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Guide to the manuscript papers of British scientists: B

 

ACCESS ARRANGEMENTS

The collections described in this guide have been catalogued by the Unit and subsequently deposited in libraries and archives throughout the UK

Inclusion in this guide does not imply that all the material in the collections will be available for research; there are restrictions on access to items in many of the collections and researchers should always consult the repository before planning a visit. 

 

Most of the catalogues compiled by the Unit can now be viewed online through the Access to Archives website at the National Archives (www.a2a.org.uk).  Direct links to the catalogues are being added from this Guide.  To view the full-text catalogue, please click on the link under Finding Aid.  Note, some catalogues are very extensive and may take a few moments to download.  An indication of the size of the file is provided.

 

 

BACON, Francis Thomas (1904-1992), engineer

 

BADEN-POWELL, Donald Ferlys Wilson. See POWELL, Donald Ferlys Wilson BADEN-

BAGNOLD, Ralph Alger (1896-1990), geophysicist

BAILEY, Kenneth (1909-1963), biochemist

BAKER, John Randal (1900-1984), cytologist

BALDWIN, Ernest Hubert Francis (1909-1969), biochemist

BARTLETT, Sir Frederic Charles (1886-1969), psychologist

BATES, John A.V. (1918-1993), physiologist

BATES, Leslie Fleetwood (1897-1978), physicist

BAWDEN, Sir Frederick Charles (1908-1970, plant pathologist, biomathematician and biochemist

BEAVER, Sir Hugh Eyre Campbell (1890-1967), engineer

BENJAMIN, Thomas Brooke (1929-1995), mathematician

BLACK, Joseph (1921-2001), engineer

BLACKETT, Patrick Maynard Stuart, Baron Blackett of Chelsea (1897-1974), physicist, science policy

 

BLACKMAN, Geoffrey Emett (1903-1980), agronomist

BOHM, David Joseph (1917-1992), physicist.

BOOT, Henry Albert Howard (1917-1983), physicist

BOWDEN, Keith Frederick (1936-1982), computer scientist

BOWEN, Edmund John (1898-1980), chemist, historian of science

BRETSCHER, Egon (1901-1973), chemist, nuclear physicist

British Association Mathematical Tables Committee (1871-1948)

BROWN, Robert Hanbury (1916-2002), astronomer.

BRYCE, Alexander Graham (1890-1968), thoracic surgeon, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland

BULLARD, Sir Edward Crisp (1907-1980), geophysicist

BURCH, Cecil Reginald (1901-1983), physicist and engineer

BURHOP, Eric Henry Stoneley (1911-1980), physicist

BURN, Joshua Harold (1892-1981), pharmacologist

 

BUTTERFIELD, William John Hughes, Baron Butterfield (1920-2000), medical researcher and administrator

 

 

Bacon, Francis Thomas, 1904-1992. Engineer and fuel cell pioneer.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. Reference code: GB 0014 BACN
Title: Papers and correspondence of Francis Thomas Bacon 1904-1992
Dates of creation of material: 1917-1993
Extent: 150 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bacon was born at Ramsden Hall, Billericay, Essex on 21 December 1904. He was educated at Eton College 1918-1922, specialising in science and winning the Moseley Physics Prize in 1922 and at Trinity College, Cambridge obtaining a third class in the Mechanical Sciences Tripos in 1925. He served an apprenticeship at C.A. Parsons & Co. Ltd, Heaton Works, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1925-1928, subsequently working in the Searchlight Reflector and Research and Development Departments at Parsons, 1928-1940. It was while at Parsons in 1932 that he first came to appreciate the potential of the fuel cell, setting himself the task of carrying out the practical engineering to prepare the way for the fuel cell to be considered for commercial application. In 1940-1941 he was able to start full-time work on the hydrogen oxygen fuel cell at King's College London with the financial support of the consulting engineers Merz and McLellan. From 1941 to 1946 he was temporary experimental officer at H.M. Anti-Submarine Experimental Establishment, Fairlie, Ayrshire, working on ASDIC, the underwater submarine detection system.

In 1946 he resumed experimental work on the hydrogen oxygen fuel cell at Cambridge University, first in the Department of Colloid Science, then in the Department of Metallurgy and from 1951 to 1956 in the Department of Chemical Engineering. This work was supported financially by the Electrical Research Association (ERA). In 1956 Bacon became consultant to the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC) undertaking fuel cell development work at the Cambridge engineering firm Marshalls where a 6kW forty cell battery unit was demonstrated in August 1959. From 1962 to 1971 he was principal consultant to Energy Conversion Ltd (ECL), the first British effort to manufacture fuel cells. From 1971 to 1973 he was Consultant on Fuel Cells to Fuel Cells Ltd, at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell. In 1973 he retired though he continued to follow the development of fuel cells very closely for the rest of his life.

Although Bacon hoped to see the adoption of a high efficiency/low pollution fuel cell in everyday applications such as transport, it was in the unforeseen application of space exploration that the Bacon cell achieved its most notable success in his life time. In the USA the Pratt and Whitney Division of United Aircraft took out a licence on the Bacon patents and used the concept of the Bacon cell in a successful bid to provide electrical power for the Apollo moonshot. The fuel cells operated successfully in space applications, providing electricity for the functioning of systems and the production of drinking water, so that Bacon's pioneering work may be considered an essential prerequisite of the Apollo programme

Bacon was elected FRS in 1973 and became an initial Fellow of the Fellowship of Engineering in 1976. He died in 1992.

See K.R. Williams, 'Francis Thomas Bacon', Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, vol. 39, 3-18 (1994).

Custodial history

The papers were received from Churchill Archives Centre in 1994.  Returned to Churchill Archives Centre 1997.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

Biographical material includes obituaries, curricula vitae, articles about Bacon and press-cuttings. His fuel cell career is represented by agreements between Bacon and Merz and McLellan, the NRDC and ECL and his honours and awards by the election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1973 and the NASA Award for Scientific and Technical Contribution in 1976. Also of interest are school notebooks from Eton College including a 'Science Notes' notebook used by his elder brother A.W. Bacon in 1917 and subsequently by Bacon for notes of work at C.A. Parsons Ltd 1930-1931.

Fuel cell research and development papers are exceptional in extent and comprehensiveness and document the successive stages of Bacon’s involvement: Parsons and early fuel cell research, Electrical Research Association/Cambridge University, NRDC/Marshalls of Cambridge, Energy Conversion Ltd, and his continuing interest in fuel cell research and development after his formal retirement. There are also a relatively few papers from the 1930s which relate to his work at Parsons and are not concerned with fuel cells. Bacon's publications, lectures and broadcasts are represented by a chronological sequence of drafts, 1953-1984 and his publications correspondence files, 1952-1991. There is also material relating to patent applications, 1949-1967. There is documentation of eight societies and organisations with which Bacon was associated including the Electrochemical Society and the Royal Society. The Electrochemical Society papers principally relate to its Spring meeting in Seattle 1978 at which Bacon received the Society's Vittorio de Nora - Diamond Shamrock Award and delivered the Award Address. Much of the Royal Society material relates to Bacon's 1973 Review Lecture on the Development and Practical Application of Fuel Cells.

There is visits and conferences material, 1956-1984, which record Bacon's participation as speaker at a number of international conferences and a series of visits to the USA which included visits to centres of fuel cell research and development. Bacon's fuel cell correspondence covers an exceptionally extended period 1933-1991. Although Bacon kept correspondence files for a small number of named individuals such as the Cambridge University authority on metallic corrosion U.R. Evans, and fuel cell associates T.M. Fry and R.G.H. Watson, most of the correspondence was kept in three major chronological sequences: 'fuel cell' correspondence 1933-1991, 'personal' correspondence, 1952-1991, and 'miscellaneous' correspondence, 1953-1975. The 'personal' and 'miscellaneous' correspondence sequences also relate to Bacon's fuel cell interests. Although for long periods Bacon wrote most of his letters by hand, even when writing by hand he made carbon copies and thus his correspondence is unusually complete.  There are photographs of Bacon himself, 1950s-1991, photographs of fuel cell equipment from the late 1950s and a film relating to the demonstration of the 6kW forty cell battery in August 1959.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical, Research and development, Lectures and publications, Patents, Societies and organisations, Visits and conferences, Correspondence, Non-print material. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Readers intending to use the Archives Centre must write in advance to the Keeper of the Archives giving details of their research subject and listing the collections they will wish to consult. New readers should also provide a letter of introduction and some form of identification (such as a passport or driving licence).
Finding aid: Printed catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Francis Thomas Bacon: NCUACS catalogue no. 68/6/97, 207 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath.  
Link to catalogue ¯ (a2a)

ALLIED MATERIALS

In same repository

Additional material deposited by Mrs Vivian-Neal, 12 December 2000:  further biographical material including pocket diaries 1929-1939 and 1945-1969.  Rolls of technical drawings 1938-1939.

