History of Science at the British Science Festival

Tuesday 9th September, 1.30pm to 3.30pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Sherrington, University of Liverpool

Sponsored by The Wellcome Trust

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By exploring Liverpool’s maritime history the speakers discuss how medicine came to be allied with global imperial expansion through the founding of the Liverpool School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Find out how attempts to improve the health of seamen through public health measures moved on from the post-colonial world to today’s local-global framework.

• Dr Sally Sheard (Division of Public Health and School of History, University of LIverpool)
  ‘Health at the Gateway: ports, seafarers and the perception of risk in the early twentieth century’

By the 1920s Liverpool was at its economic peak – but this came with a health ‘cost’��. Port health officials coped with massive movements of goods and people, that required a sophisticated approach to risk management. Seafarers in particular were viewed as disease threats because of their long-established association with prostitutes. Yet their actual health issues reflected their working conditions, and poor access to medical services. This paper considers the gap between perceived and real health risks, and their influence on the development of health policies.

• Dr Sanjoy Bhattacharya (Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London): ‘Crucial Building Blocks: “Localities” in International and Local Health Programmes’.

The World Health Organization has played an important role in the design and deployment of international and global public health policy since its formal inauguration in 1948. The organisation is a complex one, incorporating a Geneva-based headquarters, as well as several regional offices; this intricate network of offices, departments and advisory groups has been responsible for the application of a variety of policies in a plethora of locales, in association with scientific organisations (like universities and non-governmental think thanks) and national governments (which were composed of complex administrative formations with varying links to civil society groups). Seen from this perspective, a variety of ‘localities’, located in developed, less developed and developing countries proved crucial to the WHO’s global activities – indeed, the agency’s ability to create productive connections between numerous stakeholders was the basis of its greatest successes, and its ability to stoke partnerships across diverse constituencies continues to be the primary basis of its significance in the contemporary world. This presentation aims to use the case studies of the WHO’s involvement in the global malaria and smallpox eradication programmes in the South Asian sub-continent to describe how a variety of ‘localities’ – ranging from European government, scientific and university agencies on the one hand, to South Asian administrative units, NGOs and civil society representatives on the other – were able to determine the shape and working of international and global health policies in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

• Professor Anne Hardy (Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London): ‘Home and Abroad: The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’

Books of interest:

M. Gorsky and S. Sheard (eds), Financing British Medicine Since 1750 (2006)
S. Sheard and L. Donaldson, The Nation’s Doctor: the role of the Chief Medical Officer, 1855-1998 (2005)

Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Expunging Variola: The Control and Eradication of Smallpox in India, 1947-1977 (2006)
Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Mark Harrison and Michael Worboys, Fractured States: Smallpox, Public Health and Vaccination Policy in British India, 1800-1947 (2005)
Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Propaganda and Information in Eastern India, 1939-45: A Necessary Weapon of War (2001)

Monday 8th September, 1.30pm to 3.30pm in the Eleanor Rathbone Theatre, Eleanor Rathbone, University of Liverpool.

Organised by the BA Sociology and Social Policy Section and the BA History of Science Section.

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Come and have your understanding of race and identity challenged. We will chart the emergence of sociobiology in the late 19th Century, looking at the thinkers who applied biological ideas to the ’social’ and we will explore the enduring impact of these ideas on how we talk about race and identity. We will also explore how our understandings of race are now challenged by new developments in the biological sciences. How can sociology and biology work together to make sense of what ‘race’ means in relation to concepts of ‘genetic identity’ in the 21st century?

The Olympic (From Steam-ships and their Story by R.A.Fletcher, 1910)

Saturday 6th September, 2-4pm at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, Albert Dock

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Liverpool’s position at the forefront of ocean steam navigation throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras built the city into a cultural capital of fine art and architecture with endowed school and university facilities dedicated to the pursuit, especially through science, of knowledge and power. Explore the causes and effects of Liverpool’s glorious history.

• Mr Michael Stammers (Merseyside Museum, Liverpool): ‘John Grantham, pioneer naval architect of Liverpool’

Early 19th century Liverpool has often been characterised as a commercial centre with little interest in manufacturing. John Grantham’s career and those of other Liverpool engineers of the same era show that whatever its manufacturing limitations, Liverpool was a centre for developing the new iron and steam technology. Grantham was also a pioneer of a new profession – the consulting naval architect.

• Dr Graeme Milne (School of History, University of Liverpool): ‘Liverpool and globalisation, 1850-1914: Communications, information and knowledge in mercantile business’

Discover how Liverpool was an important hub in the nineteenth-century knowledge economy. New communications technologies (steamships, railways, telegraphs and telephones) transformed the information available to the city’s business communities, while presenting great challenges in processing that information into useful knowledge. Traders remained reliant on local, personal contacts for monitoring reputation, trustworthiness and reliability in a globalising business environment.

