PubhD #29: Classics, Chemistry, and History

First up is Harriet who is researching the ancient Greek poet Sappho, and how her work was translated into English in the 18th century.

Sappho is the reason that lesbians are called lesbians – she lived on the island of Lesbos in the 6th century BCE. We know hardly anything about her, we don't even know what she did. There are stories that she was a school mistress, a priestess or a choir leader. All we do know about her, we know from her poetry. We have 230 fragments of her work but only one complete poem, which is thirty lines long. She wrote on a wide variety of subjects including beauty, nature, women, family, the moon, chickpeas, Aphrodite and orgasms. It was all written down by other writers. Still today pieces of her work are being discovered, with a fragment of a poem about her brother found in 2014.

Sappho is a literary heavyweight, the last surviving female voice from the ancient world. But how do we in England read her work today? Through translation. In the first century BCE, her work was translated into Latin and into French in 1685. At the same time, it was translated into English as part of a compilation. Then in 1711, it was translated into English and published in a coffee house magazine. Two poems were translated, the complete one that we still have and another about desire.

How accurate are these translations? And how do the translations and the way that the poetry was published colour how we read Sappho? She wrote in an unusual dialect and she invented words, so how do you translate that into English? How do you deal with the homoeroticism in her poetry? If you only have two poems, how do you present them? With other love poets? With other ancient Greek writers, such as Homer? The context creates a narrative, as do the book's indices, introduction and any (made-up) biographies. It's always important to remember that you're reading a translation of the original work.

Key learning: Plato called Sappho the 10th Muse

Next up is Floor, who is trying to improve the gold standard for creating cell culture.

Cell culture is the expansion of cells and is usually created in 2D – cells grow by attaching to a surface. To remove the cells from our surface we use enzyme ‘scissors’ to cut the protein. However, if we grow them in 3D, it becomes much easier to remove the cells.

The key to this 3D technique are the polymers, which change dependent on temperature. At 37^oC (body temperature) the chains stick together, but at 20^oC (room temperature) they start to split up and allow water in. The cells are then pushed from the surface, and can be dissolved in a solvent using an electrical voltage. Charged with a positive voltage, they can be collected at the negative terminal. Over time, the solvent will start to evaporate.

Floor is focussing on cells from the cornea, in the eye; these have a robust outer shell and are transparent cells. By using the 3D technique, the cells are kept transparent. If they are grown using the current 2D technique then the cells can change as they grow as they do not like the harsh conditions that they find themselves in. Is it possible to change the polymer to make the cells happier? The long term aim of this research is to grow replacement corneas.

Key learning: If this technique works, it could be used in range of cell types.

Finally, we have Stacey, who is researching juvenile crime between 1840 and 1880.

Crime during this period was seen as a major problem. The end of the Napoleonic wars led to more of an internal focus and during this time there was the creation of a formal police force. Juvenile crime was considered to be a threat to the stability of society. Contemporary researchers thought that there were two main causes:

1.       Family life. Most criminals came from the working classes. They were lacking the perfect family life and were sent out into the world prematurely before their moral compass had developed.

2.       Environment. Juvenile crime was thought to be an urban condition. These environments were the worst ever seen.

The cure was to turn to the antithesis – the rural. Victorians thought that this could restore the character of fallen youths and so sent them to a reformatory for 2-5 years as an alternative to prison. These ‘farm schools’ were carefully controlled recreations of idealised settings and were structured around rural life and labour. Boys were split into ‘families’ with a house father and a house mother – the ideal family that they lacked before. The farm schools had a working farm and boys would be cooks, bakers, blacksmiths, livestock carers and general labourers. Simple, honest work. This was designed to stop the boys physically committing crimes and was also supposed to take away their inclination.

Rural society wasn't the perfect lifestyle that some imagined it to be; they were having their own problems at the time. The reformatories were not always successful – staff and funding were far bigger indicators of success that just the concept of an idealised rural setting itself. Parents had to pay for the upkeep of their children while they were in the reformatory and the children had to spend 14 days in prison before they went. This was so that they didn't just ‘take the easy way out’ and avoid jail altogether. Meanwhile, girls weren't sent to farm schools as rural work wasn't deemed suitable for them.
Key learning: There was a riot at one reformatory because the children found the quality of the staff so poor.

PubhD returns to The Vat & Fiddle on the Wednesday 17 August, 7:30pm, with talks on microbiology, physics and chemistry. 

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