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Discipline | History of science |
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Language | English |
Publication details | |
History | 1937–present |
Publisher | |
Frequency | Quarterly |
0.600 (2018) | |
Standard abbreviations | |
ISO 4 | Ambix |
Indexing | |
ISSN | 0002-6980 (print) 1745-8234 (web) |
Links | |
Ambix is a peer-reviewed academic journal on the history of alchemy and chemistry; it was founded in 1936 and has appeared continuously from 1937 to the present, other than from 1939 to 1945 during World War II. It is currently published by the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry.
Ambix is one of the oldest journals of the history of science in the English-speaking world, preceded by Isis (1912) and Annals of Science (1936). [1] On Christmas Eve, 1936, the Manchester Guardian notified its readers that a journal "for the study of alchemy and early chemistry" was established. In May of the following year, 1937, the first issue of the journal was printed. [2] This initial publication predominantly focused on classical and medieval alchemy, with only two out of sixteen essays addressing early modern chemistry. However, due to the outbreak of the Second World War, the activities of the journal were disrupted, and the publication of the second volume of Ambix could not be completed. After the war ended in 1945, the journal was able to resume its activities. In December 1946, another issue of the second volume was published, featuring articles by notable contributors such as Dorothea Waley Singer, W.H. Barnes, and Carl Gustav Jung, who had joined the society in May 1946. From this period onwards, Ambix began to include papers on early modern chemistry more frequently [3]
Ambix is published four times a year, in February, May, August and November. It is currently published for the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry by Taylor & Francis, which in 2015 purchased Maney Publishing, the previous publisher of Ambix. [4] The name of the journal comes from the Greek word for a still-head (ἄμβιξ), which later gave rise to the word alembic. [5] [6]
The papers published in Ambix are refereed by an international editorial board. The journal covers a wide variety of topics in the history of alchemy and chemistry from any historical period and geographical area, including but not limited to chrysopoeia, alchemy and religion, alchemy/chemistry and experiments, alchemy/chemistry and society, alchemical medicine, early modern and Enlightenment chemistry, 19th and 20th-century chemistry, and the history of chemical engineering. [7] The presentation of scientific ideas, methods and discoveries is made as non-technical as possible, consistent with academic rigour and scientific accuracy. Extensive book reviews are published in each issue of Ambix.
The Journal has published several special issues on a variety of topics. A recent special issue was devoted to new studies on Sir Humphry Davy. The special November 2017 issue of Ambix celebrates 80 years of the journal, and includes articles by former Ambix Editor Jennifer Rampling, Hasok Chang, and the 2017 Partington Prize winning paper written by Steve Irish. Earlier special issues include The Royal Typographer and the Alchemist: Willem Silvius and John Dee (2017) and Chemical Knowledge in Transit (2015). In May 2013, 2014, and 2015 three special issues were published on Sites of Chemistry devoted to the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively, while the November 2014 special issue concerned Analysis and Synthesis in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
Alchemy is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD.
Pseudo-Geber is the presumed author or group of authors responsible for a corpus of pseudepigraphic alchemical writings dating to the late 13th and early 14th centuries. These writings were falsely attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan, an early alchemist of the Islamic Golden Age.
Isis is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press. It covers the history of science, history of medicine, and the history of technology, as well as their cultural influences. It contains original research articles and extensive book reviews and review essays. Furthermore, sections devoted to one particular topic are published in each issue in open access. These sections consist of the Focus section, the Viewpoint section and the Second Look section.
Corpuscularianism is a set of theories that explain natural transformations as a result of the interaction of particles. It differs from atomism in that corpuscles are usually endowed with a property of their own and are further divisible, while atoms are neither. Although often associated with the emergence of early modern mechanical philosophy, and especially with the names of Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and John Locke, corpuscularian theories can be found throughout the history of Western philosophy.
Allen George Debus was an American historian of science, known primarily for his work on the history of chemistry and alchemy. In 1991 he was honored at the University of Chicago with an academic conference held in his name. Paul H. Theerman and Karen Hunger Parshall edited the proceedings, and Debus contributed his autobiography of which this article is a digest.
