Lecture: October 6, 2026

Postdoc , PhD Floris Martin Constantijn Winckel
Department for Science Education, UCPH

When Snowflakes Entered Labs

Snow crystals have a long history of being studied by scientists. Key figures in seventeenth-century natural and experimental philosophy observed them; they featured across different strands of Enlightenment science; early scientific photographers and Polar scientists found them appealing objects of study; they even occupied a central role in the development of upper-atmosphere meteorology and climatology in the mid twentieth century. This talk focuses on a key geographical shift in this tradition of science, which took place in the 1930s and 1940s. After centuries of being a largely outdoor scientific practice, dictated by the whims of the weather, cold-labs became prime locations to study these objects. Almost simultaneously, groups of researchers across the world started to explore the origin, development, and death of single snow crystals under controlled laboratory conditions. Through a comparison of three labs in this period, located across three continents, I explore the impact of labs on the old tradition of studying snowflakes, and what historians of science can learn from the time when snowflakes entered labs.

Tuesday, 6 October 2026, 17.00–19.00
Room TBA at H. C. Ørsted Institute,
Universitetsparken 5, Copenhagen

At 16.30, we will meet informally for coffee, cookies, and tea in room 04.4.20.

After the lecture there will be an invitation to dinner with the lecturer at own expense.