ISoS News

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Guillermo Restrepo as a new member of ISoS and as the holder of a DFG "Eigene Stelle" (Individual Research Grant) to conduct research at the intersection of history, data science, and chemistry.

Guillermo joins us from the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig, where he has led a project on the computational history of chemistry. By analysing vast historical datasets (scientific publications, chemical substances, and synthesis methods) using mathematical and computational tools, he uncovers hidden patterns in the evolution of chemical knowledge. His new DFG project, titled "Material, Social and Semiotic Dimensions of the Discovery of Substances over the History of Chemistry", explores how we understand the evolution of chemical knowledge as a dynamic interplay of people, materials, and language.

At the heart of Guillermo’s research is a bold question: How did the chemical space, the vast collection of known substances and reactions, evolve over the past two centuries? His project uses large-scale digital data from databases like Reaxys, Scopus, and OpenAlex to trace the historical expansion of chemistry through a unique triad of material, social, and semiotic dimensions. The material dimension involves the substances, reactions, and technologies that shaped chemical practice. The social dimension is based on institutions, nations, and networks that drove discovery. The semiotic dimension incorporates the language, journals, patents, and naming conventions that communicated and codified chemical knowledge.

By analysing millions of chemical records from 1800 to 2023, Guillermo aims to uncover patterns that reveal how wars, economic crises, and political shifts left their mark on chemistry, and how the very structure of the discipline evolved over time.

Guillermo’s background is interdisciplinary. Trained as a chemist at the Universidad Industrial de Santander (Colombia), he holds a MSc in Chemistry from the same university and a PhD in mathematical chemistry from Bayreuth University (Germany) and has spent years bridging the gap between the humanities and the sciences. He held postdoctoral positions at Bayreuth University in mathematics and at Texas A&M University-Galveston in mathematical chemistry. He also held an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship to conduct research on the computational history of chemistry at Leipzig University, before moving to the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig, where he conducted research for about a decade.

His work has been published in multidisciplinary journals like Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Proceedings of the Royal Society A, and in specialised journals in the sciences and the humanities such as Nature Chemistry, and Angewandte Chemie, and in Ambix, the leading journal in the history of chemistry.

Welcome, Guillermo, and great to have you on board!