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This essay uses the framework of "thrifty science" to highlight commonalities between two early modern endeavours that seem distinct today – experimental science and cookery. Comparing Isaac Newton's experiments on light using glass prisms with Anne Shackleford's recipes for fruitcakes I argue that for early moderns the culture of domestic thrift united the two enterprises more than we might imagine. Thrift and frugality were values of "oeconomy" or household management and encouraged householders to diversify the uses of things, a motive for experimentation across various endeavours, including what came to be defined as cookery and natural philosophy. While the home was a common ground for diverse experiments, efforts to institutionalise experiment divided it into more distinct forms, prompting a separation of practices that came to seem self-evident later on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the common association of voyages of exploration with discovery and the arrival of modernity, this essay argues that maintenance and repair were essential to the success of such voyages and that maintenance and innovation are best seen as fundamentally integrated. Using the Russian circumnavigatory voyage of Adam von Krusenstern and Urey Lisianskii in 1803–7 as a case study, the essay explores the diverse forms and roles of infrastructure and repair work in enabling a voyage of exploration, and reveals the tensions and debates that considerations of maintenance evoked among ships' officers, crews, and the peoples they encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narratives of supply chains and raw materials are a poor fit for early modern Europeans' "thrifty" habit of reusing and reworking goods into new forms. This essay stresses the importance of such habits for early modern work using the example of paper, as a medium, instrument, and epistemic resource in various domestic and scientific spheres. Thrifty perspectives challenge not only linear supply narratives but also enduring accounts of the identities of materials themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue investigates women's scientific networks in Europe roughly between 1720 and 1830, an interesting period from a gender point of view. The articles analyse the role that networks played in enabling, shaping and circumscribing women in their intellectual pursuits, social aspirations and ideals. They also focus on the nature of the members' relationships, how women negotiated their scientific identities and how often women could use their femininity to create new social spaces for themselves and their families. We traced different types of networks such as 'paper', 'technical', 'distant' (in its special and temporal sense), 'moral' and 'mixed', as well as how many of these networks were characterized by broad intellectual engagement that was never exclusively scientific, but also literary, poetic, educational and philosophical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against an assumption that conservation practices only became 'scientific' in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this essay shows how, on the contrary, preservation techniques in early modern England were an inspiration for new forms of scientific inquiry and knowledge. Following the framework of 'thrifty science', the essay demonstrates how the thrifty value of making use and extending the life of goods encouraged a variety of preservation practices, which some scholars identified as valuable resources for a new experimental philosophy. In practice, preserving techniques crossed between domestic, experimental and academic sites. Since 'thrifty science' included the preservation of human and non-human 'bodies', the essay argues that an appreciation of early modern conservation necessitates an interdisciplinary approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between King Charles II and the Royal Society in Restoration England is discussed, with a focus on the king's key role in the legitimation of experimental science. Topics include royal ritual and the Restoration, experimental procedures in relation to public demonstrations of royal power, and the 'Royal Styptique Liquor.'

This special issue of Ambix is an outgrowth of the Tenth Annual Postgraduate Workshop titled "Society and the Creation of (al)Chemical Knowledge" hosted by the Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam, 29–30 November 2019. This meeting of early career scholars with a shared interest in the history of alchemy and chemistry illustrated the diversity of methodological approaches that contribute to this subfield. Alchemical knowledge, created through practice, language, and material culture, has permeated society since the ancient world. Adepts and laity alike learned to navigate and appropriate the seemingly paradoxical hermetic language and images of alchemy, applying them to an array of societal needs that span time and place. The editorial essay to this special issue of Ambix considers alchemical knowledge-creation through the social lens of language and practice and proposes the inclusive concept of the "Chemical Humanities" to address variations within alchemical practice and the diverse scholarly research methodologies presented in this special issue. We examine the history of chemistry using approaches from the humanities, arts, and sciences and consider the effects of interdisciplinary research today and for the future of alchemical scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports from the program chairs for the July 2019 annual meeting of the History of Science Society held in in Utrecht, the Netherlands are presented. An overview of the conference is provided. The winners of 2019 awards such as Claire Isabel Webb winning the HSS/NASA Fellowship in Aerospace History for her dissertation“Technologies of Perception: The Search for Life and Intelligence beyond Earth,” Brad Bolman won the Nathan Reingold Prize for best essay by a graduate student for "Pig Mentations: Race and Face in Radiobiology and Beyond,” and the Sarton Medal which honors a historian for a lifetime of scholarship was given to M. Norton Wise.

The article presents history of science-related news briefs on topics including the History of Science Society Annual Meeting which was held in 2018, Science History Institute Haas Postdoctoral Fellow Ingrid Ockert's receipt of the 2018 2018 HSS/NASA Fellowship in Aerospace History. It states that historian Owen Hyman's won the Ronald Rainger Prize for his essay "Anxieties of the Plastic Age: Cotton Culture, White Supremacy, and Tenant Forestry in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, 1935–1953."

The body of the Artisan Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution by Pamela H. Smith University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2004. 377 pp. $35, 24.50 £ ISBN 0-226-76399-4. Did [...]

The article discusses the biography and professional career of Russian inventor Ivan Petrovich Kulibin in St. Petersburg, Russia. The author reflects on technological innovations such as steam engines, carriages, and clocks related to social policy under the reign of Empress Catherine II. Kulibin's training in instrument-making and his construction of an egg-clock are described. Emphasis is given to bridges, optics, and Kulibin's relations with the Academy of Sciences. Other topics include inventions in illumination, autonomy, and artisanal culture.

An essay is presented on how the history of the Panopticon conflicts with assumptions regarding its role in the work of philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The author notes that architect Samuel Bentham created the Panopticon as an inspection house for the estate of Russian prince Grigorii Potemkin. The connection of the Panopticon to social control, absolutism and the theatricality of Russian nobles is explored.