ABSTRACT Around 65 AD, the Ancient Roman philosopher Seneca wrote his only text concerning Natural Phenomenon: Natural Questions. Considered since medieval times as part of a trinity of great thinkers including Plato and Aristotle, Seneca’s work in rhetoric, philosophy, and legal theory still receive praise today. The praise is not replicated for Natural Questions, however. Modern historians who consider the work paint it as uninspiring. Pliny, another Roman author and philosopher, wrote a far more encompassing and detailed work called Natural History, and it is this work that is considered the premier Roman comment on Natural Philosophy. These contemporaneous works become juxtaposed and used to criticize Seneca’s work as inferior. A deeper consideration of the texts --primarily the subject material and use of poetry-- will determine that Seneca and Pliny wrote to different audiences and belong to different genres.

This dissertation is an analysis of the professionalization tactics of white, native-born, Protestant, middle-class women who served with the U.S. armed forces as dietitians during World War I. Through the overlapping rubrics of maternalism, citizenship, and professionalism, I examine the ways in which dominant race, class, and gender ideologies inflected their quest for professionalization. I specifically examine the way hospital dietitians infused their expertise with rhetoric of race betterment and national security to acquire distinct status and authority in relation to other female medical/health practitioners. In this study, I locate the ideological origins of Public Law 36, 80 th Congress, establishing the U.S. Women's Medical Specialist Corps, within the cultural sensibilities of American antebellum evangelical health reform movements. Public Law 80-36 (April 16, 1947) authorized Regular Army commissions for dietitians, physical therapists, and occupational therapists. I contend that dietetics, a central force in the rise of the home economics movement, also served as an important portal for women's access to higher education in science and medicine. Finally, I hold that military service was critical to the professionalization of women's labor and claims to citizenship in early twentieth century America. In other words, military service allowed native-born, Protestant, middle- and upper-class, white American women to mobilize, network, and expand the scope of their work, as well as leaven their access to professional resources and political power.

This study was undertaken with the idea of bringing together information concerning some of the most important Kentuckians who have made contributions to the biological sciences. In order that we may better understand and appreciate the work done by these men, it was thought best to give a brief discussion of the major periods in the history of biological development. An attempt will be made to interpret the contributions of the men discussed, according to the period in which they lived. Only a sufficient number of men are discussed in each epoch to give a correct picture of the trends of that period.

This thesis presents an account of a prominent eighteenth-century European naturalist, Peter Pallas (1741-1811), in the setting to which he contributed his scientific talents—the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. A complete outline of Pallas' life is presented for purposes of continuity, but the heart of the thesis is presented in chapters four and five, which combined, relate the major features of Pallas' career in Russia. These two chapters are set against pertinent background material, most of which is involved with the institution itself which supported Pallas. The St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences is surveyed in its origin and development in the eighteenth century and material is presented which will outline the ups and downs of the development of academic life in Russia as well as the general milieu in which Pallas fitted. This milieu, it has been concluded, was one of lively and relatively unfettered advance in the development of science in Russia, to which Pallas contributed a great deal of stimulus by way of his widely known and respected accomplishments. The focal point of Pallas' career is represented by his Siberian expedition of 1768-1774, a momentous six-year scientific enterprise to which a central part of the research has been directed. The account of the Pallas Expedition presented here is entirely original, utilizing chiefly his own travel account and the Proceedings (Protokoly) of the Academy, from which source, in the absence of archival materials, can be gained the general content of Pallas' communications to the Academy during his absence. To add perspective, the Pallas Expedition has been set against the historical and contemporary background of Russian scientific exploration in the eighteenth century. An appendix has also been included which lists the Russian-sponsored eighteenth-century scientific expeditions. The follow-up to Pallas' expedition--the remainder of his career in St. Petersburg--is equally a central part of the study. As an academician in St. Petersburg from 1774 to 1793, Pallas was a luminary of European natural science as well as a pillar of scientific achievement in Russia. In historical terms and seen against the background of the Academy of which he was a part, Pallas’ scholarly contributions in Russia have been outlined, most of which can be explained as a consequence of his expedition. A wide selection of available secondary material has been utilized to explain Pallas’ academic career supplemented by some original research supplemented by some original research (chiefly from the Academy Proceedings) and the opportunity I have had to see and scan most of his major publications pertaining to zoology and botany, the major fields to which he contributed. Although of German background, Pallas spent most of his adult life in Russia (1767-1810). His career there forms one of the highlights of foreign scientific expeditionary achievement during the century that Russia relied almost exclusively on foreigners to establish the serious beginnings of both. His contributions--expeditionary and academically in the realm of biology--for obvious reasons are more closely connected to the Russian arena; perhaps for that reason he has failed to attract deserved notice alongside the eighteenth-century European naturalists who are now more popularly known. This thesis attempts no more than to account historically for the career of Peter Simon Pallas in Russia and to present his remarkable accomplishments. A categorized, partially annotated bibliography is appended, preceded by a bibliographic explanation.

We investigate the origins of mathematical societies and journals. We argue that the origins of today’s professional societies and journals have their roots in the informal gatherings of mathematicians in 17th century Italy, France, and England. The small gatherings in these nations began as academies and after gaining government recognition and support, they became the ancestors of the professional societies that exist today. We provide a brief background on the influences of the Renaissance and Reformation before discussing the formation of mathematical academies in each country.

