Centres and Peripheries of Chymical Knowledge: Tracing Traditions of Alchemy and Chemistry in Eastern Europe
This collection of papers from Ambix celebrates the 13th International Conference on the History of Chemistry held in Vilnius, Lithuania. From the patronage networks of Rudolph II to the military campaigns of World Wars I and II, chymical knowledge was highly sought after in Eastern Europe, especially as a means to exert political power. The articles featured in this collection trace historical evidence of Eastern European chymical traditions, from a fourteenth-century Bohemian alchemical manuscript to twentieth-century global approaches to chemistry, to illustrate the mutual influence of Western and Eastern European chymical knowledge exchange. The insularity of Eastern European science before the establishment of the port of Archangel was not intentional but forced by feuding neighbouring lands. Ivan the Terrible attempted to create a Moscow medical school, but the Western European instructors he tried to bring in were blocked by the Danes and Swedes. The establishment of the port of Archangel in 1553 expedited cross-cultural chymical exchange between Eastern and Western Europe. As a result, the Russo-English trading organization Muscovy Company formed in 1555. By the 1620s, Tsar Mikhail Romanov had succeeded in forming the Apothecary Chancery at his court in Moscow. While there has been a history of Eastern European monarchs importing courtly alchemists from the West, including both John Dee (1527-1608) and his son Arthur Dee (1579-1651), many influential chymical practitioners were born and worked in Eastern Europe—such as Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius (1566-1636), Hungarian Janos Banfihunyadi (1576-1646), Mikhail Vasil’evich Lomonosov (1711-1765) of St. Petersburg, Russian born chemists Nikolai Nikolaevich Zinin (1812-1880) and Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleeve (1834-1907), as well as many notable Soviet chemists of the twentieth century.
Edited by
Dr Meg Piorko(Distinctive Collections & Digital Engagement, Villanova University)