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For decades, rapid steroid responses initiated by membrane receptors have been a primary research focus. G protein-coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) is activated by 17β-estradiol and participates in functional crosstalk with other steroid receptors. With reference to the physician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), who used rigorous scientific approaches to shift paradigms and change dogma, we discuss whether GPER can also be considered an aldosterone receptor., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Marie Curie directed a research laboratory for 28 years. Between 1906 and 1934, forty five women worked under her guidance. Some were, and are, well-known in their own countries as their first woman full professor such as Ellen Gleditsch or Margaret von Wrangel, but for twenty eight of them, who were often French, nothing has ever been written. The strong presence of women in Marie Curie's laboratory has often been highlighted and has been considered as an exception, and the result of deliberate choice. Of course, these women did not choose this workplace by accident. They knew its director was a woman, a laureate of one, and after 1911, two Nobel Prizes, who was leading a well-equipped laboratory with an important radioactive source. But how did Marie Curie selected her collaborators among the many applications she received? Was her choice influenced by gender? A prosopographical research based on genealogical researches and new sources explains this presence contextually and sheds light on several questions : where did these women come from, what were their social and geographic origins, did they occupy any specific cultural or technical area inside Curie's lab, what future did they have after the laboratory? Through their lives, we can question the existence, or not, of a one profile of the female researcher in scientific areas in France.

"Chemistry of Concepts" and "Historical Sense". On Philosophical Concept Formation. The question concerning concepts and their relations to objects and words has had a long and controversial history. Recently, it is challenged by an anew turn towards objects and an emphasized object-oriented ontology. The article argues that one reason for this is the reduction of concepts towards pure rational constructions and offers arguments for alternative understandings. In this context, the article proposes a re-reading of Nietzsche's particular approach and shows that Nietzsche's thought is decisively shaped by the sciences of his time, especially physiology and chemistry. Before the background of the recent increase in research interest on Nietzsche and the sciences the article examines place and function of the sciences related to the genealogy and justification of concepts. Opposing a strong naturalist reading it makes a plea for understanding Nietzsche's epistemological critique concerning concepts systematically as a triple one: philological, physiological, and historical., (© 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

This paper explores the history of the isolation and industrial production of aluminium in France, from the work of Henri Sainte-Claire Deville in the 1850s to the latter part of the twentieth century, focusing on the relationships between academic research and industrial exploitation. In particular, it identifies a culture and organisation of research and development, "learning-by-doing," that emerged in the French aluminium industry following the establishment of the first electrolytic production facilities in the late 1880s by Paul Héroult, who, along with the American Charles Hall, patented the electrolytic method of producing the metal. This French method of R&D was a product both of a scientific culture that saw a continuity between scientific research and industrial application, and of a state policy that, unlike in Germany or the United States, was late to recognise the importance of fostering, on a large scale, the relations between academic chemistry and industry. It was only after World War II that the French state came fully to recognise the importance of underpinning industry with scientific research. And it was only from the 1960s, in the face of intensifying global competition, the risks of pollution, and the cost of energy, that the major aluminium firm Pechiney et Cie was able to replace a culture of "learning-by-doing" by one that integrated fundamental science with the production process.

This paper's primary goal is to compare the personalities, values, and influence of August Wilhelm Hofmann and Emil Fischer as exemplars and acknowledged leaders of successive generations of the German chemical profession and as scientists sharing a 19th-century liberal, internationalist outlook from the German wars of unification in the 1860s to Fischer's death in 1919 in the aftermath of German defeat in World War I. The paper will consider the influence of Hofmann and Fischer on the shaping of national scientific institutions in Germany, from founding of the German Chemical Society in 1867 to the first institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society founded in 1911, their academic leadership in other areas including the shaping of a successful academic-industrial symbiosis in organic chemistry, and finally their response to war as a force disruptive of scientific internationalism. All of these developments posed serious dilemmas, exacerbated by emerging strains of nationalism and anti-Semitism in German society. Whereas Hofmann's lifework came to a relatively successful end in 1892, Fischer was not so fortunate, as the war brought him heavy responsibilities and terrible personal losses, but with no German victory and no peace of reconciliation--a bleak end for Fischer and the 19th-century liberal ideals that had inspired him.

