-22DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2248836
J. Powers
{"title":"Bodily Fluids, Chemistry and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Boerhaave School","authors":"J. Powers","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2248836","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2248836","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48816817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2234717
Frank A J L James
{"title":"When Ben met Mary: The Letters of Benjamin Thompson, Reichsgraf von Rumford, to Mary Temple, Viscountess Palmerston, 1793-1804.","authors":"Frank A J L James","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2234717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2234717","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper publishes the sixty-nine surviving very personal letters that Reichsgraf von Rumford wrote to Viscountess Palmerston after they met in Milan in 1793. The letters draw attention to the private domestic spaces of science and the critical importance of the aristocracy in scientific developments, topics that have both received some discussion recently. They were, however, not written with the purpose of providing historical evidence, but as part of a decade-long friendship which the letters trace, revealing, among other things, Rumford's other amours. They also describe in some detail his thoughts about his activities as a member of the governing elite in Bavaria, his scientific and engineering researches (especially the writing and publication of his <i>Essays</i>), as well as what he would have termed his philanthropic efforts in Bavaria, Northern Italy, Britain, and Ireland. All this is framed within the context of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars that in so many ways, directly and indirectly, affected Palmerston's and Rumford's lives and work.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10150892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2023-07-10DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2233226
Sofiya Kamalova
{"title":"Poison Powder: The Kepone Disaster in Virginia and its Legacy","authors":"Sofiya Kamalova","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2233226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2233226","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44243245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2023-06-15DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2222587
P. Joshi
{"title":"Making Ammonia: Fritz Haber, Walther Nernst, and the Nature of Scientific Discovery","authors":"P. Joshi","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2222587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2222587","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45095210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2023-06-12DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2222575
Marcin Krasnodębski
{"title":"Research between Science, Society and Politics: The History and Scientific Development of Green Chemistry","authors":"Marcin Krasnodębski","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2222575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2222575","url":null,"abstract":"lasting. The first section is concluded by Peter Morris with a brief and well-written summary – in English – of the development of synthetic rubber in Germany (15 pp.). Morris argues convincingly that the market for natural rubber played a dominant role, and that Adolf Hitler promoted the synthetic rubber industry for reasons of national pride, despite poor economic prospects. The second section, “Substitutes for Basic Chemicals and Chemical Products,” opens with a lengthy chapter by Manfred Rasch (52 pp.) that summarises in a well-structured narrative his lifelong research on liquid fuels and lubricants from coal, produced by key technologies such as low-temperature coking, high-pressure hydrogenation (Bergius), and the Fischer-Tropsch process. Rasch argues that the attempts to solve the oil shortage produced new scarcities of energy and electricity in their turn – a kind of domino effect that is also addressed in the chapters by Maier and Zilt. The second contribution to this section, by Sandra Fehr, focuses on the scarcity of nitrogen products in Germany during the First World War. Fehr sheds new light on well-known facts by analysing the developments systematically in a strict chronological order, using Joseph Schumpeter’s analytical framework: invention – innovation – diffusion. She argues that all major inventions predated the war, that the nitrogen scarcity for the military was solved, but at the expense of agriculture, and that the HaberBosch process had a long-term impact on world food supply. The third section, “Substitutes for Fragrances, Flavorings, Food and Fodder,” starts with a chapter by Claus Priesner on the development of synthetic coffee flavours by first-rate organic chemists such as Reichstein and Staudinger. The production on an industrial scale of the substitute Coffarom took place after the war, between 1921 and 1931. As in the case of synthetic rubber, competition with the natural product played a large role. Nevertheless, Coffarom stayed on the market until the 1960s. The last chapter of the book, by Ulrike Thoms, deals with the production of fodder from waste materials and animal cadavers. It discusses in detail the great progress in the production of meat and bone meal by the rendering industry during the First World War. These technologies were further improved during the Second World War and had a lasting impact after 1945. Together with the extensive introduction, the seven cases studies represent a history of the German chemical industry in a nutshell, from the nineteenth century to the late 1950s, with a far greater attention than usual to the role played by politics and the military. With respect to the two central questions mentioned above, the answer to the first is that the external pressures of the two wars seldom led to really new inventions, but they scaled up existing technologies and their application. The answer to the second question is more ambiguous. In some cases innovations emerging during the wars ","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43266400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2023-06-07DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2218689
E. Homburg
{"title":"Ersatzstoffe im Zeitalter der Weltkriege: Geschichte, Bedeutung, Perspektiven","authors":"E. Homburg","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2218689","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2218689","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46723512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2023-05-09DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2205715
Teresa Sabol Spezio
{"title":"Long Hard Road: The Lithium-Ion Battery and the Electric Car","authors":"Teresa Sabol Spezio","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2205715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2205715","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49064481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2023-05-01DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2201744
Megan Piorko, Sarah Lang, Richard Bean
{"title":"Deciphering the <i>Hermeticae Philosophiae Medulla</i>: Textual Cultures of Alchemical Secrecy.","authors":"Megan Piorko, Sarah Lang, Richard Bean","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2201744","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2201744","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article presents the decryption, historical analysis, and alchemical interpretation of an alchemical cipher found in a shared notebook of John and Arthur Dee (British Library MS Sloane 1902). The cipher is an early example of a Bellaso/Della Porta/Vigenère type, a strong encryption method which was historically deemed indecipherable. The essay explores the medical and alchemical context for the manuscript into which the cipher was copied and provides the transcription, plaintext solution (in Latin), and English translation of the encrypted text. Further, it interprets the enciphered text through the lens of alchemical practice and provides evidence for the dissemination of this cipher as part of a larger alchemical knowledge network.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9511297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}