In September, Alain Touwaide participated in the teaching of History of Science at the French University Denis Diderot in Paris. Intervening on Byzantine Science in a program devoted to the History of Medieval Science, he illustrated the relevance of Byzantium in such teaching, as the Byzantine empire was the center of a network of connections which contributed much to generating the medieval scientific activity.
With geneticist Robert Fleischer (Smithsonian Institution) and IPMT CEO Emanuela Appetiti, Touwaide delivered a keynote lecture at the 2nd Biomedical Sciences in Archaeology held in Kusadasi (Turkey), September 15-18, on the identification of the medicines recovered from the Baratti shipwreck. They illustrated the potential of applying advanced laboratory research (next generation DNA sequencing) to archaeological remains of biological material, including the validation of the written record of medical practice that such analytical methods provides.
On Thursday, October 13, Touwaide took part in the Unveiling the Mysteries of Medicine program offered by the Ward Melville Heritage Organization, at Stony Brook, NY. This session was devoted to Natural and Alternative Medicine, and brought together a small group of scientists and medical professionals to help clarify the various implications of disease, sickness, history of treatments, and technology of present and future medicine.
In November, 14-15, the Institute will be represented at the Life and Literature conference organized in Chicago IL, by the international consortium of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The conference, to be hosted at the Field Museum, will bring together speakers from all specialties who will debate about the ways of constructing massive digital libraries, the interaction with scientists and other similar enterprises, and the impact of such collections on knowledge and the practice of science. Intervening in Life and Literature panel (devoted to Building Collaborative Networks for Science and the Humanities through Scientific Literature), Alain Touwaide will show how a massive collection of digital data from Renaissance printed herbal transformed the current historiography of botany.
