Jennifer Rampling | Princeton University (original) (raw)
I am a historian of science and medicine, with particular research interests in the history of alchemy and early chemistry. My first book, The Experimental Fire, traces alchemical ideas and practices in England over four centuries, from 1300-1700. My second book project investigates the visual culture of alchemy, focusing on a spectacular group of manuscripts known as the ‘Ripley Scrolls’.
I have edited several collections of essays, including one on the Elizabethan mathematician and astrologer, John Dee (1527–1609), and another on alchemy in early modern Europe. I am also engaged in recreating early chemical experiments.
From 2013-2017 I was the Editor of Ambix, the Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, and the leading specialist journal in the history of alchemy and chemistry. With Prof. Lawrence Principe, I am also general editor of a series of critical editions and translations: Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry.
Address: Princeton University
Department of History
129 Dickinson Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
USA
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Papers by Jennifer Rampling
Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World Macropaedia
Nature, 2014
ABSTRACT To mark the 450th anniversary of the bard's birth, Jennifer Rampling probes how ... more ABSTRACT To mark the 450th anniversary of the bard's birth, Jennifer Rampling probes how mathematics and technology shaped his era.
An influential strand of English alchemy was the pursuit of the “vegetable stone,” a medicinal el... more An influential strand of English alchemy was the pursuit of the “vegetable stone,” a medicinal elixir popularized by George Ripley (d. ca. 1490), made from a metallic substance, “sericon.” Yet the identity of sericon was not fixed, undergoing radical reinterpretation between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries as Ripley’s lead-based practice was eclipsed by new methods, notably the antimonial approach of George Starkey (1628–65). Tracing “sericonian” alchemy over 250 years, I show how alchemists fed their practical findings back into textual accounts, creating a “feedback loop” in which the authority of past adepts was maintained by exegetical manipulations—a process that I term “practical exegesis.”
Bshm Bulletin: Journal of The British Society for The History of Mathematics, 2011
This article considers John Dee's famous classification and justification of ‘the Sciences, and A... more This article considers John Dee's famous classification and justification of ‘the Sciences, and Artes Mathematicall’ in his Mathematicall praeface to Henry Billingsley's Elements of geometrie of Euclid of Megara (1570), the first English translation of Euclid. It is a revised version of a lecture presented to the British Society for the History of Mathematics Autumn Meeting, October 2010, under the title ‘John Dee and the Elizabethan Mathematics of Everything’.
Book Reviews by Jennifer Rampling
Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World Macropaedia
Nature, 2014
ABSTRACT To mark the 450th anniversary of the bard's birth, Jennifer Rampling probes how ... more ABSTRACT To mark the 450th anniversary of the bard's birth, Jennifer Rampling probes how mathematics and technology shaped his era.
An influential strand of English alchemy was the pursuit of the “vegetable stone,” a medicinal el... more An influential strand of English alchemy was the pursuit of the “vegetable stone,” a medicinal elixir popularized by George Ripley (d. ca. 1490), made from a metallic substance, “sericon.” Yet the identity of sericon was not fixed, undergoing radical reinterpretation between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries as Ripley’s lead-based practice was eclipsed by new methods, notably the antimonial approach of George Starkey (1628–65). Tracing “sericonian” alchemy over 250 years, I show how alchemists fed their practical findings back into textual accounts, creating a “feedback loop” in which the authority of past adepts was maintained by exegetical manipulations—a process that I term “practical exegesis.”
Bshm Bulletin: Journal of The British Society for The History of Mathematics, 2011
This article considers John Dee's famous classification and justification of ‘the Sciences, and A... more This article considers John Dee's famous classification and justification of ‘the Sciences, and Artes Mathematicall’ in his Mathematicall praeface to Henry Billingsley's Elements of geometrie of Euclid of Megara (1570), the first English translation of Euclid. It is a revised version of a lecture presented to the British Society for the History of Mathematics Autumn Meeting, October 2010, under the title ‘John Dee and the Elizabethan Mathematics of Everything’.