Additional material deposited by Mr Edward Bacon, 13 February 2002: further material including photographs of Bacon and scientific equipment and apparatus relating to his research.

  5

 

Bagnold, Brigadier Ralph Alger, 1896-1990. Soldier, explorer, geophysicist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. Reference code: GB 0014 BGND
Title: Papers and correspondence of Brigadier Ralph Alger Bagnold, 1896-1990
Dates of creation of material: 1896-1991
Extent: 12 boxes + plan chest

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bagnold was educated at Malvern College and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was commissioned in the Royal Engineers with the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in 1915. After First World War service he returned to England in 1919 to study at Gonville and Caius College for the Cambridge Engineering Tripos, resuming his army career in 1921. A posting in Egypt, 1926-1928, instilled in him a fascination with desert exploration. He went on expeditions with fellow officers into Sinai, Transjordan and the Libyan Desert and returned to North Africa to lead expeditions in 1929, 1930 and 1932. In 1934 Bagnold received the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society and in 1935 recounted his desert expeditions in Libyan Sands. Travel in a dead world. During these expeditions Bagnold became interested in the physics behind the creation and movement of sand dunes. On his retirement from the army in 1935 he began scientific research at Imperial College, London using a home-made wind tunnel. This work culminated in Bagnold’s 1941 monograph The physics of blown sand and desert dunes.

At the outbreak of the Second World War Bagnold was recalled to the army and in 1940, with General Wavell's support, he founded the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), a small motorised force which undertook reconnaissance and raids deep into enemy-held territory. Bagnold received the OBE (Military) for the part he played in establishing the Group and was later promoted to Brigadier. Bagnold returned to England in 1944. In 1947 he became Director of Research of the Shell Refining and Marketing Company. He resigned in 1949 to concentrate on research at Imperial College, London into the transport of solids by a stream of water. This led to collaborative work with L.B. Leopold, Head of the Water Resources Division of the US Geological Survey, on the annual rate at which rivers transport solids. He remained an authority on the transport of blown sand and in 1977 was invited by NASA to be key-note speaker at a meeting on the desert landscapes of Earth and Mars. In later years Bagnold also studied patterns of random distributions, work which had its origins in observations made in 1927. He was elected FRS in 1944.

See R.A. Bagnold Sun, Wind, War and Water (University of Arizona Press, 1991) and R.A. Bagnold Libyan Sands. Travel in a Dead World.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1991-1992 from Mr S.C. Bagnold, son.  Placed in Churchill Archives Centre 1992.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers document Bagnold's career as a desert explorer, soldier and scientist. There is good documentation of Bagnold's early explorations in the Middle East and North Africa, 1926-1932. Scientific research is less well documented; most of the surviving material dates from after the Second World War and the later research on random distributions is the best represented. The Long Range Desert Group papers were assembled by Bagnold for a projected history of the Group and include original instructions for and reports of many operations and draft chapters of a 'war diary and narrative'. There are many maps relating to First World War service, desert exploration and the LRDG. The papers also include Bagnold's autobiography (posthumously published by the University of Arizona Press), childhood letters to his family from school and, of special interest, a 1928 letter to Bagnold from T.E. Lawrence ('Lawrence of Arabia').

Arrangement:

By section as follows: Biographical, Expeditions and research, Long Range Desert Group, Maps, Photographs. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Readers intending to use the Archives Centre must write in advance to the Keeper of the Archives giving details of their research subject and listing the collections they will wish to consult. New readers should also provide a letter of introduction and some form of identification (such as a passport or driving licence).
Finding aids: Printed catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Brigadier Ralph Alger Bagnold: NCUACS catalogue no. 35/3/92, 61pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath
Link to catalogue ¯ (a2a)

ALLIED MATERIALS

In other repositories

Bagnold’s family retain a First World War narrative and photograph albums and the papers of Bagnold's grandfather Major General Michael Edward Bagnold (1787-1857), his great uncle Captain Thomas Maxwell Bagnold RN (1780-1848) and his father Colonel Arthur Henry Bagnold (1854-1943).

Bagnold’s scientific correspondence with L.B. Leopold forms part of the Leopold papers in the American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

Bagnold’s observations of positions, routes, heights in Egypt, 1929 are in the Archives of the Royal Geographical Society, London. Observations file no.123.

  5

 

Bailey, Kenneth, 1909-1963. Biochemist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Cambridge University Library. Reference code: GB 0012 CUL Add MS 8723
Title: Papers and correspondence of Kenneth Bailey, 1909-1963.
Dates of creation of material: 1955-1965.
Extent: 18 items (1 packet)

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bailey was born at Alsager's Bank near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire and educated at Orme's Boys School, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Birmingham University where he took the course on 'Biochemistry of fermentation' and embarked on research on carbohydrate biochemistry with R.H. Hopkins. In 1933 he was awarded a Beit Scientific Research Fellowship at Imperial College, London where he began a long association with A.C. Chibnall and developed research interests in protein biochemistry. It was at this time he became acquainted with W.T. Astbury, an important scientific collaborator. His contributions to protein and especially muscle biochemistry were increasingly recognised in the years after the Second World War. In 1948 he was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge and appointed Assistant Director of Research and in 1961 he was appointed University Reader in Biochemistry at Cambridge. He was elected FRS in 1953.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1988 from Professor S.V. Perry.  Placed in Cambridge University Library in 1988.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The material is almost exclusively correspondence concerning the last few years of Bailey's life. Although of considerable biographical interest, it does not reflect his scientific achievement.

Arrangement

See Scope and contents. The material is not sectionalised.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Access to holders of full Reader's Tickets for Cambridge University Library.
Finding aids: Printed catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Kenneth Bailey: NCUACS catalogue no. 4/3/88, 12 pp. Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath.
Link to catalogue ¯ (a2a)

  5

 

Baker, John Randal, 1900-1984. Cytologist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Bodleian Library, Oxford.   Reference code: GB 0161 J.R. Baker papers
Title: Papers and correspondence of John Randal Baker, 1900-1984.
Dates of creation of material: ca 1920-1981.
Extent: 63 boxes.

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Baker was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk and educated at Boxgrove School, Guildford and New College, Oxford where he read zoology. He became Demonstrator in Zoology at Oxford in 1923 and Reader in Cytology in 1955. He took part in several scientific expeditions to the New Hebrides in 1922, 1927 and 1933 and to Ceylon in 1937. In 1940 he founded with M. Polanyi and A.G. Tansley the Society for Freedom in Science which he served as secretary and treasurer for the next twenty-two years. Baker's principal research interests were sexual physiology including pioneering work on contraception, cytology, and in his later years historical and anthropological studies. He was elected FRS in 1958.

See E.N. Wilmer and P.C.J. Brunet, 'John Randal Baker', Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society vol 31 (1985), 31-64.

Custodial history

Original material received for cataloguing in 1977 from Baker.  Placed in Bodleian Library (Gift) 1979.

Supplementary material received for cataloguing in 1985 from Baker's family. Placed in Bodleian Library (Gift) 1986.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

Original material: The papers consist almost entirely of Baker's laboratory research, teaching material and lectures at Oxford University on cytology, histochemistry, and microscopy and microtechnique.

Supplementary material: The supplementary papers include research material reflecting his interests in microscopy, chemical contraception, scientific biography (Abraham Trembley of Geneva) and the humane killing of crustacea. The most extensive records relate to anthropology and race, the main interest of Baker's later years, with considerable documentation for his book Race published in 1974 by Oxford University Press.

Correspondence about the Society for Freedom in Science, which Baker founded with Polanyi and Tansley, does not form part of the original or supplementary papers.