The word chemistry derives from the word alchemy, which is found in various forms in European languages. Alchemy derives from the Arabic word kimiya (كيمياء) or al-kīmiyāʾ (الكيمياء). The Arabic term is derived from the Ancient Greek χημία, khēmia, or χημεία, khēmeia, 'art of alloying metals', from χύμα, from χέω. However, the ultimate origin of the word is uncertain. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, al-kīmiyāʾ may be derived from the greek "χημία", which is derived from the ancient Egyptian name of Egypt, khem or khm, khame, or khmi, meaning "blackness", i.e., the rich dark soil of the Nile river valley. Therefore, alchemy can be seen as the "Egyptian art" or the "black art". However, it is also possible that al-kīmiyāʾ derived from χημεία, meaning "cast together".
James Riddick Partington was a British chemist and historian of chemistry who published multiple books and articles in scientific magazines. His most famous works were An Advanced Treatise on Physical Chemistry and A History of Chemistry, for which he received the Dexter Award and the George Sarton Medal.
Gabriel Plattes (c.1600–1644) was an English writer on agriculture and science, and also now recognised as the author of the utopian work Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria, often attributed to Samuel Hartlib under whose name it was published.
Frank Sherwood Taylor was a British historian of science, museum curator, and chemist who was Director of the Science Museum in London, England.
Alchemy in the medieval Islamic world refers to both traditional alchemy and early practical chemistry by Muslim scholars in the medieval Islamic world. The word alchemy was derived from the Arabic word كيمياء or kīmiyāʾ and may ultimately derive from the ancient Egyptian word kemi, meaning black.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to alchemy:
Lawrence M. Principe is the Drew Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of History of Science and Technology and the Department of Chemistry. He is also currently the Director of the Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe, an interdisciplinary center for research at Johns Hopkins. He is the first recipient of the Francis Bacon Medal for significant contributions to the history of science. Principe's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and a 2015-2016 Guggenheim Fellowship. Principe is recognized as one of the foremost experts in the history of alchemy.
John Maxson Stillman (1852-1923) was a pioneer of the history of science in the United States. He was also the first head of the chemistry department at Stanford University, as well as its first Chemistry Professor. His most enduring work was the posthumously published book The Story of Early Chemistry, decades later republished as The Story of Alchemy and Early Chemistry.
Lychnos: Lärdomshistoriska samfundets årsbok is an annual academic journal published since 1936 by the Swedish History of Science Society. Articles are mostly in Swedish, with summaries in English, German, or French. A number of volumes have also been published in a monograph series called Lychnos-bibliotek, starting the same year as the periodical.
William R. Newman is Distinguished Professor and Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University. Most of Newman’s work in the History of Science has been devoted to alchemy and "chymistry," the art-nature debate, and matter theories, particularly atomism. Newman is also General Editor of the Chymistry of Isaac Newton, an online resource combining born-digital editions of Newton’s alchemical writings with multimedia replications of Newton’s alchemical experiments. In addition, he was Director of the Catapult Center for Digital Humanities and Computational Analysis of Texts at Indiana University. Newman is on the editorial boards of Archimedes, Early Science and Medicine, and HOPOS.
William Hodson Brock is a British chemist and science historian.
Chymes was a Greco-Roman alchemist who lived before the third century. He is known only through fragments of text in the works of Zosimos of Panopolis and Olympiodorus of Thebes.
The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, founded as the Society for the Study of Alchemy and Early Chemistry in 1935, holds biennial meetings and a yearly Graduate Workshop, publishes the journal Ambix and a biennial newsletter Chemical Intelligence, and offers prizes and grants to scholars. It has a worldwide membership.
William Arthur Smeaton was a British chemist and historian of science, who wrote more than seventy-five articles and several books on the history of chemistry in France in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Henry Ernest Stapleton (1878-1962) was an English chemist, historian of chemistry, Arabist, linguist, and numismatist specializing in the history of alchemy and chemistry in the medieval Islamic world.