Papers by Rebekah Higgitt
Science Museum Group Journal, 2021
The Metropolitan Science research project, based at the University of Kent from 2017-2020 and des... more The Metropolitan Science research project, based at the University of Kent from 2017-2020 and designed to run alongside the Science City gallery project, explores the significant place of craft, trade and commercial institutions in the development of London's technical and experimental knowledge cultures. Drawing on this research, this paper presents three case studies to show what can be revealed by considering the spaces in and around such institutions-the Royal Mint in the Tower of London, the Trinity House on Water Lane and East India House on Leadenhall Street. These sites combined ceremonial and administrative functions with important roles in the processes of making, codifying, storing, disseminating and assessing knowledge of various kinds. We examine how, both as physical and imaginative spaces, they enabled, structured and limited these processes. Showing the various ways in which the spaces we discuss were defined, policed, used and networked, we consider how their multifunctional character, which often blurred distinctions between public and private, impacted on their communities of knowledge and practice and on broader metropolitan scientific cultures. This is a matter of how they related to other spaces, other authorities, and other resources, but also of how the communities that occupied them sought to balance commercial or craft secrecy with public accountability.
Nature, 2019
relishes a biography of mathematical reformer Charles Hutton.
Nuncius, 2019
It has become a commonplace that exceptional achievement, including within science, should be rew... more It has become a commonplace that exceptional achievement, including within science, should be rewarded with prizes and that these will often take the form of a medal. The ubiquity of such awards today means that the circumstances behind their arrival tend to be overlooked, but they were novelties when first suggested at the Royal Society in the 1730s. This article traces the creation of the Copley Medal and explores the meaning of medals to the recipients, the Society and the proposer of the scheme, Martin Folkes. Paying attention to the medal’s iconography and material nature can shed light on how experimental philosophy and the role of the Royal Society were conceived by key Fellows, demonstrating their links to antiquarianism and Freemasonry. Rather than arriving as a fully formed reward system, the medal concept required investment of time, money, thought and skill, and the development of ritual, meaning and value.
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2019
Built in Greenwich in 1675–1676, the Royal Observatory was situated outside the capital but was d... more Built in Greenwich in 1675–1676, the Royal Observatory was situated outside the capital but was deeply enmeshed within its knowledge networks and communities of practice. Scholars have tended to focus on the links cultivated by the Astronomers Royal within scholarly communities in England and Europe but the observatory was also deeply reliant on and engaged with London's institutions and practical mathematical community. It was a royal foundation, situated within one government board, taking a leading role on another, and overseen by Visitors selected by the Royal Society of London. These links helped develop institutional continuity, while instrument-makers, assistants and other collaborators, who were often active in the city as mathematical authors and teachers, formed an extended community with interest in the observatory's continued existence. After outlining the often highly contingent institutional and personal connections that shaped and supported the observatory, th...
Annals of Science, 2017
The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users ar... more The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2013
Over its long history, the buildings of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich were enlarged and alte... more Over its long history, the buildings of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich were enlarged and altered many times, reflecting changing needs and expectations of astronomers and funders, but also the constraints of a limited site and small budgets. The most significant expansion took place in the late nineteenth century, overseen by the eighth Astronomer Royal, William Christie, a programme that is put in the context of changing attitudes toward scientific funding, Christie's ambitious plans for the work and staffing of the Observatory and his desire to develop a national institution that could stand with more recently founded European and American rivals. Examination of the archives reveals the range of strategies Christie was required to use to acquire consent and financial backing from the Admiralty, as well as his opportunistic approach. While hindsight might lead to criticism of his decisions, Christie eventually succeeded in completing a large building – the New Physical Obse...
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2019
This essay introduces a special issue of the BJHS on communities of natural knowledge and artific... more This essay introduces a special issue of the BJHS on communities of natural knowledge and artificial practice in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London. In seeking to understand the rise of a learned and technical culture within a growing and changing city, our approach has been inclusive in terms of the activities, people and places we consider worth exploring but shaped by a sense of the importance of collective activity, training, storage of information and identity. London's knowledge culture was formed by the public, pragmatic and commercial spaces of the city rather than by the academy or the court. In this introduction, we outline the types of group and institution within our view and acknowledge the many locations that might be explored further. Above all, we introduce a particular vision of London's potential as a city of knowledge and practice, arising from its commercial and mercantile activity and fostered within its range of corporations, institutions and as...
