Victoria Lee: Fermentation Science in 20th-Century Japan: The Arts of the Microbial World

Description

Victoria Lee, an assistant professor of the history of science and technology at Ohio University, will give a talk titled "Fermentation Science in 20th-Century Japan: The Arts of the Microbial World" for the Department of History of Science and Technology.

This talk explores how Japanese scientists and skilled workers sought to use the microbe's natural processes to create new products, from soy-sauce mold starters to MSG, vitamins to statins. In traditional brewing houses as well as in the food, fine chemical, and pharmaceutical industries across Japan, they showcased their ability to deal with the enormous sensitivity and variety of the microbial world. Charting developments in fermentation science from the turn of the 20th century, when Japan was an industrializing country on the periphery of the world economy, to 1980 when it had emerged as a global technological and economic power, the talk highlights the role of indigenous techniques in modern science as it took shape in Japan. In doing so, it reveals how knowledge of microbes lay at the heart of some of Japan's most prominent technological breakthroughs in the global economy. At a moment when 21st-century developments in the fields of antibiotic resistance, the microbiome, and green chemistry suggest that the traditional eradication-based approach to the microbial world is unsustainable, 20th-century Japanese microbiology provides a new, broader vantage for understanding and managing microbial interactions with society.

All in-person events at Johns Hopkins must follow university COVID-19 policies. See current guidelines online. This is a hybrid event; please attend virtually by using the Zoom link. In person registration information is below.