Arrangement

Original material: By section as follows: Research and lectures 1928-1969 on cytology, Research and lectures 1928-1969 on histochemistry, Research and lectures 1928-1969 on microscopy and microtechnique, Publication.

Supplementary material: By section as follows: Research and publications, Anthropology and Race, Correspondence, Biographical. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Entry permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card or an Oxford University Card displaying the Bodleian logo. All applicants for new or replacement cards must apply in person, with a recommendation and payment if required, and with proof of their identity.  Certain items not available for 30 or 50 years from date of writing.
Language: English
Finding aids: Printed Catalogues of papers and correspondence of J.R. Baker: CSAC catalogue no. 69/7/79, 25 pp and CSAC supplementary catalogue no. 114/5/86, 48 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath

ALLIED MATERIALS

In other repositories

Diaries and other material relating to scientific expeditions to the New Hebrides in the 1920s and 1930s are retained by Baker's family.

Index cards used by Baker in respect of his work on anthropology and race are preserved at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford.

  5

 

Baldwin, Ernest Hubert Francis, 1909-1969. Biochemist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Library, University College London.  Reference code: GB 0103 E.H.F. Baldwin
Title: Papers and correspondence of Ernest Hubert Francis Baldwin, 1909-1969
Dates of creation of material: 1926-1983
Extent: 18 boxes, 1 outsize folder

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Baldwin was born on 29 March 1909 in Gloucester. He was educated at the Crypt Grammar School, Gloucester, 1920-1928 and St. John's College, Cambridge, graduating with a first class degree in both parts of the Natural Science Tripos (Part ll Biochemistry). Baldwin then began postgraduate research at the Biochemistry Department at Cambridge, receiving his Ph.D. in 1934 for 'Some comparative studies on phosphagen'. He was a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, 1936-1941, Demonstrator in Biochemistry, 1936-1943, working under F.G. Hopkins, and in 1943 became a Lecturer in the Biochemistry Department. On 1 January 1950 Baldwin was appointed to the Chair of Biochemistry at University College London (UCL), a position he held until his death in 1969.

Baldwin's principal research interest was comparative biochemistry. Although his early research was chiefly carried out at Cambridge, in the 1930s he also worked for periods at marine biological stations in France and at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Plymouth. He undertook a series of investigations of the pharmacology and physiology of Ascaris lumbricoides, 1940-1949 and carried out research into the phosphagen of the invertebrates at the Marine Biological Laboratories at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, June-August 1948. After his move to University College London, his principal research interests were in the comparative biochemistry of nitrogen metabolism as well as water shortage effects on the ureotelic metabolism and during a period as Visiting Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California in 1956-1957 he carried out research on ureogenesis in elasmobranch fishes. An important contribution to the development of biochemistry was his role as organiser of the First International Congress of Biochemistry in Cambridge in 1949 (Joint Honorary Secretary of the Congress and member of the Congress and Executive Committees).

His reputation as an educator was one of the principal reasons for his appointment to the Chair of Biochemistry at UCL in 1950. Here Baldwin established the first undergraduate biochemistry course at the College and orientated the biochemistry department as a branch of biological rather than chemical science. Baldwin is remembered chiefly as a communicator and he was the author of a number of influential books on biochemistry, An Introduction to Comparative Biochemistry (1937), Dynamic Aspects of Biochemistry (1947), and The Nature of Biochemistry (1962).

Custodial history

Original material: Received for cataloguing in April 1997 from Mrs Nicola Milligan, daughter through the good offices of Dr R.W.A. Oliver, Honorary Archivist of the Biochemical Society.  Placed in University College 1997.

Supplementary material: Received for cataloguing in December 1997 from Mrs Milligan through the good offices of Dr Oliver.  Placed in University College 1997.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

Original material: Biographical papers document Baldwin's academic career from 1934 onwards including his appointment to the Chair of Biochemistry at UCL in 1950. The principal sequence of correspondence in the collection, 1951-1968 is described by Baldwin as personal correspondence but includes exchanges with scientific colleagues. There is significant documentation of Baldwin's research, especially in notebook form. The earliest notebooks, 1930-1933, include material documenting Baldwin's work at Cambridge with D.M.M. Needham, J. Needham and J. Yudkin, a continuous sequence of ten notebooks document research, 1934-1948 and there are also notebooks kept at Woods Hole during 1948 and at Scripps in 1956-1957. Extensive publications, lectures and broadcasts material illustrates Baldwin's role as writer and lecturer on biochemical matters and there are drafts and correspondence relating to his principal biochemical texts such as Dynamic Aspects of Biochemistry and The Nature of Biochemistry. There is also documentation relating to public and invitation lectures and extensive teaching material prepared for his biochemistry courses at Cambridge and UCL. These show signs of revision and rearrangement and there is evidence that they were used in the preparation of some of Baldwin's books. Visits and conferences material covers the period 1948 to 1965, much of it documenting Baldwin's visits to the USA to attend conferences, give lectures at academic institutions, undertake research and take up visiting professorships. A little printed material also survives for the First International Congress of Biochemistry at Cambridge in 1949.

Supplementary material: Biographical material includes documentation of the award of the 1952 Cortina Ulisse Prize by Edizioni Scientifiche Einaudi for the Italian edition of Baldwin's Dynamical aspects of biochemistry. Photographic materials includes two photograph albums recording the visit to Italy during which he received the Cortina Ulisse award and a group photograph of the participants at the Third International Congress for Experimental Cytology which was held at Cambridge in 1933. There is a little further material relating to Baldwin's classic biochemical texts especially royalty statements. Visits and conferences material includes Baldwin's notes of his 1955 visit to the USSR for the All-Union Congress of Physiologists and Biochemists held in Kiev. There is also additional material relating to Baldwin's Visiting Professorships in the USA for 1956-1957 (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) and 1965 (University of Kansas).

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical, Research, Publications, lectures and broadcasts, Visits and conferences. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Appointment required.  Admission is by UCL ID and/or by completing a reader application form.
Finding aids: Printed Catalogues of the papers and correspondence of Ernest Hubert Francis Baldwin: NCUACS catalogue no. 67/5/97, 78 pp and NCUACS supplementary catalogue no. 74/3/98, 20 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath.

Links to catalogues (a2a): original ¯, and supplement ¯

 

  5

 

Bartlett, Sir Frederic Charles, 1886-1969. Knight. Experimental psychologist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Cambridge University Library. Reference code: GB 0012 CUL Add. MS 8076
Title: Papers and correspondence of Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett, 1886-1969.
Dates of creation of material: ca 1906-1966.
Extent: 3 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bartlett was born in Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire and educated at home and London University where he read philosophy graduating in 1909 with first class honours and received an M.A. two years later with special distinction in sociology and ethics. He then moved to St John's College, Cambridge where he read for the Moral Sciences Tripos, 1911-1914, graduating with first class honours. He made his career at Cambridge University, being appointed successively Assistant Director, 1914-1922, and Director, 1922-1952, of the Psychological Laboratory and eventually the University's first Professor of Experimental Psychology, 1931-1952. Bartlett was editor of British Journal of Psychology, 1924-1948. He was interested in problems of perception and memory and the development of skill and training (including work with K.J.W. Craik during the Second World War). He lectured regularly on social psychology at Cambridge University in the 1930s. He was elected FRS in 1932 (Royal Medal 1952) and knighted in 1948.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1974 from Lady Bartlett, widow.  Placed in Cambridge University Library 1975.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers include notebooks of experiments on sensory perception, 1913-1914, association tests, 1914-1915, and memory, 1916-1917, manuscript lectures including lectures given in Cambridge in the 1930s on social psychology, draft publications, and reports on the work of the Psychological Laboratory. There is almost no surviving correspondence.

Arrangement:

By section as follows: Notebooks, Lectures and reports, Publications, University of Cambridge.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Access to holders of full Reader's Tickets for Cambridge University LIbrary.
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett: CSAC catalogue no. 36/13/75.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath.
Link to catalogue ¯ (a2a)

  5

 

Bates, John A.V., 1918-1993. Physiologist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Archives and Manuscripts, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, London.  Reference code: GB 0121 GC/179
Title: Papers and correspondence of John A.V. Bates, 1918-1993
Dates of creation of material: 1942-1985
Extent: 6 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bates was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge and went on to clinical training at University College Hospital, London. During the Second World War he worked on visual tracking in gunnery and control design in tanks for the Ministy of Supply. In 1946 he joined the External Staff of the Medical Research Council based at the Neurological Research Unit at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, London, where he worked until retirement in 1978. Bates also served as Honorary Consultant Physician to the Department of Applied Electrophysiology at the Hospital.

