Sarah Bridger Columbia University My dissertation covers the political arguments among scientists about Cold War weapons, scientists’ advice to politicians and military planners, and the personal ethical concerns of scientists engaged in research with potential weapons applications. A PACHS Dissertation Research Fellowship in the fall of 2008 supported my research on this topic at three PACHS member institutions, Princeton University, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society.
Nicholas Spicher Johns Hopkins University There was only one functioning college in British North America at the turn of the 18th century. By the American Revolution, eight more had been founded, and several more were chartered by 1800. What did these colleges teach? Who were the instructors, and on what sources did they base their teaching? What methods did they use? Until recently, many historians have assumed that the colonial colleges were intellectual backwaters whose only purpose was to train future clergy in the bare essentials of classical grammar.
Eric S. Hintz
University of Pennsylvania
Terry M. Christensen Oregon State University John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) was among the giants of 20th-century physics. Even so, Wheeler’s many contributions to the corpus of physics are, in my view, overshadowed by his contributions to the community of physicists. Here it is useful to bear in mind that knowledge is cumulative in nature. Today’s breakthrough is tomorrow’s building block, upon which future discoveries will be predicated. A proficient mentor, by contrast, may well have a multiplicative influence on generations of physicists.
Mary Peterson Zundo Ph.D. Candidate, Art History University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign The aim of my research has been to examine the ways in which the scientific classification of the Trans-Mississippi West and the rhetoric of westward travel shaped how many American artists and their audiences understood—visually and conceptually—their nation in terms of mapping the land for empire.
Melissa J. Grafe Institute of the History of Medicine Johns Hopkins University My research into the 18th-century medical practices of the Archer family of Harford County, Maryland had led me unexpectedly to Philadelphia. With the generous support of the PACHS fellowship, which gave me the funding for a month to research at multiple archives, and the support and advice of the PACHS executive director Babak Ashrafi and his assistant Bonnie Clause, I started my search at the University of Pennsylvania’s Rare Book and Manuscript library on the sixth floor of the Van Pelt library. Dr.
Susan Kaplan, co-organizer of the North By Degree conference describes the film festival, Arctic Exploration in Motion, that will follow the conference. Here is the audio.
The Center has awarded six fellowships for dissertation research in area archives and libraries as well as two dissertation writing fellowships. Dissertation Research Fellows will spend one or two months conducting research in the Philadelphia area, and give a talk about their work here. Dissertation Writing Fellows will spend nine months in residence at the Center and speak in the Regional Colloquium in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine.
The 2008-2009 Dissertation Research Fellows:
Terry M.The first season of the Philadelphia Regional Colloquium in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine concluded with a discussion at the Franklin Institute of Anke Timmermann's work on alchemical recipes. Each meeting of the series was a discussion of a pre-circulated paper that was distributed from this web site. In addition to Dr. Timmermann's chapter, participants read and discussed the work of Arwen Mohun of the University of Delaware, Dominique Tobbell of the University of Pennsylvania, and Amy Slaton of Drexel University.
