SHAC Spring meeting “Remembering Bill Brock”

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SHAC Spring meeting “Remembering Bill Brock: Chemistry and Culture“

10 April 2026

Arranged with and at the Maison Française d’Oxford, 2-10 Norham Road, Oxford, OX2 6SE

This meeting is being held to commemorate the life, work and legacy of William Hodgson Brock (1936-2025), who spent his entire career at the University of Leicester. Sometime chair of SHAC and editor of its journal Ambix, Brock was one of the leading historians of chemistry in his time, writing the Fontana/Norton History of Chemistry, as well as biographies of William Crookes, Justus von Liebig and Henry Edward Armstrong. (An extended obituary can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2025.2489298). The papers to be presented at this meeting take their starting point from Brock’s work and historical interests.

9.30Registration and Coffee 
9.55Welcome:  Stéphane Van Damme, MFO, and Frank James, SHAC
10.00First Brock Award Lecture:Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne             The history of chemistry through the lens of materials. A very             short introduction
10.45Session 1:Alan Rocke, Case Western Reserve University:             The Best of Frenemies: Liebig and Dumas (A Tribute to William             H. Brock)
11.15Coffee 
11.45Session 2:Eira H. Betthell (Booth), University of Essex:             From Laboratory to Library: Bill Brock’s Prolific Writing as             Chemical Practice Matthew Daniel Eddy, Durham University:             A Context for Colonial Chemistry: Thinking with Bill Brock             about the Biomedical Relevance of Dr J. A. B. Horton’s             Experiments on the Soil of Sierra Leone Georgiana D. Hedesan, University of Oxford: The Foundation of the Society for the Study of Alchemy and Early Chemistry in 1935: Between Historical Research and the Transmutational Paradigm Michael Jewess, Independent Scholar:             Working with Bill: Robert Fergus Hunter (1904-1963)
13.15LunchNot provided but there are some good pubs nearby
14.30Tribute from the Brock family:Susannah Ahluwalia, Gareth Brock and Benjamin Brock
14.50Session 3:Julia Carr-Trebelhorn, University of Cincinnati: Burning Diamonds: Lavoisier, Guettard, and the 1771 Development of Reduction Firing and Hard-Paste Porcelain in Paris John R.R. Christie, University of Oxford: Commerce, Manufacture and Practical Chemistry in 18th–            Century Britain Robert Bud, Science Museum/UCL:             Poison gas and Art Deco: analysing early 20th century             ambivalence about chemistry
16.00Coffee 
16.20Session 4:Robin Mackie, Open University and Gerrylynn K Roberts, Independent Scholar: Counting the British Chemical Community, 1881-1971:             Opening the ‘Black Box’ Annette Lykknes, Norwegian University of Science and Technology:             Crookes’ Vis Generatrix in teaching and learning
17.15 Closing remarks
17.20End of meeting 

There is no charge for this meeting, but please let Frank James, frank.james@ucl.ac.uk, know if you wish to attend.

More information: https://mfo.web.ox.ac.uk/event/shac-spring-meeting-remembering-bill-brock-chemistry-and-culture