Bates was a leader in the field of neurophysiology. At the end of the Second World War, using home-made equipment from surplus electronic parts, Bates developed specialised equipment for brain stimulation and recording. He studied the human electroencephalogram (EEG) in research into voluntary movement, a term he may have coined. He went on to study the neurological effects of hemispherectomy and later collaborated with Irving Cooper and Purdon Martin on research into Parkinson's Disease, with work on human postural and balance mechanisms.

Bates founded the Ratio Club, a small informal dining club of young physiologists, mathematicians and engineers who met to discuss issues in cybernetics. The idea of the club arose from a Society of Experimental Biology Symposium on Animal Behaviour held in Cambridge, July 1949. The initial membership was W.R. Ashby, H. Barlow, G.D. Dawson, T. Gold, W.E. Hick, D.M. MacKay, T. McLardy, P.A. Merton, J.W.S. Pringle, H. Shipton, D.A. Sholl, A.M. Uttley, W.G. Walter and J. Westcott. A.M. Turing joined after the first meeting and other other members included I.J. Good, P.A. Woodward and W.H.A. Rushton. The Club continued in being until 1958. Bates acted as Secretary and retained many of its historical records.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1995 from the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre.  Returned to CMAC 1995.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The collection is small but includes significant records of Bates's scientific research, and of the Ratio Club. The research material comprises notebooks, and notes and correspondence. The notebooks cover the period 1943-1971. They document wartime research and later research topics including EEG, hemispherectomy and Parkinson's Disease, and may also have notes and drafts for lectures and personal information. The research notes and correspondence include wartime material relating to gunnery, and post-war correspondence, particularly 1945-1952. The Ratio Club papers are principally the contents of a box-file of material assembled for a possible history of the Club. They include a chronological sequence of correspondence and papers relating to meetings of the Club (dates, topics, possible speakers), membership and the future direction of the Club, 1949-1955. There is also a photograph of members of the Club and correspondence 1978 and 1984-1985 relating to the historical records of the Ratio Club. There is some correspondence with members of the Club mostly dating from before the Club was established or after it was discontinued.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Research, Ratio Club. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: By appointment with the Archivist and after completion of a Reader's Application and Undertaking.
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of John A.V. Bates: NCUACS catalogue no. 56/5/95, 26 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath.

  5

 

Bates, Leslie Fleetwood, 1897-1978. Physicist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Nottingham University Library. Reference code: GB 0159 NOTT Bts
Title: Papers and correspondence of Leslie Fleetwood Bates, 1897-1978.
Dates of creation of material: 1914-1978.
Extent: 17 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bates was born in Kingswood, Bristol and educated at the Merchant Venturers' School and Bristol University where he read physics, graduating in 1916. He spent the next four years as a radiographer with the British army in India, returning in 1920 to Bristol to pursue research. He remained at Bristol until 1922, and it was during this period that he was introduced by A.P. Chattock to the study of magnetism which became his main research interest for the rest of his life. Bates then spent two years working under Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, where he completed a Ph.D. thesis on long range alpha particles. In 1924 he was appointed Lecturer and in 1930 Reader in Physics at University College, London. In 1936 he became Lancashire-Spencer Professor of Physics at Nottingham University where he remained until retirement in 1964. He established a thriving research group based on his own interest in magnetism, was responsible for the building of a large new Physics Department and was very active in general university administration. He was elected FRS in 1950.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1978 from Dr Elizabeth Lautch, daughter.  Placed in Nottingham University Library 1982.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

There is very little material in the papers from Bates's pre-Nottingham career except three notebooks from the Bristol period and lectures delivered to undergraduates at London, and very little remains of Bates's actual scientific work except for the three Bristol notebooks. There is material relating to the development of physics at Nottingham, to the magnetism conferences of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) which Bates usually attended and some of which he helped to organise, and to his many services to learned societies, committees and organisations at both national and local level. These include the Royal Society Symbols Committee, the British Standards Institution Units and Symbols Committee, the University Grants Committee on which he served as assessor, the Home Office and others. There is some biographical material especially speeches and letters of congratulation. In Bates's correspondence exchanges are both personal and scientific, often intermixed and there are many letters from former Nottingham students.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical and personal, Notebooks, lectures and publications, University notebooks, Committees and societies, Conferences, Examining and education, Correspondence. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Accessible to all registered readers.
Finding aid: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Leslie Fleetwood Bates: CSAC catalogue no. 83/1/82, 84 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath.

Link to catalogue ¯ (a2a)

  5

 

Bawden, Sir Frederick Charles, 1908-1972. Knight. Plant pathologist

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Library, Royal Society, London. Reference code: GB 0117 Bawden papers
Title: Papers and correspondence of Sir Frederick Charles Bawden, 1908-1972.
Dates of creation of material:  1934-1973.
Extent: 6.33 shelf feet

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bawden was born in North Tawton, Devon and educated at local grammar schools and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 1926-1930, where he read for Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos and the Cambridge Diploma in Agricultural Science. After graduating from Cambridge he worked as Research Assistant to R.N. Salaman at the Potato Virus Research Institute in Cambridge. In 1936 he moved to Rothamsted Experimental Station, Hertfordshire as Virus Physiologist, and became successively Head of the Plant Pathology Department, 1940-1958, Deputy Director, 1950-1958, and Director from 1958 to his death. Bawden served on many committees, and on the Council of the Royal Society of which he was also Treasurer. He lectured and travelled widely and was frequently invited to advise on overseas agricultural projects. He was elected FRS in 1949 (Leeuwenhoek Lecture 1959) and knighted in 1967.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1975 from Lady Bawden, widow.  Placed in the Royal Society 1976.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers include laboratory notebooks dealing with Bawden's research on various plant viruses, and in particular his collaborative work with N.W. Pirie and with A.A.P. Kleczkowski. There is also a detailed exchange of correspondence with Pirie on research in progress, 1937-1940. (Pirie moved to Rothamsted as Virus Physiologist in 1940 when Bawden became Head of the Plant Physiology Department). There is a wide range of correspondence, with individuals and institutions. It deals with scientific research and problems including viral nomenclature, lectures, conferences, publications, Bawden's reports on research projects, grant applications and appointments. The correspondence relating to Bawden's overseas visits as adviser or lecturer is mainly after 1958 and is sometimes accompanied by Bawden's reports.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical and personal, Laboratory notebooks, Scientific correspondence, Correspondence on overseas visits, Correspondence on lectures and conferences, Correspondence on publications. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Papers retain the period of confidentiality agreed at time of the deposit. All new deposits closed for 30 years except by permission of Officers of the Royal Society or the person controlling access.
Finding aid: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Sir Frederick Charles Bawden: CSAC no. 37/1/76, 20 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath

ALLIED MATERIALS

The archive of N.W. Pirie was catalogued for deposit in the Royal Society in 2003.

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Beaver, Sir Hugh Eyre Campbell, 1890-1967. Knight. Engineer and industrialist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: British Library of Political and Economic Science, London. Reference code: GB 0097 BEAVER
Title: Papers and correspondence of Sir Hugh Eyre Campbell Beaver, 1890-1967
Dates of creation of material: 1896- 1972.
Extent: 15 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Beaver was born in Johannesburg in 1890 and educated at Wellington College, 1904-1909. He began his career in the Indian Police, 1910-1912, then joined the engineering firm of Alexander Gibb and Partners, of which he became a Partner, 1932-1942. He served as Director-General, Ministry of Works, 1940-1945, and after the war became Managing Director, Arthur Guinness, Son and Co. which position he held to retirement in 1960.  He was Director of the Colonial Development Corporation 1951 – 1960, Chairman of the British Institute of Management, 1951-1954, of the Committee on Air Pollution, 1953-1954, and of many other bodies connected with engineering, industry and education for management. Beaver was knighted in 1943. He also received honorary degrees from the University of Cambridge, Trinity College Dublin, and the National University of Ireland.  He died in 1967.

