Fitxa persona

JOSE RAMON BERTOMEU SÁNCHEZ  is senior lecturer at the University of Valencia and director of the Institute for the History of Medicine and Science. He has been founding member of the STEP (Science and Technology in the European Periphery) group and editor of Ambix book reviews. His publications included papers, edited volumes and books on the history of science education, chemistry textbooks, scientific popularization, material culture of science and nineteenth-century chemistry in France and Spain. During the last decade, his research was focused on nineteenth-century forensic medicine. He has written several studies on the biography of the Spanish-French toxicologists Mateu Orfila (1787-1853). He has also worked on the emergence of scientific policing in twentieth-century Spain, particularly on the works of Federico Olóriz and Antonio Lecha-Marzo. He has published (with Agustí Nieto-Galan), Chemistry, Medicine and Crime: Mateu Orfila (1787-1853) (Science History Publications, 2006); “Popularizing Controversial Science: A Popular Treatise on Poisons by Mateu Orfila (1818)” (Medical History, 2009);  (with J. Vidal), Mateu Orfila: Autobiografia i Correspondència (IME, 2011); “Animal Experiments, Vital Forces and Courtrooms: Mateu Orfila, François Magendie and the Absorption of Poisons” (Annals of Science,  2012); 'Managing Uncertainty in the Academy and the Courtroom: Normal Arsenic and Nineteenth-Century Toxicology' (Isis, 2013). And the  book is “The Truth about the Lafarge affair: Science, Justice and Law in Nineteenth-Century France” (In Spanish, Barcelona, 2015). One of his last research project is “Living in a Toxic World” (1800-2000) which covers several aspects of the regulation of toxic risks in Spain and France during the last two centuries (HAR2015-66364-C2-2-P).