International Workshop on Historical Scientific Instruments in Universities; June 21-24, 2007; Oxford, MS

大学历史科学仪器国际研讨会；

• 批准号: 0620995
• 负责人: Thomas Marshall
• 金额: $ 2.36万
• 依托单位: University of Mississippi
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-01 至 2008-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0620995&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: International; Workshop; Historical; Scientific; Instruments

Summary: International Workshop on Historic Scientific Instrument Collections in UniversitiesThis proposal seeks partial support for an international workshop to bring together working scientistsin universities and colleges with historians of science, museum curators, and archivists. The workshop isa follow-on to the international conference on Scientific Instrument Collections in Universities (SICU)held at Dartmouth College in June 2004. SICU was an ambitious first attempt by this nascent communityto find hidden instrument collections and to assemble a wide spectrum of people with common interestsin formalizing university collections. As a first step, SICU was successful in bringing to light someimportant collections and in organizing an interested group of more than 80 international scholars.However, much remains to be done to effectively promote interactions between these scholars andscientists and curators involved with university collections.The aim of the proposed workshop is to take the next steps in the process of getting scientists andhistorians of science to communicate and collaborate on conducting research and education based onhistorical scientific instruments. Specifically, three main needs for an intensive gathering of interestedpractitioners have been identified: access, security, and utilization of collections. The scientificcommunity needs to be more involved in the effort, as they have the background and understanding of thescience concepts that many of these collections were created to teach. There are many more collectionsof varying dates that have not yet become accessible to the scholarly community, and often, onlyuniversity scientists know about these collections. Security of collections involves developing anunderstanding of their value and a practical resource base for their proper care. Effective utilization ofthese instruments for scholarship, science education, and public outreach requires a broad effort ofawareness and an accessible reference guide to their intended purposes. Meeting these three needs is theoverarching goal of this workshop.The intellectual merit of this project comes through the extension of the resource base for scholarsfocusing on the material culture of science beyond the major museum collections that have been used anddocumented for many years. The workshop will divulge the wealth of historically significant scientificequipment that may still exist in most major colleges and universities founded prior to the 1950's. Inaddition, a network of researchers will be developed that would jointly work to establish a context andbackground for any unknown instruments found in newly accessed collections and contributed byhistorians, curators, and scientists. Solutions and descriptions to these mysteries would be published inthe open literature.The broader impact of this project derives from the fact that participants will work cooperatively todevelop a community-wide compendium of scientific instrument collections online that would meet theneeds of scientists, historians of science, museum curators, and science educators. As conceived, thecompendium would include significant aspects of the instrument: science, history, inventor, instrumentmaker, references, videos, and demonstration contexts. It will also serve as a practical resource guide forstewards of these collections. Such a compendium will require interdisciplinary involvement andcollaboration between the science, history, education, and curatorial communities; the workshop formatwill be used to establish guidelines for the development of this resource. This compendium will have farreaching impacts for the history of science, science education, and public outreach through the increasedknowledge of, access to, and utilization of these significant university resources.The workshop will be held at the University of Mississippi, home to the Millington-BarnardCollection of 19th Century Natural Philosophy Demonstration Apparatus. This 500-piece collectionwas acquired by the University in 1852-1860 and narrowly escaped destruction during the Civil War.Pieces from the top instrument makers in the U.S., France, Germany, and England were used forinstruction in Physics and Astronomy for more than 150 years and are now exhibited in the UniversityMuseum. . Approximately 100 participants are anticipated at the workshop from outside the University of Mississippi.

总结：大学历史科学仪器收藏国际研讨会本提案寻求对一个国际研讨会的部分支持，该研讨会将大学和学院的工作科学家与科学史学家、博物馆馆长和档案管理员聚集在一起。该讲习班伊萨2004年6月在达特茅斯学院举行的大学科学仪器收藏国际会议的后续活动。SICU是这个新生社区雄心勃勃的第一次尝试，旨在寻找隐藏的乐器收藏，并聚集广泛的具有共同兴趣的人，使大学收藏正规化。作为第一步，SICU成功地展示了一些重要的收藏品，并组织了一个由80多名国际学者组成的感兴趣的小组。为了有效地促进这些学者和科学家以及参与大学收藏的馆长之间的互动，还有很多工作要做。拟议中的研讨会的目的是采取下一步措施，让科学家和科学史学家交流，基于历史科学仪器的研究和教育合作。具体而言，三个主要需求的密集聚集感兴趣的从业者已经确定：访问，安全和利用的集合。科学界需要更多地参与到这项工作中来，因为他们对这些科学概念有背景和理解，而这些科学概念正是为了教授而创建的。还有更多不同日期的收藏品尚未进入学术界，通常只有大学科学家知道这些收藏品。藏品的安全涉及到对藏品价值的理解以及对其进行适当保护的实际资源基础。有效地利用这些工具进行学术研究，科学教育和公共宣传，需要广泛的意识和对其预期目的的可访问参考指南。满足这三个需求是本次研讨会的首要目标。该项目的智力价值来自于为博物馆提供的资源基础的扩展--将重点放在已经使用和记录多年的主要博物馆藏品之外的科学物质文化上。该研讨会将揭示在20世纪50年代以前建立的大多数主要学院和大学中可能仍然存在的具有历史意义的科学设备的财富。此外，还将建立一个研究人员网络，共同努力为新获得的收藏中发现的任何未知乐器建立背景和背景，并由历史学家，策展人和科学家贡献。这些谜团的解决方案和描述将在公开文献中发表。这个项目的广泛影响来自于参与者将合作开发一个社区范围的在线科学仪器收藏纲要，以满足科学家、科学史学家、博物馆馆长和科学教育者的需求。正如设想的那样，指南将包括仪器的重要方面：科学，历史，发明者，仪器制造者，参考文献，视频和演示环境。它也将作为一个实用的资源指南forstewarders的这些集合。这样一个纲要将需要科学、历史、教育和策展界之间的跨学科参与和合作;研讨会的形式将被用来建立开发这一资源的指导方针。这一纲要将对科学史、科学教育和公众宣传产生深远的影响，通过增加对这些重要大学资源的了解、获取和利用。研讨会将在密西西比大学举行，该校收藏了19世纪世纪自然哲学演示仪器。这500件藏品于1852-1860年被大学收购，在内战期间险些被摧毁。来自美国顶级乐器制造商的作品，法国、德国和英国用于物理学和天文学的教学已有150多年的历史，现在在大学博物馆展出。.预计将有大约100名来自密西西比大学以外的参与者参加研讨会。