https://hdl.handle.net/10481/77551 2026-04-20T23:03:30Z https://hdl.handle.net/10481/77570 La mirada occidental hacia el otro: dos siglos de difíciles encuentros Girón Sierra, Álvaro La expansión europea, que comienza a desarrollarse de manera palpable desde los descubrimientos de los navegantes portugueses a partir del XV, alcanza un impresionante desarrollo en el periodo que va desde mediados del XVIII a la Gran Guerra, entrando en crisis con los procesos de descolonización posteriores a 1945. Es bien sabido que la actividad científica, en la medida que era un instrumento geopolítico de primer nivel, tuvo un papel enormemente relevante en el proceso. A la vez que se abren nuevos mercados y se establecen nuevos equilibrios de poder, mares y continentes son meticulosamente cartografiados, nuevas especies vegetales y animales catalogadas, otros cuerpos y mentes sometidas a la mirada médica. Mientras tanto, en las metrópolis se establecen grandes museos de ciencias naturales, lugares en los que no sólo se impulsa y divulga la investigación científica 1, sino en los que se celebra la inexorable marcha de los estados-nación europeos; su capacidad de establecer conocimientos y poderes globales. Nuevas disciplinas toman carta de naturaleza en estrecha conexión con este proceso —la Etnología, la Antropología Física— mientras que otras subdisciplinas dentro de la medicina —la medicina tropical, por ejemplo— comienzan su desarrollo. Por otro lado, durante el largo periodo en que la ciencia de laboratorio todavía no había establecido una primacía indiscutible, la forma más habitual de acreditarse como naturalista era a través del viaje científico. Viajes que, como muestran muy a las claras las biograf ías de Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt, Thomas Huxley o Piotr Kropotkin, estaban de una manera u otra ligados a los intereses y necesidades de los imperios emergentes. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/77564 From prophylaxis to atomic cocktail: Circulation of radioiodine Santesmases, María Jesús This paper is a history of iodine. To trace the trajectory of this element, goiter is used as a guideline for the articulation of a historical account, as a representation of thyroid disorders and of the spaces of knowledge and practices related to iodine. Iodine’s journey from goiter treatment and prophylaxis in the late interwar period took on a new course after WWII by including the element’s radioactive isotopes. I intend to show how the introduction of radioiodine contributed to stabilize the epistemic role of iodine, in both its non-radioactive and radioactive form, in thyroid gland studies and in the treatment of its disorders. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/77563 Dreams and needs: The applications of isotopes to industry in Spain in the 1960s Barca Salom, Francesc X. The efforts to change the bleak image of the atom bomb galvanised the discourse on the peaceful applications of nuclear energy. This contributed to a utopian vision of nuclear energy, especially of the uses of radioactive isotopes in the immediate post-war period. Desire for peace engendered dreams of a better future based on the use of radioactivity. These dreams were first converted into reality using isotopes in medicine. These advances were subsequently applied to industry and agriculture. This article gives an overview of the peaceful applications of isotopes in industry and agriculture in Spain. It describes a period in which the initial dreams, sometimes fantastic and other times down-to-earth, gave rise to the first applications to meet the needs of economic growth in the 1960s. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/77562 Isotope networks: Training, sales and publications, 1946-1965 Herran, Néstor The aim of this paper is to provide an assessment of the spread of isotope-related techniques in Western Europe and the USA in the two first decades after World War II, by focusing on structural features. In particular, I analyse three major components of the European «isotope industry»: radioisotope distribution networks, the establishment of training sites and publications in which isotopes played some role as the object of study or research tools. This study leads to an assessment of the importance of industrial applications of isotopes in this period, in relation to biomedical ones, and provides with a transnational comparison in terms of productivity in material resources, workforce and knowledge. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/77561 Cores of production: Reactors and radioisotopes in France Adamson, Matthew This paper concerns the technologies used in radioisotope production in the French Atomic Energy Commission (the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique) between 1946 and 1958. Particular attention is given to the various instruments used for the bombardment of isotopes, including accelerators and reactors, and their relationship with the CEA’s radioisotope preparation laboratories. Ultimately, the vast majority of bombardments took place in research reactors. These versatile machines, and the isotopes and other materials that passed through them, act as historical tracers: they shed light on the orientation of the entire atomic system in which radioisotope production is found.