Jennifer M. Rampling

Title
Associate Professor of History
Office Phone
Office
104 Dickinson Hall
Office Hours
Tuesday: 10:00 am-12:00 pm

and by appointment; also available on Zoom by prior arrangement.

Bio/Description

I am a historian of medieval and early modern science and medicine, specialising in alchemy. In my teaching and research, I explore alchemy’s relationship with natural philosophy, medicine and culture in pre-modern Europe (particularly England), focusing especially on interconnections between textual authority, artisanal practice, and alchemical imagery. My interests also extend to early modern intellectual history and the history and philosophy of chemistry more generally.

I hold degrees in Law (LL.B. Hons., Hull, 1996), Renaissance Studies (MA, London, 2006) and History and Philosophy of Science (Ph.D., Cambridge, 2010). Prior to joining the Princeton faculty in 2014, I spent four years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Cambridge. I have also held visiting fellowships at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia (2009); Scaliger Institute, University of Leiden (2010); University of Athens (2011); and Beinecke Library, Yale University (2013). Since 2013, I have been Editor of Ambix, the main journal for the history of alchemy and chemistry.

Current Projects

I am completing two book projects at present. The first, contracted with the University of Chicago Press, traces the relationship between alchemical ideas and practices in medieval and early modern England, drawing on my Wellcome Trust-funded project, “Medicine and the Making of English Alchemy, 1300–1700.” My second book, The Hidden Stone, investigates the visual culture of alchemy, focusing on a spectacular group of manuscripts known as the “Ripley Scrolls.” I am also starting work on a new project that aims to recover the practices of early chemistry by recreating historical experiments.

Selected Publications

“Transmuting Sericon: Alchemy as ‘Practical Exegesis’ in Early Modern England.” Osiris, 29 (2014): 19–34.

“A Secret Language: The Ripley Scrolls.” In Art and Alchemy: The Mystery of Transformation, ed. Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk, Beat Wismer, Sven Dupré, and Anita Hachmann (Düsseldorf: Hirmer/Museum Kunstpalast, 2014), 38–45; translated as “Eine geheime Sprache: Die Ripley-Bildrollen,” in Kunst und Alchemie: Das Geheimnis der Verwandlung, ed. Kerssenbrock-Krosigk et al (Düsseldorf: Hirmer/Museum Kunstpalast, 2014), 38–45.

“Depicting the Medieval Alchemical Cosmos: George Ripley’s Wheel of Inferior Astronomy.” Early Science and Medicine, 18 (2013): 45–86. Reprinted in Observing the World Through Images: Diagrams and Figures in the Early-Modern Arts and Sciences, ed. N. Jardine & I. Fay (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 45–86.

“Transmission and Transmutation: George Ripley and the Place of English Alchemy in Early Modern Europe,” Early Science and Medicine, 17 (2012): 477–499.

“John Dee and the Alchemists: Practising and Promoting English Alchemy in the Holy Roman Empire.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 43 (2012): 498–508.

“The Elizabethan Mathematics of Everything: John Dee’s ‘Mathematicall Praeface’ to Euclid’s Elements,” BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, 26:3 (2011): 135–146.

“The Catalogue of the Ripley Corpus: Alchemical Writings Attributed to George Ripley (d. ca. 1490).” Ambix, 57 (2010): 125–201. Awarded the 2013 Neu-Whitrow Bibliography Prize.

“Establishing the Canon: George Ripley and His Alchemical Sources.” Ambix, 55 (2008): 189–208. Awarded the 2008 Partington Prize.

Journals

Editor, Ambix

General Editor (with Lawrence M. Principe), Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry: Sir Robert Mond Studies in the History of Early Chemistry

Guest editor, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012): special issue, “John Dee and the Sciences: Early Modern Networks of Knowledge”

Guest editor (with D. Bobory), Early Science and Medicine 17 (2012): special issue, “Alchemy at the Fringes: Communication and Practice at the Peripheries of Early Modern Europe”

Advisee(s):
Area of Interest
Intellectual History
Medicine & Health
Home Department & Other Affiliations
History
Period
15th & 16th Centuries
17th & 18th Centuries
Region
Europe