Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Charlotte Bigg

Visiting Scholar

Ph.D., Centre Alexandre Koyré/CNRS, Paris, France

Funded by the CNRS

Residence: February 1 - June 30, 2012


Profile

Charlotte Bigg is an historian of physics, chemistry and astrophysics and their popularisation. Her PhD dissertation focussed on the circulation of spectroscopic instruments and techniques between different scientific and industrial settings (University of Cambridge, 2002). She is currently completing a project on the history of Brownian  motion research in early twentieth century France, examining in particular the work of physical chemist Jean Perrin. On 1 January 2009 she took up a position as Chargé de Recherche at the Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris (CNRS), with a project on the observatory as a scientific, political and cultural actor from the late 18th to the early 20th century.

Selected publications

Charlotte Bigg. "Evident Atoms. Visuality in Jean Perrin’s Brownian motion research. " Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 39 (2008)

Charlotte Bigg. "La Carte du Ciel vue de Potsdam." In: La Carte du Ciel, Histoire et actualité d’un Projet scientifique international, eds.: J. Lamy. 2008.

Bigg, Charlotte. "In weiter Ferne so nah : Bilder des Titans. " Bildwelten des Wissens 5 (2 2007)

Bigg, Charlotte. "The scientist as personality : elaborating a science of intimacy in the Nadar/ Chevreul interview (1886)." In: Science images and popular images of the sciences, eds.: Hüppauf, Bernd-Rüdiger; Weingart, Peter. New York [u.a.]: Routledge, 2007.

Bigg, Charlotte. "The panorama, or la nature a coup d’oeil." In: Observing nature - representing experience : the osmotic dynamics of romanticism 1800-1850, eds.: Fiorentini, Erna. Berlin: Reimer, 2007.

Talks and presentations

22-23 April 2009
Workshop on Seriality and scientific objects in the the age of capital and empire, 1848-1919, History and Philosophy of Science dept., University of Cambridge – "Seriality transposed. On the techniques of studying the motion of organisms and molecules ca. 1900"
12-13 March 2009
Conference on Observation in economics and natural sciences, historically considered, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam – "Observation in the age of statistical mechanics: the case of Brownian motion"
5 February 2009
Séminaire Le biographique dans l’histoire et la sociologie des sciences, Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris – "L’émergence du scientifique comme personnalité : la science de l’intimité dans l’'interwiew' de Chevreul par Nadar (1886)"
10-11 December 2008
Workshop Cinematography, Seriality and the Sciences. Or: Was there a cinematographic turn in the (Life) Sciences around 1900? , Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin – "Seriality transposed. On the techniques of studying the motion of organisms and molecules c. 1900"
4-7 July 2008
Session on Thinking with experiments, or the invention of theoretical physics, 1850-1914., 3 Societies Meeting, Keble College, Oxford – "Not theoretical physics: Perrin, Borel, Langevin on Brownian motion"

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