A mind of her own. Hélène Metzger to Emile Meyerson, 1933

In May 1933 the historian of chemistry Hélène Metzger addressed a letter to the renowned historian and philosopher of science Emile Meyerson, a cri de coeur against Meyerson's patronizing attitude toward her. This recently discovered letter is published and translated here because it is an exceptional human document reflecting the gender power structure of our discipline in interwar France. At the age of forty-three, and with five books to her credit. Metzger was still a junior scholar in the exclusively male community of French historians and philosophers of science. We sketch the institutional setting of higher learning in France at the time, noting the limited openings it offered to would-be femmes savantes, and situate Metzger in this context. We also describe the philosophical differences between Metzger and Meyerson. Though Metzger never managed to obtain a post of her own, in her letter to Meyerson she forcefully lays claim, at least, to a mind of her own.     

Making mobile knowledges. The educational cruises of the Revue Générale des Sciences Pures et Appliquées, 1897-1914

Over the past few years there has been an increasing acknowledgment that all knowledge is "sited knowledge." While place, mobility, and travel have become central issues in the history (and geography) of science, much of the discussion has nevertheless revolved around "formal scientific knowledge." This essay focuses on a specific type of popular "mobile" scientific knowledge making that emerged in the last decades of the nineteenth century: the educational cruise. In particular, it considers a series of voyages d'etude organized by the French scientific periodical Revue Générale des Sciences Pures et Appliquées between 1897 and 1914 that were open to the general public. It examines both the ways and the spaces in which knowledge was produced and the type of knowledge that was produced.