The Accademia del Cimento in seventeenth-century Florence has traditionally been seen as the first European organization to employ an experimental programme, thus becoming a major participant in the so-called ‘birth of modern experimental science’. Such traditional accounts have also detailed the cultural, political and religious environment of the period that contributed to the Accademia's use of a supposedly atheoretical experimental method. However, despite the merits of such cultural histories, these stories do not portray the full details behind the Accademia's intellectual workings – how knowledge claims were constructed, interpreted and presented by the academicians according to their natural philosophical concerns. It is argued here that such an analysis will provide a more accurate account of the Accademia's activities than existing stories about the birth of an experimental programme or method. By looking past the experimental rhetoric produced by the academicians in their only publication, Saggi di naturali esperienze, we begin to see at play one of the major issues which made up the Accademia's knowledge-making process: the natural philosophical interests of this institution's participants, particularly Borelli, Viviani, Rinaldini and Marsili. Those interests are represented in the Accademia's experiments, including their work concerned with air pressure and the void.

Argument

In France 15 per cent of university professors are women. Though this percentage is not high, France ranks among the top European countries in this regard. We argue that the “relatively favorable” situation of French women scientists is related to the social structure of French society, in particular its child-care system, and to the stable permanent positions in academia, where people are hired in their early thirties. French women scientists experience less difficulty than other European colleagues to manage both a private and a professional life. We also argue that the weak position of French gender studies stems from its lack of institutionalization, and from the isolation of the single researchers in their specialized disciplines. Finally we argue that the French recent interest in the issue of women and science is specifically related to the general interest, since the mid-1990s, in the political parity problem.

European universities have been informally and formally closed to women from their founding in the twelfth century until the late nineteenth century. A few, exceptional women scientists received Ph.D.s and taught in these institutions before 1900: Laura Bassi served as lecturer in physics at the University of Bologna from 1732 to 1778 and held the chair in experimental physics at the prestigious Istituto delle Scienze from 1776 until her death in 1778 (Findlen 1993; Ceranski 1996). Anna Morandi Manzolini replaced her husband as lecturer in anatomy at the University of Bologna in 1755 (Messbarger 2001). Dorothea von Schlözer, daughter of the renowned Göttingen historian, received a doctoral degree for her work in mineralogy in 1787 (Schiebinger 1989, 257–60). These intermittent positions awarded to women were unique to Italy and Germany; none were granted women in England or France. Nowhere in Europe did women gain regular access to universities until the late nineteenth century.

The Rev. Dr John Walker was the Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh from 1779 to 1803. Although his time in this position has been addressed by several studies, the previous thirty years that he spent ‘mineralizing’ have been virtually ignored. The situation is similar for many of the well-known mineralogists of the eighteenth century and there is a lack of studies that address how a mineralogist actually became a mineralogist. Using Walker's early career as a guide, this essay seeks to detail the making of an eighteenth-century Scottish mineralogist. The time frame under examination begins with Walker's matriculation at the University of Edinburgh in 1746 and it ends with his being appointed professor in 1779. The first section demonstrates that Walker's early mineralogical education at the Medical School and under William Cullen was closely linked to chemistry. The second section shows how he used chemical characters to classify minerals and to criticize the systems of Linnaeus, Da Costa, Wallerius and Cronstedt. Because Walker needed many ‘fossil’ samples to test the viability of his chemical mineralogy, the final section details how he used tours, patrons and correspondents to build his mineral collection.

Argument

Science is more sex-segregated in Germany than in other European countries or in the United States. Female students and faculty were admitted to German universities 30 to 50 years after they were admitted to universities elsewhere. This article analyzes why this was so. First, since the nineteenth century, science has enjoyed great prestige in Germany: German higher education was systematized at that time and has since then been run by the government. In addition, the early professionalization of science in Germany put in place demands for high levels of qualification and research, which made academic careers in science attractive to Germany’s social elites. Germany lacked a strong feminist movement. For many years women were excluded from the academic labor market. Even after women were admitted to universities, female representation in faculty positions was sporadic. Exclusionary strategies, often demanded by male academics, were implemented throughout the interwar years, culminating in the anti-feminist policies of the Nazi regime, and the expulsion and persecution of “non-Aryans.” After World War II this legacy of a conservative, often anti-feminist, faculty persisted. As a result, academic careers opened to women only after the tremendous expansion of universities in the 1970s. New feminist movements have finally motivated the government to introduce programs in the 1990s aimed at greater sexual equality.