Historians of medicine--and even Louis Pasteur's biographers--have paid little attention to his close relationship with the Finnish artist Albert Edelfelt. A new look at Edelfelt's letters to his mother, written in Swedish and never quoted at length in English, reveals important aspects of Pasteur's working habits and personality. By understanding the active collaboration through which this very famous portrait was made, we also discover unnoticed things in the painting itself, gain a new appreciation of its original impact on the French public's image of science, and better understand its enduring influence on the portrayal of medicine in the art and the popular culture of many countries even to the present day.

Chemical ecology is a mechanistic approach to understanding the causes and consequences of species interactions, distribution, abundance, and diversity. The promise of chemical ecology stems from its potential to provide causal mechanisms that further our understanding of ecological interactions and allow us to more effectively manipulate managed systems. Founded on the notion that all organisms use endogenous hormones and chemical compounds that mediate interactions, chemical ecology has flourished over the past 50 years since its origin. In this essay we highlight the breadth of chemical ecology, from its historical focus on pheromonal communication, plant-insect interactions, and coevolution to frontier themes including community and ecosystem effects of chemically mediated species interactions. Emerging approaches including the -omics, phylogenetic ecology, the form and function of microbiomes, and network analysis, as well as emerging challenges (e.g., sustainable agriculture and public health) are guiding current growth of this field. Nonetheless, the directions and approaches we advocate for the future are grounded in classic ecological theories and hypotheses that continue to motivate our broader discipline.

Everybody knows that glass is and always has been an important presence in chemical laboratories. Yet the very self-evidence of this notion tends to obscure a supremely important change in chemical practice during the early decades of the nineteenth century. This essay uses manuals of specifically chemical glassblowing published between about 1825 and 1835 to show that early nineteenth-century chemists began using glass in distinctly new ways and that their appropriation of glassblowing skill had profoundly important effects on the emerging discipline of chemistry. The new practice of chemistry in glass-exemplified in this essay by Justus Liebig's introduction of a new item of chemical glassware for organic analysis, the Kaliapparat--transformed not merely the material culture of chemistry but also its geography, its pedagogy, and, ultimately, its institutions. Moving chemistry into glass--a change so important that it warrants the term "glassware revolution"--had far-reaching consequences.

In a number of papers and in his recent book, Is Water H2O? Evidence, Realism, Pluralism (2012), Hasok Chang has argued that the correct interpretation of the Chemical Revolution provides a strong case for the view that progress in science is served by maintaining several incommensurable "systems of practice" in the same discipline, and concerning the same region of nature. This paper is a critical discussion of Chang's reading of the Chemical Revolution. It seeks to establish, first, that Chang's assessment of Lavoisier's and Priestley's work and character follows the phlogistonists' "actors' sociology"; second, that Chang simplifies late-eighteenth-century chemical debates by reducing them to an alleged conflict between two systems of practice; third, that Chang's evidence for a slow transition from phlogistonist theory to oxygen theory is not strong; and fourth, that he is wrong to assume that chemists at the time did not have overwhelming good reasons to favour Lavoisier's over the phlogistonists' views., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

I respond to the critical comments by Martin Kusch and Ursula Klein on my account of the Chemical Revolution. I comment along three different lines: descriptive, explanatory, and normative. (1) I agree with Klein that Lavoisier did not introduce drastic changes in chemical ontology, but maintain that there was methodological incommensurability in the Chemical Revolution; in response to Kusch's view, I maintain that Lavoisier's victory was slow and incomplete. (2) Admitting that there were many causes shaping the outcome of the Chemical Revolution, including the convenience of Lavoisier's theoretical scheme and various complicated social factors, I still think that the general rise of compositionism was an important factor. (3) I defend my normative pluralist view on the Chemical Revolution, denying Kusch's argument that chemists had overwhelmingly good reasons to trust Lavoisier and his allies over the phlogistonists. Overall, I agree with Kusch that it would be desirable to have a good descriptive-normative sociological account of the Chemical Revolution, but I also think that it should be an account that allows for divergence in individuals' and sub-communities' self-determination., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