 

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1974 from Mrs C. Lawson-Tancred, daughter.  Placed in the BLPES March 1976.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers contain a good deal of autobiographical and personal material, and numerous speeches and addresses on various topics connected with industry, productivity, management, public health, citizenship and education. Throughout his career, Beaver maintained correspondence or personal relations with former colleagues. In addition, he collected photographs, press-cuttings, notes of meetings and discussions, and other material bearing on people or subjects which interested him. He had intended to write, during his retirement, an account of his family and its branches, including his own life and times. He had drawn up outlines of the work, and completed drafts of some of the sections, but died before the task was finished. Accounts remain of his schooldays, service in India, and fragments of recollections of distinguished colleagues. These include Lord Waverley (John Anderson) and Lord Reith, with whom Beaver had a long association, 1940-1960, and from whom a considerable number of letters survive.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical and personal, Professional, Correspondence, Lectures.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Open.
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of  Sir Hugh Eyre Campbell Beaver: CSAC catalogue no. 40/4/76, 9 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath.

Link to catalogue ¯ (a2a)

ALLIED MATERIALS

In other repositories

Extensive family documents relating to the Beaver, Eyre, Campbell and Harrison families were retained in family hands.

Documents and correspondence relating to Wellington College, where Beaver was at school and of which he was Chairman of the Governors, are in the Archives of the College.

Beaver's collection of books on India was given by him to the Library of Sussex University.

  5

 

Benjamin, Thomas Brooke, 1929-1995. Mathematician.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Bodleian Library, Oxford. Reference code: GB 0161 T.B. Benjamin papers
Title: Papers and correspondence of Thomas Brooke Benjamin, 1929-1995.
Dates of creation of material: ca 1947-1996.
Extent: 14 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Benjamin was born in 1929 in Wallasey, Merseyside. He was educated at Wallasey Grammar School and Liverpool University where he studied electrical engineering, 1947-1950 before moving to Yale University on a Rotary Foundation Fellowship where he obtained a Master's degree. He took his doctorate at Cambridge University on cavitation of liquids. He was elected Fellow of King's College, Cambridge in 1955, and appointed Assistant Director of Research 1958-1970 and Reader in Hydrodynamics 1967-1970, working in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Cambridge University, on problems of fluid dynamics such as thin films, wave instability, drag reduction and vortex breakdown. In 1970 Benjamin moved as Professor of Mathematics to the University of Essex, where he set up the Fluid Mechanics Research Institute, to promote interaction between mathematicians and experimentalists in advanced fluid mechanics. In 1979 he accepted appointment to the Sedleian Chair of Natural Philosophy at Oxford University. Apart from periods as Visiting Professor at overseas universities, principally in America, Benjamin remained in Oxford until his death in 1995.

In addition to his contributions to the study of fluid dynamics, Benjamin retained a lifelong interest in music, as executant (piano and strings), conductor and composer. Somewhat later in life, he also turned to the composition of poetry.

Benjamin was elected FRS in 1966 (Bakerian Lecture 1992). He died in 1995.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1996 from Mrs Natalia Benjamin, widow and via Professor John Toland, School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath.  Placed in the Bodleian Library (Gift) 1997.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The surviving documentation of many aspects of Benjamin’s career, is unfortunately sparse; several of his career moves seem to have resulted in the loss or destruction of papers. The biographical material provides a useful outline of the principal events of Benjamin's life including his appointment to the Sedleian Professorship at Oxford. His non-professional interests, music and poetry are well recorded. There is material relating to university courses taught by Benjamin and a considerable quantity of notes, drafts and calculations relating to research, lectures and publications, much of it undated and difficult to assign as to category. Although few records survive relating to Benjamin's visits and conferences, the extent of his travels and his reputation as a lecturer can be seen. Benjamin’s involvement with professional mathematical societies and journals is not well documented. However, there is a more satisfactory representation of his concern with various aspects of higher education, especially the National Conference of University Professors of which he was a founder and first Chairman. Only a very little mathematical correspondence survives.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical, Notes, drafts and calculations, Lectures, conferences and visits, Societies and organisations, Mathematics and higher education, Correspondence. Index of correspondents

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Entry permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card or an Oxford University Card displaying the Bodleian logo. All applicants for new or replacement cards must apply in person, with a recommendation and payment if required, and with proof of their identity.
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Thomas Brooke Benjamin: NCUACS catalogue no. 63/1/97, 54 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath

  5

 

Black, Joseph, 1921-2000. Engineer.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: University of Bath Library. Reference code: GB 1128 Black
Title: Papers and correspondence of Joseph Black, 1921-2000.
Dates of creation of material: 1938-2000
Extent: 4 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Joseph Black was born in Belfast on 25 January 1921.  He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and at Queen’s University, Belfast, graduating in 1941 with first class honours in mechanical engineering.  After three years as a scientific officer with the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, Hampshire, Black returned to Queen’s in 1944 as a research fellow. He was awarded an MSc in 1945.  Later in the same year Black joined de Havilland Aircraft as an aerodynamicist and worked with the team designing the revolutionary Comet jet aeroplane.

 

In 1946 Black left de Havilland to begin an academic career.  His first appointment was as a lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Bristol where his colleagues included A.G. Pugsley, A.H. Chilver and B. Crossland.  Shortly after his appointment Black helped to establish the department of aeronautical engineering under the leadership of A.R. Collar.   In 1960 he left the University of Bristol to become Head of the Department of Engineering at the newly created Bristol College of Science and Technology (subsequently Bristol College of Advanced Technology).  He decided that from the outset his new department should embrace both aeronautical and mechanical engineering.  In 1966 the transformation of the College into Bath University of Technology (later the University of Bath) presented Black with new challenges as he helped to guide and foster the institution’s development. Between 1960 and 1966 he was involved in the intensive planning which immediately preceded the university’s creation and was a member of the committee that chose its Claverton Down site.

 

Between 1970 and 1973, as one of the University of Bath’s first pro-vice-chancellors, Black was instrumental in devising and implementing a number of innovative administrative and academic structures, including the establishment of a unified School of Engineering encompassing mechanical, aeronautical and manufacturing engineering.  As a keen advocate of design as an integral part of engineering, Black laid the foundation of the school’s outstanding reputation in engineering design.  Particularly enthusiastic about new techniques in computer-aided design, he ensured that appropriate emphasis was placed on design in the University of Bath undergraduate engineering curriculum.  Recognising the need in engineering education for closer links between universities and industry, Black played an important part in the introduction of the ‘thin sandwich’ course whereby students alternated academic terms with periods spent on industrial placements.  He was also largely responsible for instigating degree courses in engineering with French and German.  On his retirement from the University of Bath in 1985 Black was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship to research and write on engineering in art.

 

Amongst Black’s contributions to the wider higher education community and public service was membership of the University Grants Committee and the Design Council.  He was appointed CBE in 1979 for his work in the field of university education and in 1981 elected to the Fellowship of Engineering (Royal Academy of Engineering).

Custodial history:

The papers were received from Mrs M. Black, widow, in August 2001.  Placed in University of Bath Library in 2002.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

Biographical material includes early letters of reference from Belfast, 1938-1941, a report on a visit to educational establishments in the USA in 1962, papers relating to the conferment of honorary degrees, and photographs, 1976-1989.  Although there are a few early engineering drawings (Belfast 1938) and later records of Black’s interest in Gustave Eiffel’s contribution to the development of experimental aerodynamics, the largest component of his research material relates to a medical engineering project at Bath.   This involved the development of a ‘floating stretcher’, designed to alleviate problems of road vibration while patients were being conveyed by ambulance.  There are correspondence and papers relating to publications and lectures, 1947-2000, the topics ranging from supersonics to Renaissance Art.

