Spaces and collections in the portrayal of the chemist of the chemist José Júlio Betencourt Rodrigues

Abstract

This chapter aims at portraying José Júlio Bettencourt Rodrigues (1843-1893), professor of chemistry at the Lisbon Polytechnic School, by cross-cheeking information obtained from documentary and material sources: archives, the space of the Laboratório Chimico and the chemistry collections kept by the museum of Science of the University of Lisbon (MCUL). Despite the difficulties such an approach might pose, namely the facto that these collections have not yet been wholly catalogued, it is worth attempting a convergence of “words” and “objects”. In the last decades of the twentieth century, interest in scientific and technical heritage derives directly from new trends in the history of science and technology, which began to value the material culture of scientific and technological research and teaching, in particular the role of instruments in the shaping and development of experimental practices, and of the relations between science and industry.