If we define scientific revolutions as changes of scientists' ontologies, types of causal explanation, and paradigmatic types of methods and instruments, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier's contribution to chemistry did not amount to a scientific revolution. Contrary to the received view that Lavoisier initiated a "chemical revolution," which is accepted by Chang and Kusch, I argue that Lavoisier shared with the phlogistonists their "flat ontology" of chemical substance, established decades before the 1770s, their types of explaining chemical transformation, and their quantitative methods. Based on my historical reconstruction, I criticize Chang's argument that the late eighteenth-century phlogistic systems and Lavoisier's system belonged to two different theoretical traditions. As a consequence, I also question Chang's argument that the acceptance of Lavoisier's system can be explained in terms of dominance of "compositionism" over "principlism.", (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In this highly personal account of my career in science, I try to show how many others influenced its course. I was able to abandon work in pure chemistry and microbiology and to take up research in entomology only with the help of others. My faith in the value of collaborative, interdisciplinary work has been the key to success. Our focus on proteins of insect hemolymph has provided valuable insights into insect biochemistry and physiology.

This essay investigates the relationship between color and contingency in Robert Boyle's Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) and his essays on the unsuccessfulness of experiments in Certain Physiological Essays (1661). In these two works Boyle wrestles with a difficult practical and philosophical problem with experiments, which he calls the problem of contingency. In Touching Colours, the problem of contingency is magnified by the much-debated issue of whether color had any deep epistemic importance. His limited theoretical principle guiding him in Touching Colours, that color is but modified light, further exacerbated the problem. Rather than theory, Boyle often relied on craftsmen, whose mastery of color phenomena was, Boyle mentions, brought about by economic forces, to determine when colors were indicators of important 'inward' properties of substances, and thus to secure a solid foundation for his experimental history of color.

Sir John Cornforth's work on the stereochemistry of enzyme reactions involved in the biosynthesis of squalene and cholesterol and in the formation and metabolism of a chiral methyl group in acetyl co-enzyme A, is reviewed.

This review describes the life of Sir John Cornforth AC CBE FRS, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1975. It covers his early life in Australia, his work in Oxford, the National Institute for Medical Research, the Milstead Laboratory of Chemical Enzymology and the University of Sussex, together with the contributions made by his wife, Lady Rita Cornforth.

Ali Riza Bey was born in Istanbul in 1867. He graduated from the Imperial School of Medicine (Mekteb-i Tibbiye-i dhine) in 1888 and was sent to France six months later to specialize in chemistry. After staying there for four years, he returned to Turkey in 1892. Besides teaching courses in biochemistry, analytical chemistry and organic chemistry at both the military and civil schools of medicine and at the University (Dariifiinun), Ali Riza Bey managed the laboratory of chemistry at the Imperial School of Medicine. In 1902, he was appointed as a chemist at the Hamidiye Children's Hospital (Hamidiye Etfal Hastahanesi) where he would conduct significant research on analyzing and bottling the mineral waters of Afyonkarahisar. He also developed a reagent for detecting cystine. In 1901, he published a textbook titled Kimya-yi Uzvi (Organic Chemistry) in which he used chemical symbols written in Arabic letters, and which indicates that he closely followed the recent developments in the organic chemistry.

Before Newton's seminal work on the spectrum, seventeenth-century English natural philosophers such as Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Nehemliah Grew and Robert Plot attributed the phenomenon of color in the natural world to salts and saline chymistry. They rejected Aristotelian ideas that color was related to the object's hot and cold qualities, positing instead that saline principles governed color and color changes in flora, fauna and minerals. In our study, we also characterize to what extent chymistry was a basic analytical tool for seventeenth-century English natural historians.

