JOSE RAMON
BERTOMEU SANCHEZ

José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez is a Professor of the History of Science at the University of Valencia and a member of the López Piñero Interuniversity Institute (www.uv.es/ihmc. Initially trained in chemistry, he pursued his doctoral studies in the Department of the History of Science and Documentation at the University of Valencia. With the support of an FPI research grant, he completed his thesis on the scientific policies of Napoleonic governments and the travels of scholars and exiles between Spain and France in the early 19th century. Subsequently, he undertook postdoctoral research stays in Paris (École des Hautes Études) and New Haven (Yale University), later complemented by visiting positions at Harvard University (2001), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (2004), the Science History Institute in Philadelphia (2010, 2011), as well as the universities of Manchester (2013), Lyon (2021, 2024), and Montreal (2022). He has published extensively on the social and cultural history of science, covering topics such as 19th-century chemistry textbooks in France and Spain (“L’émergence d’une science des manuels”, Paris, Archives Contemporaines, 2003), the material culture of science (“Abriendo las cajas negras”, Valencia, PUV, 2002), and the history of scientific language (“Nombrar la materia”, Barcelona, El Serbal, 1998). His articles have appeared in leading journals in the history of science, technology, and medicine (Isis, Medical History, Annals of Science, Social History of Medicine, Centaurus, Technology & Culture, Ambix, HoST), as well as in contemporary history journals (“Ayer, Hispania”, among others). His research has explored the history of modern toxicology, examining the intersections between science, medicine, and law. In this field, he has published “La verdad sobre el caso Lafarge” (Barcelona, El Serbal, 2015) and authored a biography of the toxicologist Mateu Orfila (“Entre el fiscal y el verdugo”, València, PUV, 2019). He has also analyzed early 20th-century identification technologies through the personal archives of Federico Olóriz and Antonio Lecha-Marzo. More recently, he has been working in the history of toxic substances (lead, asbestos, arsenic, etc.) through various 20th-century case studies. His primary research focus is the history of pesticides in 20th-century Spain, examining their sociotechnical dimensions through the lens of environmental injustices, slow violence, and the construction of different forms of ignorance. His most recent work in this area, dealing with ignorance studies in the context of Francoist Spain, has been co-edited with C. Florensa and A. Nieto-Galan, is Agnotologías: Saberes e Ignorancias en la España del siglo XX (Valencia, Tirant Lo Blanch, 2024). He is currently working in a transnational history of Spanish pesticide industry during the 20th-century and organizing a book on history of the Faculty of Sciences in Valencia during the Francoist regime. In addition to his academic work, he has engaged in extensive public outreach, organizing seminars, lectures, exhibitions and workshops on the history of science for educators. His recent publications in this vein include “Tóxicos: Pasado y presente” (Barcelona, Icaria, 2022) and, with C. Ferragud, “Entre venenos” (finalist for the Bromera Prize for Scientific Communication, 2023). He is also co-editor (with J. Gil) of the online blog: “Saberes en acción: Una nueva historia de la ciencia, la tecnología y la medicina”: https://sabersenaccio.iec.cat/.