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  • The ‘stuff that almost brings people back from the dead’

    06/01/2017

    An exhibition to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the first human trials of penicillin has recently opened at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford. ‘Back From The Dead‘ traces the “miraculous and precarious” nature of antibiotics from the… Continue reading

  • Dr Oliver Wrong: a salt and water physician

    11/10/2016

    Dr Oliver Wrong, best known as an academic and clinical nephrologist, was a salt and water physician. Meaning that he was mostly interested in what simple substances (such as water, potassium, sodium, and magnesium) could reveal about life – which… Continue reading

  • William James: radical empiricist

    19/09/2016

    For the next in our series on Crick and Consciousness, Dr Emma Sutton contrasts Francis Crick’s materialist science of consciousness with that of 19th century psychologist William James, who developed a much broader understanding of what ‘counts’ as scientific evidence.… Continue reading

  • Francis Crick: anti-vitalist crusader

    16/09/2016

    In the next in our series about Crick and Consciousness, Dr Christine Aicardi tells us how she came to the conclusion that there may have been one underlying motivation for all of Crick’s research choices across different scientific fields. Although… Continue reading

  • Crick on consciousness

    14/09/2016

    In the States of Mind exhibition at Wellcome Collection you’ll find a small section dedicated to Francis Crick’s work on the science of consciousness. Since the Library also has Crick’s personal papers, we decided to take a closer look at… Continue reading

  • The story of Daraprim: from experimental drug to commodity

    30/06/2016

    A 62-year-old pharmaceutical drug developed by the Burroughs Wellcome Co. hit the news recently when the drug company who purchased the US marketing rights and increased the price by 5,000%. Today pyrimethamine (brand name Daraprim) is mainly used to treat… Continue reading

  • Full Michael Ashburner archive catalogued

    22/02/2016

    Throughout 2015 the Michael Ashburner archive was catalogued and released in stages. The final batch of records has now been finished and the entire catalogue is available online (Wellcome Library reference: PP/MIA). Previous blog posts have demonstrated why Ashburner is… Continue reading

  • A hot-wax fingerprint Christmas card

    16/12/2015

    How many Christmas cards will you send this year, if at all? The vogue for hand-crafted cards is gradually disappearing as we become ever more digital in sending out festive wishes each year. There is a particularly interesting example of… Continue reading

  • Michael Ashburner archive: the second release

    11/12/2015

    Michael Ashburner is a world authority on the genetics and genome sequence of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. The second batch of records from the Ashburner archive is now available to view at the Wellcome Library (reference PP/MIA). This batch… Continue reading

  • The story of photograph 51

    25/09/2015

    Photograph 51 is the title of a play on the London stage throughout autumn 2015. The play explores the controversy surrounding Rosalind Franklin and her contribution to the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. The discovery… Continue reading