In chemistry, Mi Gyung Kim (c.1959-), or "Mimi Kim", is a Korean-born American affinity chemistry historian noted for her two decades plus work and research on the subject of the history of European chemistry from late 17th to late 19th century.
Her excellent Affinity, That Elusive Dream: A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution, details the history of the rise of affinity chemistry beginning with the matter of heat theories of chemists such as Wilhelm Homberg (1652-1715) and Louis Lemery, to Isaac Newton’s chemical revolution launching Query 31, to Etienne Geoffrey’s 1718 construction of the world’s first affinity table, to the influence on Herman Boerhaave and his 1724 law of expansion, up through Torbern Bergman’s gigantic 1775 fold-out affinity table and affinity reaction diagram schematic, to Johann Goethe’s famous 1809 chapter four, among others.
Kim seems to be also knowledgeable about other related heat theories and topics, such as phlogiston, caloric, the sulphur principle, Wilhelm Ostwald, etc.
Education
Kim completed her BS in chemistry at Soul National University, South Korea, her MA in chemistry, thesis “Ab initio Calculations of the Equilibrium Geometries of Pyrrolines”, at the University of Texas, Austin, and her PhD (1990) in history, with a dissertation on “Practice and Representation: Investigative Programs of Chemical Affinity in the Nineteenth Century”, under American science historian Norton Wise, at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2009, she was a visiting professor at Rice University, where she taught a course on "Science and Empire" through the Department of History. [2] Currently she is a professor of history at North Carolina State University.
See also
● Jeremy Adler
● James Partington
● Trevor Levere
● Henry Leicester
References
1. Kim, Mi Gyung. (2003). Affinity, That Elusive Dream – A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution. MIT Press.
2. Past External Faculty Fellows – HRC.Rice.edu.
Further reading
● Kim, Mi Gyung. (2012). “From Phlogiston to Caloric: Chemical Ontologies,” forthcoming in Foundations of Chemistry. Publisher.
● Kim, Mi Gyung. (2009). “L’Affinité chimique dans l’Encyclopédie,” Corpus, 2009.
● Kim, Mi Gyung. (2008). “The ‘Instrumental’ Reality of Phlogiston”, International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, 14(1): 27-51.
● Kim, Mi Gyung. (2006). “Wilhelm Ostwald,” Hyle, 12, 143-150.
● Kim, Mi Gyung. (2001). “The Analytic Ideal of Chemical elements: Robert Boyle and the French didactic tradition,” Science in Context, 14, 2001, 361-395.
● Kim, Mi Gyung. (2000). “Chemical Analysis and the Domains of Reality: Wilhelm Homberg’s Essays de chimie, 1702-1709”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 31, 2000, 37-69.
External links
● Mi Gyung Kim (faculty) – North Carolina State University.
● Kim, Mi Gyung – WorldCat Identities.
