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John Sulston: a pioneer of genomics
The first of three sections of the John Sulston archive (PP/SUL) is now available. Section A focuses on Sulston’s Nobel Prize-winning work on the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). His findings had a profound impact on genetic and genomic research… Continue reading
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Half a century of helpful people with helpful answers
We are delighted to announce a significant addition to the Wellcome Library’s existing important archival holdings on sexual issues and birth control: the archives (SA/BRO) of Brook, the sexual health charity for young people. The organisation, which reaches its 50th Anniversary this… Continue reading
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The Great War on Disfiguring Injuries
In the second of our blog series commemorating World War I, archivist Natalie Walters gives a very personal response to two photograph albums of injured soldiers. The albums are part of the digitised Royal Army Medical Corps archive. Reactions to archival… Continue reading
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Beds not Bombs: histories of the medical anti-war movement
To launch the Medact archive on 27 June 2014, Wellcome Library played host to a conference on the history of medical activism: ‘Beds not Bombs: Exploring the archives of anti-nuclear medical campaigning and protest’. Delegate Paul Sims reports back on… Continue reading
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‘Beds not Bombs’: the archive of the Medical Campaign against Nuclear Weapons
As East and West squared off at the height of the Cold War, the threat of a nuclear attack was all too real. Armed with stark facts about the potential impact of the bomb, a group of doctors and nurses… Continue reading
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Francis Galton: a Victorian polymath
We have added two new digitised archive collections (Alan Coulson and Francis Galton) to the Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics online resource. Here, Katy Makin from the University College London (UCL) Special Collections team shares her experience of working with… Continue reading
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Opening doors to easy access…
Today we’ve made two changes to our access procedures that will open the door even wider to our online archives and website features. You no longer need to register to access the majority of our digitised archives – approximately 30,000… Continue reading
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Radiation Science in the Atomic Age
If the recommendations of some scientists in the early 1950s had been followed, we would now be eating food treated with waste from nuclear power stations. In 1953 the Low Temperature Research Station (forerunner to the Institute of Food Research)… Continue reading
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Dr Eric Cruickshank : a Scotsman up for a challenge
The papers of doctor and medical educator, Eric Kennedy Cruickshank (1914-2007) have recently been catalogued and are available to researchers in the Wellcome Library (Library catalogue reference: PP/EKC). The papers, donated to us by Josephine Cruickshank in 2009, give a… Continue reading
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‘Lobbied, charmed and persuaded’
We were saddened to read the recent obituary of Vera Houghton (1914-2013), pioneer in the fields of abortion law reform and free birth control. The importance of her work, and that of her late husband, the Labour MP and Cabinet… Continue reading