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(Re)Discovering the Great War
To launch a new series of blog posts commemorating World War I, Simon Chaplin and Jeffrey Reznick from the Wellcome Library and the National Library of Medicine respectively, introduce an array of fascinating digital material from the period, which you… Continue reading
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The rights to reproduction
To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, here’s a 50 year old greeting from the archives that has some mystery about it. This card was sent to Carlos Paton Blacker (1895-1975): The reverse of the card says: “Warmest greetings… Continue reading
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Uncovering a scientific life in the archives
Leslie Barnett (1920-2002) was a microbiologist who worked with some of the top geneticists of the 20th century to help discover important advances in gene structure and function. Born in London as Margaret Leslie Collard she began her career in agriculture with… Continue reading
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Rise of the machines
A good catalogue is transparent: if a library user becomes aware in more than a passing fashion of the technicalities of the catalogue, it is usually a sign that it is not doing its job smoothly. Nonetheless, from time to… Continue reading
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The art of cytology: Honor Fell’s archive
In another of our occasional series introducing the digitised archive collections in the Codebreakers: makers of modern genetics online resource, Julia Nurse, Content and Metadata Officer at the Wellcome Library introduces the Honor Fell papers. The original papers are located… Continue reading
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Maurice Wilkins: glimmers of greatness
Here’s a tantalising glimpse into the Maurice Wilkins archive by Geoff Browell, Senior Archives Services Manager at King’s College Archives Services. This is another in our series on key figures in the history of genetics, who form part of the… Continue reading
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Haldane: a cantankerous and charismatic pioneer
Katy Makin, project archivist at University College London, provides some fascinating insights into the life and personality of J B S Haldane, one of the ‘Makers of Modern Genetics’ whose papers were digitised for the Codebreakers online resource. The original… Continue reading
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The Blood Group Unit – a world stage for research …
To mark World Blood Donor day, on 14th June, consider the work of some pioneers in blood research – the Medical Research Council Blood Group Unit (BGU). Robert Race (founder of the BGU) and his wife/assistant, Ruth Sanger, effectively opened… Continue reading
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Did Adam have 6 fingers?
Not many paintings are assessed for the genetic defects of the characters portrayed – Jan van Scorel’s version of Adam and Eve of 1540 is an exception. Geneticist Hans Gruneberg, whose digitised archive forms part of the Codebreakers: Makers of… Continue reading
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Fred Sanger: a maker of modern genetics
In the third of our series about the digitised archive collections in ‘Codebreakers: makers of modern genetics’, Jenny Shaw, archive project officer at the Wellcome Library, explores Fred Sanger’s research notebooks: My involvement with Sanger’s notebooks is through the Human… Continue reading