We investigate the origins of mathematical societies and journals. We argue that the origins of today’s professional societies and journals have their roots in the informal gatherings of mathematicians in 17th century Italy, France, and England. The small gatherings in these nations began as academies and after gaining government recognition and support, they became the ancestors of the professional societies that exist today. We provide a brief background on the influences of the Renaissance and Reformation before discussing the formation of mathematical academies in each country.

This thesis focuses on the commercialization of Chinese medicine in the post-Mao era, from 1977 to 2014. It looks at its social and environmental impact on local rural areas.

I will analyze the transcript from the 2000 BPAC meeting on the reevaluation of the MSM deferral policy and will elucidate the role that scientific data, specifically the data associated with NAT, plays in the 2000 deliberations surrounding the MSM deferral. This examination reveals that while scientific data did play a significant role in the decision making process of the BPAC there were also a number of other factors that influenced their deliberations as well. Ultimately what I will argue is that there were two different platforms present in the meeting and that each platform performs and enacts the body and blood of the donor differently. One platform is all about the inclusionary principles of blood donation and is most concerned by the potential for discrimination toward the body of the donor. The other platform is all about risk regulation and economics and is most concerned about how the body and blood of the donor will affect the safety and integrity of the blood supply. These platforms are not perspectival or dependent on view; this is not an epistemological argument but rather, an ontological one that concerns the reality and materiality of the situation, not the perspective. Thinking about these two platforms gives a handle to the nature of this controversy and contextualizes the committee’s decision to continue with the MSM deferral.

Widespread malnutrition after the Great Depression called into question the role of the British state in preserving the welfare of both its citizens and its subjects. International organizations such as the League of Nations, empire-wide projects such as nutrition surveys conducted by the Committee for Nutrition in the Colonial Empire (CNCE), sub-imperial networks of medical and teaching professionals, and individuals on-the-spot in different colonies wove a dense web of ideas on nutrition. African women quickly became the focus of efforts to end malnutrition due to Malthusian concerns of underpopulation in Africa and African women’s role as both farmers and mothers. Currently, the field focuses either on the history of nutrition science in Britain specifically, such as David Smith’s Nutrition in Britain: Science, Scientists, and Politics in the Twentieth Century, or broadly on the history of European scientists of all disciplines in Africa, such as Helen Tilley’s Africa as a Living Lab. Gendered medical histories in Africa tend to have a narrow geographical focus and a broad chronology, such as Henrietta Moore and Megan Vaughan’s Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990. This work enlarges the field both by linking British nutrition science to nutrition science in Africa, and by analyzing gendered colonial policy across space rather than across time. The dissertation examines the process by which colonial officials came to pin their hopes of ending malnutrition on the education of African women. Specifically, this project analyzes nutrition surveys from the League of Nations and the CNCE, as well as articles and pamphlets circulated by medical and education experts. Using circular dispatches from the Colonial Office and CNCE, meeting minutes from the Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies, annual education reports, and medical journal articles, this work zooms out to show the global context of the interest in malnutrition and the scientific advancements of nutrition. Then, the dissertation zooms in to illustrate how those global concerns impacted women in Southern Nigeria, who used colonial education for their own goals of professional advancement or marrying up rather than ending malnutrition. I argue that African women’s education transitioned from under the control of missions to the control of the state as a result of the proposed solutions of colonial nutrition surveys. Furthermore, I argue that, as a priority of the colonial state, the pedagogy of African women’s nutrition education became its own kind of colonial experiment as educators and students disagreed on the best means of relating the new knowledge of nutrition. In conclusion, the colonial state increasingly controlled African women’s education by the end of the 1930s, and this focus on altering individual African women’s food habits via education allowed the colonial state to take action to solve malnutrition without altering the colonial economy from which they profited. State-controlled education attempted to create a new kind of colonial subject concerned with science, which revealed the limits of state intervention and provided a new arena for African women to shape their own futures.

This dissertation explores the world of early American botany and the transatlantic community of botanical enthusiasts from the perspective of William Hamilton, gentleman botanical collector in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Philadelphia. Drawing on both existing documentary sources and three seasons of archaeological excavation at The Woodlands, Hamilton's country estate on the west bank of the Schuylkill River, I analyze both the physical requirements of botanical collecting as well as the more nuanced social, cultural, and economic elements of this trade and its early modern participants.;The personal experiences of individual participants in this exchange are often traced through the existing documentary evidence they leave behind, in the form of letters, plant orders, and published works. But this botanical exchange was not just intellectual; it was also physical and material, as both knowledge about plants and the plants themselves were shipped back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean. Exploring the physical and material elements of this trade adds immeasurably to our understanding of the experiences of individual participants by locating them and the items exchanged within the physical spaces of these exchanges themselves. The archaeological investigation of William Hamilton's greenhouse complex at The Woodlands explores the physical and material elements of this trade in one specific site of exchange -- Hamilton's greenhouse complex -- and the ways in which those physical and material elements reflect the experiences of the participants in this transatlantic botanical trade.