Frédéric Brechenmacher (Tel at the X: 3354)
Email : frederic.brechenmacher@polytechnique.edu
This internship offer provides a choice of two distinct types of activity: 1) research in science history; 2) engineering works on computing tools used in social science.
1) As a research field, science history presents is highly interdisciplinary, integrating many approaches to general history, philosophy, sociology or literary studies. This field enables not only to think about science and techniques but also to gain analytical tools of the social challenges of the contemporary world and its future evolutions.
This offer give students the opportunity to conduct works that suit its own interests (specific scientific field, histrorical period, issues, etc.). These works will be based on the fonds of the Ecole. The wealth of these fonds offers a wide range of research theme, as much from the perspective of scientific and technologic fields as technological objects or other fields like arts, philosophy, companies, etc.
In order to value these productions, the subject of the internship will be formulated with each student, according to their interests and related to themes in contemporary research in science history (projects young researchers, current thesis, international network, regional research teams etc.).
The internship will take place in the of the Ecole for the archive works. Depending on the chosen topic, it could also join an international thematic research network or in a laboratory of science history (Team "mathematical science history" of the Institut de mathématiques de Jussieu, Centre Koyré of the EHESS, GHDSO of the Université Paris-Sud 11, UMR SPHERE of the Université Paris-7, UMR STL of the Université Lille 1, Archives Henri Poincaré in Nancy, etc.).
Examples of possible topics:
- Mathematics history, in relation to the international project young reserchers CaaFÉ (http://caafe.math.cnrs.fr )
- Science and literature in the 19th and 20th century, in relation to the international project young reserchers "Histoire croisée"
- Development of an audiovisual archive of the contemporary actors of the Ecole (professors, researcers, students, etc.)
- Scientifical biography
- The paper of the Ecole Polytechnique, in relation to the international project on scientific press history
- Scientific correspondence: study and digitization of a archive fonds
- Polytechnicians contribution to geometry, crystallography and kinematics of the 19th century, in relation to three current thesis (Brazil, Canada, France)
- Machines and instruments in the Ecole's archives
Depending on the chosen topic, the intenship can result in different types of productions
- publication (papers and/or websites)
- exposition
- development / promoting archives (participating to the Virtual museum of the Ecole)
- documentary
- etc.
2) Students can choose to conduct an engineering project on computing tools used by researchers in science history, linked to current researches. Among the activities on offer are:
- interface and content of the Virtual museum of the Ecole
- participation in software development for a digital project (as d'Alembert's complete works)
- use of graphs for the viewing of intertextual citation network
- problems raised by different bibliographic formats
- improvement of user programming interfaces
- development of a variant in order to enable requests based on connections between data and not just on the data itself.
Course language: French
- Teaching coordinator: Brechenmacher Frédéric