Arrangement

By section as follows:. Index of correspondents

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Contact the Archivist, University of Bath Library.
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Joseph Black: NCUACS catalogue no. 107/6/02, 26 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath

  5

 

Blackett, Patrick Maynard Stuart, Baron Blackett of Chelsea, 1897-1974. Physicist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Library, Royal Society, London. Reference code:  GB 0117 Blackett papers
Title: Papers and correspondence of Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, Baron Blackett of Chelsea, 1897-1974.
Dates of creation of material: 1911-1975.
Extent: ca 1,360 items, 45.92 linear feet

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Blackett was born in Kensington, London. He was educated at the Osborne Naval College and Dartmouth College for a career in the Royal Navy and saw action during the First World War at the Battle of Jutland. He resigned from the navy at the end of the war and entered Magdalene College, Cambridge to read for the Natural Sciences Tripos, 1919-1921. He became a research student under Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory in 1921, working with cloud chambers. In 1924 he succeeded in obtaining the first photographs of an atomic transmutation, which was of nitrogen into an oxygen isotope. He continued to develop the cloud chamber and in 1932, with the assistance of G. Occhialini, he designed a cloud chamber in which photographs of cosmic rays were taken automatically. Early in 1933 the device confirmed the existence of the positron. In the same year he became Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, London where he continued his cosmic ray studies demonstrating in 1935 the formation of showers of positive and negative electrons from gamma rays in approximately equal numbers. In 1937 he succeeded W.L. Bragg as Langworthy Professor of Physics at Manchester University, continuing his cosmic ray work.

He was brought into the Air Defence Committee in 1936 by H.T. Tizard and during the Second World War he contributed to or directed several research projects such as proximity fuses and bombsights and greatly developed the technique of operational research, notably as applied to controversies over bombing policy and the U-boat campaign. He returned to academic life at the end of the war and, as a consequence of his research into cosmic rays, became interested in the history of the Earth's magnetic field and turned to the study of rock magnetism. In 1953 he was appointed Head of the Physics Department at Imperial College, London where he built up a team specialising in rock magnetism. He was Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow, 1965-1974. Blackett was always politically committed to the left, and in later years to developing countries and especially to India. At certain periods he exerted influence, particularly after the Labour Party's General Election victory in 1964 when he became Deputy Chairman and Scientific Adviser, Advisory Council on Technology, Ministry of Technology.

Blackett received many honours and awards both in Britain and internationally. He was elected FRS in 1933 (Bakerian Lecture 1939, Royal Medal 1940, Copley Medal 1956, PRS 1965-1970), and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1948 for his work on particle disintegration and cosmic rays. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1967 and received a Life Peerage in 1969.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1975-1976 from Lady Blackett, widow.  Placed in the Royal Society 1979.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers are extensive, relating to almost every aspect of Blackett's career in science and public life. There is biographical and personal material including large numbers of letters of congratulation received on the occasion of the various scientific and public awards and honours with which Blackett's achievements were recognised. There are records of his work on particle disintegration, cosmic rays, astrophysics and magnetism in the form of laboratory notebooks, working papers, correspondence, lectures, publications and broadcasts. There is documentation of his activities on various defence projects and as a member of government committees before, during and after the Second World War. Blackett's political interests are represented by material relating to the Association of Scientific Workers, Labour Party discussion groups on science and technology policy and the Ministry of Technology instituted after the Party's 1964 electoral victory. There are records of a wide range of science-related interests such as the history of science and technology, science, education and government, and nuclear weapons and disarmament, and of his overseas activities including material relating specifically to India and that concerned with matters more generally affecting developing countries.

A few lacunae in the surviving material have been identified. There are no documents relative to Blackett's service with the National Research and Development Corporation or the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and, of his correspondence during the Second World War, only that for 1942 survives.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical and personal, Particle disintegration, Astrophysics, Magnetism, Second World War and government committees, Political activities, Science-related interests, Overseas activities, Lectures, addressses, publications and broadcasts, Correspondence.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Papers retain the period of confidentiality agreed at time of the deposit. All new deposits closed for 30 years except by permission of Officers of the Royal Society or the person controlling access..
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, Baron Blackett of Chelsea: CSAC catalogue no. 63/2/79, 401 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath
Link to catalogue ¯ (a2a)

  5

 

Blackman, Geoffrey Emett, 1903-1980. Agronomist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Bodleian Library, Oxford. Reference code: GB 0161 G.E. Blackman papers
Title: Papers and correspondence of Geoffrey Emett Blackman, 1903-1980.
Dates of creation of material: 1863-1981.
Extent: 21 boxes.

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Blackman came from a family which has included several distinguished scientists; his father, V.H. Blackman and his uncle F.F. Blackman were both botanists and his aunt Dame Harriette Chick was a nutritionist. He was born in Kensington, London and educated at King's College School, Wimbledon and St John's College, Cambridge (Natural Sciences Tripos), 1923-1926. After graduating from Cambridge, he worked briefly at Rothamsted Experimental Station, Hertfordshire and then, 1927-1933, as Head of Botany Section at the ICI Research Station at Jealott's Hill, Bracknell, where F.W. Keeble was Director. His main research was on grasses and on the use of sulphuric acid in weed control. In 1933 he moved to Imperial College, London, as Lecturer in Ecology in the Department of Botany, and remained there (under secondment to the Agricultural Research Council, 1942-1945) until 1945, when he moved to Oxford as Sibthorpian Professor of Rural Economy. Here he continued research on weed control, but also directed research teams on growth analysis.

During the Second World War, Blackman played an active part in initiating the Biology War Committee, of which he was Secretary throughout its existence. The Committee advised on research projects and coordinated results in reports on such topics as improved sources and production of food, crop storage and weed control, and prepared booklets for the Forces on 'The dangers of swimming in tropical waters' and 'Living in the jungle'. Blackman's own primary research interest was in weed control, selective toxicity and herbicide techniques, and his international reputation in these areas led to his being invited in 1971 to serve on the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Effects of Herbicides in Vietnam. He was elected FRS in 1959.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1979-1981 from Mrs Audrey Blackman, widow, Dr J.D. Fryer and Professor J.L. Harley, author of the Royal Society memoir of Blackman.  Placed in Bodleian Library (gift) 1981.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers are representative of much of Blackman's work. There is documentation of his early research on grasses and on the bluebell, and wartime research on oil-seed crops and weed control. Some of the projects of the Biology War Committee are well documented, notably a nation-wide survey of the distribution and ecology of the spindle tree arranged by the historic counties of Britain and the preparation of the booklets for the Forces. Blackman's designated areas of responsibility in respect of the Vietnam herbicides committee are fully recorded and there is also much useful background information, schedules and circulation of drafts, reviews and amendments. Blackman's service with many other committees and organisations is only patchily represented in the surviving material, the most substantial record being of his contribution to the International Council of Scientific Union's International Biological Programme. There is some biographical material including tributes to Blackman and his work, recollections and information, contributed by colleagues. General scientific correspondence is meagre.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical and personal, Lectures, Notes, drafts and working papers, Committees and consultancies, Correspondence. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Entry permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card or an Oxford University Card displaying the Bodleian logo. All applicants for new or replacement cards must apply in person, with a recommendation and payment if required, and with proof of their identity.

Certain items not available.

Language: English
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Geoffrey Emett Blackman: CSAC catalogue no. 79/3/81, 71 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath.

  5

 

Bohm, David Joseph 1917-1992. Physicist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Library, Birkbeck College, London.  Reference code: GB 1832 BOHM
Title: Papers and correspondence of David Joseph Bohm, 1917-1992
Dates of creation of material: 1933-2005
Extent: 16 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bohm was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA on 20 December 1917. He studied at Pennsylvania State University, graduating in 1939, then moved to the California Institute of Technology for post-graduate work, completing his Ph.D. in 1943 at the University of California at Berkeley under J.R. Oppenheimer. He then worked on the Manhattan Project at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. In 1947 he was appointed Assistant Professor at Princeton University. He worked there until 1950, when Princeton refused to renew his contract after he had fallen foul of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. While working at the Radiation Laboratory during the war Bohm had been active in the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians (FAECT) trade union. In 1949, as Cold War tensions increased, the Committee on Un-American Activities began investigating staff who had been working there. As a member of FAECT and as a former member of the Communist Party Bohm came under suspicion. He was called upon to testify before the Committee but pleaded the Fifth Amendment refusing to give evidence against colleagues. After the USSR tested its first atomic device in September 1949 it was thought that atomic bomb secrets must have been passed to the USSR. It was alleged that members of the FAECT had been in a Communist cell working at Berkeley during the war. In 1950 Bohm was charged with Contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions before the Committee and arrested. He was acquitted in May 1951 but Princeton had already suspended Bohm and after his acquittal refused to renew his contract. Bohm left for Brazil in 1951 to take up a Chair in Physics at the University of Sćo Paulo. In 1955 he moved to Israel where he spent two years at the Technion at Haifa. Here he met his wife Saral, who was an important figure in the development of his ideas. In 1957 Bohm moved to the UK. He held a research fellowship at University of Bristol until 1961, when he was made Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College London. He retired in 1987.