Ole H. Mynster (1772-1818) was a stepson of the leading physician at the Royal Frederik Hospital in Copenhagen. At an early age he became fond of zoology and mineralogy. He created "societies" in Enlightenment-style for boys and young people with lectures and collections. Later on a circle of talented young students, scientists and poets met in his small room at the hospital. Some of them with Ole Mynster as the head set up a modern scientific journal, Physicalsk, oeconomisk og medicochirurgisk Bibliotek for Danmark og Norge which encouraged the introduction of antiphlogistic chemistry. Ole Mynster became physician at the Royal Frederik Hospital and lecturer in clinical pharmacology. He wrote the first book in Danish on pharmacology based upon chemistry. In their memoirs, prominent members of his circle have told about him, and his son F.L. Mynster has written a draft for a biography. An overview of the activities within natural science and medicine of the young Ole Hieronymus Mynster is presented.

In the first decade of Republican China (1911-49), masculinity was explored in writings on how to manufacture makeup that appeared in women's magazines. Male authors and editors of these writings--some of whom were connoisseurs of technology, some of whom were would-be manufacturers--appropriated the tropes of the domestic and feminine to elevate hands-on work and explore industry and manufacturing as legitimate masculine pursuits. Tapping into time-honored discourses of virtuous productivity in the inner chambers and employing practices of appropriating the woman's voice to promote unorthodox sentiment, these recipes "feminized" production to valorize a new masculine agenda, which included chemistry and manufacturing, for building a new China.

Sir John Cornforth work on the synthesis of cholesterolandpenicillamine, on the chemistry of oxazoles, the stereochemistry of the synthesis of alkenes, the synthesis of abscisic acid and of dibenzophospholes as mimics of enzyme action, is reviewed.

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded jointly to William E. Moerner, Stefan W. Hell, and Eric Betzig "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy." I discuss the contributions made by this year's awardees and how advances in understanding the behavior of fluorophores and research in light microscopy converged to allow the improved visualization of biological structures., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Many disciplines and scientific fields have undergone a computational turn in the past several decades. This paper analyzes this sort of turn by investigating the case of computational quantum chemistry. The main claim is that the transformation from quantum to computational quantum chemistry involved changes in three dimensions. First, on the side of instrumentation, small computers and a networked infrastructure took over the lead from centralized mainframe architecture. Second, a new conception of computational modeling became feasible and assumed a crucial role. And third, the field of computa- tional quantum chemistry became organized in a market-like fashion and this market is much bigger than the number of quantum theory experts. These claims will be substantiated by an investigation of the so-called density functional theory (DFT), the arguably pivotal theory in the turn to computational quantum chemistry around 1990.

In the eighteenth century, many chemists asserted that chemical operations could not decompose a substance into its natural, constituent elements or principles. One such chemist was Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), who claimed, following the work of Robert Boyle and Joan Baptista van Helmont, that examples of these alleged analyses were, in fact, not reductions of a body into elements, but rather the rearrangement of its particles by the fire. Since we cannot observe the shape and arrangement of particles directly, he reasoned, any claim regarding the elemental status of a substance was purely speculative and inadmissible in his chemistry. As a result, Boerhaave devised a system of chemistry which, in effect, accepted no elemental substances and which focused on understanding how the chemist's 'instruments,' including fire and chemical menstrua, effected changes in matter. I conclude by showing how Boerhaave's conclusion had ramifications for later developments in chemistry, especially those of the French Stahlians and of Antione Lavoisier.

This paper explores diverse conceptions of the physicality and tangibility of elements and principles in early modern chymistry. By tracing the development of natural philosophical and corpuscular ideas about material elements and principles among several physicans and chymists, including Thomas Erastus, Andreas Libavius, Daniel Sennert, and Anton Günther Billich, this article locates a learned tradition that developed predominantly in Germany, and which directly challenged a common understanding of matter held by major Paracelsians as well as authors from the French textbook tradition. Likewise, conceptions of incorporeal elements or principles are shown to have developed from the ideas of Paracelsus and Petrus Severinus, whereas authors in the learned tradition emphasised a particular interpretation of Aristotle. The article concludes by suggesting that chymical interpretations of material composition had an important influence throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that this provides further evidence that the so-called "compositional revolution" in chemistry was well underway prior to the eighteenth century.