Science Museum Group Journal, 2021
The Metropolitan Science research project, based at the University of Kent from 2017-2020 and des... more The Metropolitan Science research project, based at the University of Kent from 2017-2020 and designed to run alongside the Science City gallery project, explores the significant place of craft, trade and commercial institutions in the development of London's technical and experimental knowledge cultures. Drawing on this research, this paper presents three case studies to show what can be revealed by considering the spaces in and around such institutions-the Royal Mint in the Tower of London, the Trinity House on Water Lane and East India House on Leadenhall Street. These sites combined ceremonial and administrative functions with important roles in the processes of making, codifying, storing, disseminating and assessing knowledge of various kinds. We examine how, both as physical and imaginative spaces, they enabled, structured and limited these processes. Showing the various ways in which the spaces we discuss were defined, policed, used and networked, we consider how their multifunctional character, which often blurred distinctions between public and private, impacted on their communities of knowledge and practice and on broader metropolitan scientific cultures. This is a matter of how they related to other spaces, other authorities, and other resources, but also of how the communities that occupied them sought to balance commercial or craft secrecy with public accountability.
The British Journal for the History of Science
published in in Luisa Pigatto and Valeria Zanini, Astronomy and its Instruments Before and After ... more published in in Luisa Pigatto and Valeria Zanini, Astronomy and its Instruments Before and After Galileo (Paduda: IAU/INAG, 2010), pp. 439-450
British Journal for the History of Science, 2013
Centre for the History of the Sciences, School of History, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7N... more Centre for the History of the Sciences, School of History, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NZ, UK. Email: [email protected] its long history, the buildings of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich were enlarged and altered many times, reflecting changing needs and expectations of astronomers and funders, but also the constraints of a limited site and small budgets. The most significant expansion took place in the late nineteenth century, overseen by the eighth Astronomer Royal, William Christie, a programme that is put in the context of changing attitudes toward scientific funding, Christie's ambitious plans for the work and staffing of the Observatory and his desire to develop a national institution that could stand with more recently founded European and American rivals. Examination of the archives reveals the range of strategies Christie was required to use to acquire consent and financial backing from the Admiralty, as well as his opportunistic approach. While hindsight might lead to criticism of his decisions, Christie eventually succeeded in completing a large building – the New Physical Observatory – that, in its decoration, celebrated Greenwich's past while, in its name, style, structure and contents, it was intended to signal the institution's modernization and future promise.
The British Journal for …, Jan 1, 2008
The British Association for the Advancement of Science sought to promote the understanding of sci... more The British Association for the Advancement of Science sought to promote the understanding of science in various ways, principally by having annual meetings in different towns and cities throughout Britain and Ireland (and, from 1884, in Canada, South Africa and Australia). This paper considers how far the location of its meetings in different urban settings influenced the nature and reception of the association's activities in promoting science, from its foundation in 1831 to the later 1930s. Several themes concerning the production and reception of science--promoting, practising, writing and receiving--are examined in different urban contexts. We consider the ways in which towns were promoted as venues for and centres of science. We consider the role of local field sites, leading local practitioners and provincial institutions for science in attracting the association to different urban locations. The paper pays attention to excursions and to the evolution and content of the BAAS meeting handbook as a 'geographical' guide to the significance of the regional setting and to appropriate scientific venues. The paper considers the reception of BAAS meetings and explores how far the association's intentions for the promotion of science varied by location and by section within the BAAS. In examining these themes--the geographical setting of the association's meetings, the reception of association science in local civic and intellectual context and the importance of place to an understanding of what the BAAS did and how it was received--the paper extends existing knowledge of the association and contributes to recent work within the history of science which has emphasized the 'local' nature of science's making and reception and the mobility of scientific knowledge.
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Papers by Rebekah Higgitt