Bohm made a number of significant contributions to physics, particularly in the area of quantum mechanics. As a post-graduate at Berkeley he discovered the electron phenomenon now known as 'Bohm-diffusion'. His first book, Quantum Theory published in 1951, was well-received by Einstein among others. However, he was unsatisified with the orthodox approach to quantum theory and began to develop his own approach, expressed in his second book Causality and Chance in Modern Physics published in 1957. In 1959, with his student Yakir Aharonov, he discovered the 'Aharonov-Bohm effect', showing how a vacuum could produce striking physical effects. His third book, The Special Theory of Relativity was published in 1965.

Bohm's scientific and philosophical views were inseparable. In 1959 he came across a book by the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti. He was struck with how his own ideas on quantum mechanics meshed with the philosophy of Krishnamurti. The two first met in 1961 and over the following years had many conversations or dialogues. Bohm's approach to philosophy and physics are expressed in his 1980 book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, and in the book Science, Order and Creativity, written with F.D. Peat and published in 1987. In his later years, partly through his connection with Krishnamurti, Bohm developed the technique of Dialogue, in which a group of individuals engaged in constructive verbal interaction with each other. He believed that if carried out on a sufficiently wide scale these Dialogues could help overcome fragmentation in society. Bohm led a number of Dialogues in the 1980s and early 1990s, the most well-known being those held at Ojai Grove School in California.

Bohm was elected FRS in 1990. He died in 1992.

See B.J. Hiley, 'David Joseph Bohm', Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 43, 105-131 (1997).

Custodial history

Original deposit received for cataloguing in March 1995 from Professor B.J. Hiley, with copies of Bohm material held elsewhere, especially in Brazil made available by Dr Olival Freire Jr. in February 1997.  Deposited in Birkbeck College 1997.  Supplementary material was received from Professor Hiley, via Birkbeck College in November 2006.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

Original material: There is significant biographical material in the collection. There are obituaries and tributes, interviews, discussions and Dialogues with Bohm, including those at Ojai, California. Bohm's ideas attracted much interest and there are significant number of articles and papers inspired by him. Material directly recording his life and career is comparatively slight but there are papers relating to Bohm's difficulties with the House Committee on Un-American Activities 1949-1951. There are drafts by Bohm of papers and lectures, mostly unpublished, including some drafts on quantum theory, although the bulk are of a philosophical nature. There are also copies of a few of his published works and book reviews by others of Bohm's work and drafts by F.D. Peat drawing on Bohm's work which were found with the papers. The correspondence, is divided into two sequences. There is a sequence of general correspondence, including photocopies of correspondence with Einstein ca 1950-1954 which include discussion of quantum theory as well as Einstein's advice on Bohm's career. Other significant correspondents are R. Karnette, H.M. Loewy and M. Phillips. The second sequence is photocopies of the voluminous correspondence on a wide range of philosophical and scientific subjects with the American artist and theorist Charles J. Biederman, 1960-1969.

 

Supplementary material:

Biographical papers include a copy of the Royal Society biographical memoir of Bohm, additional interviews and dialogues material, including a series of contributions to the magazine ReVision, and some additional material relating to the Ojai Dialogues of 1989.  There are further articles about Bohm showing the continuing interest his life and ideas inspired.  Life and career material includes documentation of his election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society including letters of congratulation.  The original catalogue contained a solitary letter of congratulation, from Brian Josephson, which reinforced the picture of him as a loner shunned by the mainstream scientific establishment.  The addition to this of congratulations from figures such as Lord Flowers, Sir Roger Penrose and Abdus Salam indicates the high regard in which he was widely held.  The section also has a little personal correspondence, which includes documentation of visits to North America in the 1970s and 1980s, and material relating to his wife Saral Bohm that shows her promoting her husband’s ideas after his death.

 

Documentation of Bohm’s drafts, publications and lectures, forms the largest component of this catalogue.  It covers the period 1951 to 1998.  Of particular note is the further material presented on the themes of wholeness and fragmentation and the implicate order. There is also significant material on Bohm’s ideas in quantum theory.  Drafts by Bohm include a series of lectures ‘On plasma physics’, delivered at the University of Rome in May 1958 and on ‘General theory of collective coordinates’, University of Bristol, about the same date.  Bohm’s wider vision is documented in papers delivered at various meetings, such as ‘An inquiry into the function of language and thought’ (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, March, 1971), ‘Insight, imagination, reason and the nature of knowledge’ and ‘Consciousness’ (Syracuse University, September 1982), and ‘Fragmentation and wholeness’ (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zürich, Switzerland, 1986).  The coverage of Bohm’s published output in the original catalogue was rather thin; this catalogue presents significantly more material documenting his publications.  It includes articles on quantum theory from the 1950s onwards, drafts of Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (1957) and the final chapter of Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980), and a posthumously published work ‘Cosmos, Matter, Life and Consciousness’, in The Spirit of Science. From Experiment to Experience (1998) from a lecture originally given in 1983.

 

The additional correspondence presents important new material on Bohm’s life and ideas.  It includes a bound volume of correspondence with the philosopher J.G. Bennett (1962-1964) largely arising from ideas put forward in Bennett’s book The Dramatic Universe, much influenced by G.I. Gurdjieff.  There is correspondence with A. Kahler and her daughter H.M. Loewy 1950-1951, in which Bohm discusses his difficulties with the Un-American Activities Committee, his move to Brazil and future plans.  There are exchanges with D.L. Schindler, editor of Communio, a Roman Catholic journal, arising from Schindler’s review of Bohm’s book Wholeness and the Implicate Order.  Correspondence with F. Wilhelm includes discussion of the thought and personality of J. Krishnamurti, who was a profound influence on the thought of both men, and further discussion of Krishnamurti is to be found in the typescript transcripts of correspondence with Yitzhak (‘Isidore’) Woolfson, Bohm’s brother-in-law. This correspondence also discusses individuality, the nature of understanding, memory and the Arab-Israeli conflict.  There is an extensive set of photocopies of manuscript letters from Bohm to the mathematician Miriam Yevick.  The letters cover the early 1950s after Bohm’s move to Brazil and cover his experiences there, his future plans, and the state of the world, as well as the development of his ideas in quantum theory.

 

Non-textual material includes audio cassette tapes of broadcasts on Radio France in 1982 and the proceedings of the memorial meeting to Bohm held at Birkbeck College London in May 1993.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical, Drafts, publications and lectures, Correspondence. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: By appointment.  Users should contact the College Librarian or the Science Subject Librarian.
Language: English
Finding aids: Printed Catalogues of the papers and correspondence of David Joseph Bohm: NCUACS catalogue nos. 66/4/97, 53pp and 156/6/07, 38pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath. 

Link to original catalogue on A2A (151k bytes)

ALLIED MATERIALS

Publication note:

Bohm-Biederman Correspondence. Volume One: Creativity and Science, ed. Paavo Pylkkanen (London and New York, 1999).

  5

 

Boot, Henry Albert Howard, 1917-1983. Physicist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: National Archive for Electrical Science and Technology, Institution of Engineering and Technology, London. Reference code: GB 0108 NAEST 061
Title: Papers and correspondence of Henry Albert Howard Boot, 1917-1983.
Dates of creation of material: 1939-1979.
Extent: 3.5 boxes.

CONTEXT

Biographical history:

Boot was a physicist who made an outstanding contribution to the successful application of British science during the Second World War. Working with J.T. Randall in M.L.E. Oliphant's laboratory at Birmingham University, Boot produced the first 10 centimetre radar through the cavity magnetron. a discovery which had a profound impact on the waging of the war in several important spheres. In the Battle of the Atlantic centrimetric radar provided the Allies with a means of locating with accuracy, surfaced U-boats in any weather, day or night, and centrimetric radar was also decisive in the defeat of the German night bombers in 1943-1944 and in the improvement in the accuracy of the Allies' own night bombing. The cavity magnetron was built by Randall and Boot during the winter of 1939-1940 and developed by research teams in universities, institutions and government departments in Britain and the USA. Randall and Boot were awarded the Thomas Gray Memorial Prize of the Royal Society of Arts in 1943 for 'improving the safety of life at sea'. Further recognition followed with the award by the Royal Commission for Awards for Inventors in 1949, the John Price Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute, Pennsylvania in 1958 and the John Scott Award of the City of Philadelphia in 1959.

