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10306 results in History of science: general interest

Page 156 of 516

  • Unrolling Egyptian mummies in nineteenth-century Britain

  • GABRIEL MOSHENSKA
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 47 / Issue 3 / September 2014
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    04 September 2013, pp. 451-477
    Print publication:
    September 2014

  • The unrolling of Egyptian mummies was a popular spectacle in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. In hospitals, theatres, homes and learned institutions mummified bodies, brought from Egypt as souvenirs or curiosities, were opened and examined in front of rapt audiences. The scientific study of mummies emerged within the contexts of early nineteenth-century Egyptomania, particularly following the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822, and the changing attitudes towards medicine, anatomy and the corpse that led to the 1832 Anatomy Act. The best-known mummy unroller of this period was the surgeon and antiquary Thomas Pettigrew, author of the highly respected History of Egyptian Mummies. By examining the locations, audiences and formats of some of Pettigrew's unrollings this paper outlines a historical geography of mummy studies within the intellectual worlds of nineteenth-century Britain, illuminating the patterns of authority, respectability, place and performance that Pettigrew and his colleagues navigated with varying degrees of success.

  • From garden biotech to garage biotech: amateur experimental biology in historical perspective

  • HELEN ANNE CURRY
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 47 / Issue 3 / September 2014
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    28 August 2013, pp. 539-565
    Print publication:
    September 2014

  • This paper describes the activities of amateur plant breeders and their application of various methods and technologies derived from genetics research over the course of the twentieth century. These ranged from selection and hybridization to more interventionist approaches such as radiation treatment to induce genetic mutations and chemical manipulation of chromosomes. I argue that these activities share characteristics with twenty-first-century do-it-yourself (DIY) biology (a recent upswing in amateur experimental biology) as well as other amateur science and technology of the twentieth century. The characterization of amateur plant breeding as amateur experimental biology offers a corrective to a dominant narrative within the history of biology, in which the turn to experimental research in the early twentieth century is thought to have served as an obvious dividing line between amateur and professional activities. Considered alongside other better-known amateur efforts, it also suggests that we might gain something by taking a more unified approach to the study of amateur science and technology.

Page 156 of 516