TY  -  JOUR
TI  -  Keynote: The science that Versailles forgot
  AU -Colin Jones
PY  -  2025
VL  - 
IS  - Spring 2025
KW - Abbé Nollet
KW - exhibitions
KW - Exhibits
KW - French history
KW - French Revolution
KW - medicine
KW - scientific apparatus
KW - Versailles

AB - This article is from the keynote presented by Professor Colin Jones at the Versailles: Science and Splendour conference on 13 December 2024. The conference discussed the interconnected history of the eighteenth-century French court and medical and scientific innovations that were fuelled by the resources – both economic and intellectual – available through Versailles before the French Revolution. The conference was concurrent with the opening of the Science Museum’s Versailles: Science and Splendour exhibition, which was open from 13 December 2024 to 21 April 2025. It features a large collection of scientific and medical equipment from Versailles, including a watch designed for Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI’s rhinoceros, and Cassini’s map of the moon. Emphasising and teasing apart the relationship between power and scientific discovery, the conference gathered an international set of academics and was presented in both French and English.

N1 -  For Louis XVI and Versailles at this time see John Hardman, The Life of Louis XVI (London, 2016), pp 334–50 
N1 - [Karamzine] Cited in Mathieu da Vinha and Raphael Mason (eds), Versailles. Histoire, dictionnaire et anthologie (Paris, 2015), p 813
N1 - [Stendhal] Cited in Pierre Breillat, Versailles, ville nouvelle, capitale modèle (Versailles, 1986), p 12
N1 - [Mesmer] Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, Mass, 1968)
N1 - [Mme du Chatelet] See Nina Gelbart’s treatment of her in Minerva’s French Sisters: Women of Science in Enlightenment France (London, 2021).
PB - The Science Museum Group
 
SN -  2054-5770
LA -  eng
DO -  10.15180/252306
UR -  https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/keynote-the-science-that-versailles-forgot/
T2 -  Science Museum Group Journal