• Professor Crosbie Smith (School of History, University of Kent): ‘”We never make mistakes”: the Empire of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company’

This talk aims to explore the making of this mighty Victorian empire of steam with special emphasis on the variety of people who designed, built, engined, navigated and managed the ships of PSNC. Launched in the early 1840s as one of Britain’s first mail steamship companies, PSNC laboured long and hard to build its own fragile empire along the western seaboard of South America.
In the mid-1850s it adopted a new – and fraught – type of steam engine, the marine compound engine, which maritime historians have long credited with making possible long-distance ocean steam navigation and which historians of technology have linked to the nineteenth-century science of thermodynamics.

Down-river from Liverpool’s Pier Head, and well away from the centre of the European Capital of Culture, lies Canada Dock. There at Branch No.2, on the red-brick gable end of a former transit shed, are emblazoned the letters “PSNC” in the form of a proud ship-owner’s houseflag. It is one of the last reminders of one of the world’s most famous shipping lines: the Pacific Steam Navigation Company of Liverpool.
By the early 1870s, PSNC’s empire boasted the largest and longest steamship line in the world, with a regular service between Liverpool and Valparaiso by way of the Straits of Magellan and a Pacific service linking almost every port between Chile and Panama. But even faster than most empires, the Line over-reached itself and became, for other more cautious Liverpool ship-owners, a lesson of “an extravagant fleet, extravagantly managed.”

Books of interest

Michael Stammers, The Industrial Archaeology of Docks and Habours (2008) and Sailing Barges of the British Isles (2008).

Graeme J. Milne, North East England, 1850-1914: The dynamics of a maritime-industrial region (2006) and Trade and traders in mid-Victorian Liverpool: Mercantile business and the making of a world port (2000).

Crosbie Smith and Ben Marsden, Engineering Empires. A Cultural History of Technology in Nineteenth Century Britain (2004).
Crosbie Smith and Norton Wise, Energy and Empire. A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin (1989).
Crosbie Smith, The Science of Energy. A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain (1998).

John Belchem, Liverpool 800 (2006) – includes Maritime chapter by Crosbie Smith.

Monday 8th September 2008, 3pm to 6.30pm

In Hearnshaw Lecture Theatre, Eleanor Rathbone, University of Liverpool

This session is organised by The BA History of Science Section and the BA Education Section

We would like to thank Futureworld, the Science Fiction Hub and the Science Fiction Foundation for supporting this event.

PROMOTION in association with the book Futureworld from the Science Museum: a fun and exciting look at how science fiction has merged with reality. Order Futureworld at the special pre-publication price of £7.99 (RRP £9.99). Simply enter the code FW when you reach the shopping basket page at PanMacmillan.

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Join us for an afternoon of science fiction as we explore its place in culture, education and science communication. What role does sci-fi play in public understanding of, and hopes and fears around, science? How can we use science fiction in education, and to stimulate productive public dialogue?

Science fiction author Stephen Baxter, popular science analyst Jon Turney and others explore the relationship between science fiction, science communication and education.

3pm Jon Turney: ‘Can you believe anything you learn about science in science fiction?’

Science facts in science fiction may be reliable, but they don’t have to be. But what about other things you might learn about science from fiction?

3.45pm Stephen Baxter: ‘Populating an Empty Heaven. How science fiction has shaped our expectations regarding life in the universe, from public intuition to the scientific search for extraterrestrial life.’

The modern depiction of Mars in science fiction began with HG Wells. Since Wells, fictional models of Mars and Martians have stimulated the aspirations of space engineers, and have informed public perceptions of the threats and opportunities afforded by extraterrestrial life. Science fiction visions have replaced divine visions of the cosmos.

4.30pm Tea Break

4.45pm Panel Discussion. Members of the audience are invited to discuss the day’s issues with our panellists, who will each speak for a few minutes about their involvement with Science Ficiton. Our two opening speakers, Jon Turney and Stephen Baxter will be joined by:

• Professor Steven French (University of Leeds): ‘Fictional Philosophies of Science in Science Fiction’
  Science fiction not only draws on, reflects and projects scientific theories, it also presents certain views of how these theories are discovered, how they are developed and how they are supported by experiment and observation – how, in other words, science works. Are these presentations accurate? Or do they conform to certain stereotypes, often promulgated by scientists themselves? And if so, does science fiction help or hinder our understanding of science?
• Katie Claydon-Park (Ryburn Valley High School): ‘Science Fact or Fiction?’
  How can science fiction films augment the delivery of Science in secondary schools? Katie Claydon-Park, Assistant Head teacher at Ryburn Valley High School is part of a team who hove developed imaginative approaches to the use of film to engage students and enhance the delivery of difficult topics.
• Dr David Kirby (University of Manchester): ‘Big Screen Science: Scientists’ Backstage Role in the Production of Hollywood Films’
  I will elaborate on the role science consultants play in turning scientific facts into plausible cinematic scenarios for Hollywood filmmakers.
• Dr Irene Lorenzoni (Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research): ‘Seeing or believing: does watching “The Day After Tomorrow” influence our views on climate change?’
  I will focus upon narratives of climate change presented in the film “The Day After Tomorrow” and examine how viewing of the film may influence people’s perceptions and actions.