Custodial history:

Received for cataloguing  in 1977 from Boot.  Placed in NAEST August 1979.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary:

The papers contain laboratory notebooks and drawings associated with the design of the first cavity magnetron in 1939-1940, and further notes, drawings, blueprints, reports, correspondence and committee papers relating to its subsequent development. There are reports of research teams in various British and American universities, institutions and government departments, including those led by D.R. Hartree at Manchester University and E.C. Stoner at Leeds University. There are also a number of historical accounts of the development of the cavity magnetron.

Arrangement:

By section as follows: Historical accounts of the development of the magnetron, Laboratory notebooks, working notes, drawings and blueprints, Progress reports and minutes of meetings, Correspondence, Reports on research in other laboratories. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Open access.
Language: English
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Henry Albert Howard Boot: CSAC catalogue no. 68/6/79, 21 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath

ALLIED MATERIALS

In other repositories

The original magnetron block was given by Boot to the Science Museum, London.

Tapes and transcripts of interviews with Randall and Boot are held in the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

  5

 

Bowden, Keith Frederick, 1936-1982. Computer scientist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Essex University Library.  Reference code: GB 0301 ASL/SC/BOW
Title: Papers and correspondence of Keith Frederick Bowden, 1936-1982.
Dates of creation of material: 1967-1975.
Extent: 4 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history:

Bowden was educated at Sir John Deane's School, Sandbach and Manchester University where he studied electrical engineering, graduating in 1958. He then joined T. Kilburn's research team at Manchester, working on the Atlas Computer. He moved to Essex University in 1967 as a founder member of the Computer Science Department where he was later Professor and Head of Department. He was leader of a project to apply computers to the maintenance of personal medical records. Bowden was killed in a road accident.

Custodial history:

Received for cataloguing from Mr I.R. MacCallum, Department of Computer Science, Essex University.  Placed in Essex Univeristy Library 1985.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers relate exclusively to the medical records project and include reports, correspondence with the Ministry of Health and collaborators, committee papers and records of the project's financial administration.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Reports, Correspondence and committee papers, Financial administration, Biographical. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: The Albert Sloman Library is open to researchers on application in writing to the Librarian for reference purposes.
Language: English
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Keith Frederick Bowden: CSAC catalogue no. 105/2/85, 17 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath
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Bowen, Edmund John, 1898-1980. Chemist and historian of science.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Museum of the History of Science, Broad Street, Oxford. Reference code: GB 0463 MS Bowen
Title: Papers and correspondence of Edmund John Bowen, 1898-1980.
Dates of creation of material: 1931-1980.
Extent: 1 box

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bowen was born in the Parish of St John in Bedwardine, Worcester and educated at Worcester Royal Grammar School. He entered Balliol College, Oxford in 1915 and, apart from war service, spent the rest of his life at Oxford. At the end of 1916 he volunteered to train as a gunner officer and in 1917 was posted to France with a howitzer unit, seeing almost continuous war service until the Armistice. On demobilisation he returned to Balliol to complete his undergraduate studies, 1919-1920. In 1921 he was appointed to a Lecturership at University College where he was elected a Fellow and Praelector in Chemistry in 1922, a position he held until 1965, when he was elected an Honorary Fellow. He was University Demonstrator in Chemistry, 1938-1952, and Aldrichian Praelector in Chemistry, 1952-1965. Bowen was a pioneer in the study of photochemical reactions and a major contributor to knowledge of the production and quenching of fluorescence. He was elected FRS in 1935 (Davy Medal 1963).

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1981 from Mrs E. Bowen, widow and Dr H.J.M. Bowen, son.  Placed in Museum of History of Science 1981.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers are not extensive. There are almost no records of Bowen's scientific work with the exception of reprints of his publications in the field of photochemistry, 1921-1963. There is some biographical and personal material including an autobiographical account of Bowen's childhood, service in the First World War and subsequent career to 1929. There is also material reflecting Bowen's keen interest in the history of science including reminiscences of Oxford chemistry between the wars.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical and autobiographical, Historical writings. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Access is (at normal times) available to any bona fide researcher by appointment.  No confidentiality restrictions affect this collection.
Language: English
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Edmund John Bowen: CSAC catalogue no. 81/5/81, 13 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, Univeristy of Bath

ALLIED MATERIALS

In same repository

Papers deposited by Bowen in his lifetime:
MS Museum 202: notes of laboratory work on photochemistry, early 1920s
MS Museum 88, 158 and 167: historical notes on the Royal Society, Balliol-Trinity Laboratories (Oxford), and Alembic Club (Oxford) respectively.

The Museum also holds some of Bowen's scientific apparatus, including apparatus made by him.

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Bretscher, Egon, 1901-1973. Chemist and nuclear physicist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. Reference code: GB 0014 BRET
Title: Papers and correspondence of Egon Bretscher, 1901-1973.
Dates of creation of material: 1896-1973.
Extent: 34 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bretscher was born in Zürich, Switzerland and educated at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH). He obtained his diploma in chemical engineering at the ETH and then spent 1925-1927 at Edinburgh University working for his doctorate in the Department of Chemistry (J. Walker). After a further period at the ETH he was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship, held at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, 1934-1935. Rutherford invited him to return to Cambridge in 1936 and he remained there as Clerk Maxwell Scholar, 1936-1939, and Lecturer, 1939-1944. His work on nuclear physics led to his involvement in the British atomic bomb research project 'Tube Alloys' and his membership of the British Mission to the Manhattan District Scientific Laboratory at Los Alamos from early 1944 where he worked in E. Fermi's Advanced Development Division. After the war he returned to Britain and joined the newly-established Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, first as head of the Chemistry Division, then from 1948 as head of the Nuclear Physics Division. He retired from Harwell in 1966.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1984-1986 from Mrs Hanni Bretscher, widow. Some of the papers relating to research, committees, lectures and publications during Bretscher's period at AERE Harwell, and not required by the Public Record Office, were received in 1984 from Harwell.  Placed in Churchill Archives Centre 1986.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers, though not exhaustive, provide some useful material on Bretscher's career and some of the momentous events in which he participated. There is biographical material including Bretscher's own 'Survey of activities during the war and with the A.E.R.E.', compiled in 1964 and a lecture given at Harwell in 1967 on 'Wartime nuclear physics and chemical research at the Cavendish Laboratory 1940-1944 associated with atomic weapons'. Very little remains of his early work in Switzerland and there is only a little material on the early stages of his atomic research at Cambridge and the collaboration with D.E. Lea. Much better documented is the work undertaken at the Cavendish Laboratory for the 'Tube Alloys' Project. There are research notes and reports by members of the team, reports prepared for the Maud Committee and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Bretscher's regular exchanges of correspondence with J. Chadwick and records of later work relating to postwar publication of the wartime research.

Because of the exceptionally tight security virtually no personal research material remains from the Los Alamos period. There are, however, a number of final reports contributed to the sequence of 'L.A.' reports, some personal correspondence, circulars and newsletters, and press-cuttings. The largest body of material relates to Bretscher's postwar career at Harwell and documents his involvement in national and international nuclear data committees, and his interest in maintaining collaboration with universities and other research institutions. The surviving correspondence is scanty with few substantial exchanges.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical and personal, Switzerland, Cambridge, 'Tube Alloys', Los Alamos, Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Visits, Correspondence. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Readers intending to use the Archives Centre must write in advance to the Keeper of the Archives giving details of their research subject and listing the collections they will wish to consult. New readers should also provide a letter of introduction and some form of identification (such as a passport or driving licence).
Language: English and, in part, German.
Finding aid: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Egon Bretscher CSAC catalogue no. 115/6/86, 72 pp. Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath.
Link to catalogue ¯(a2a)
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British Association Mathematical Tables Committee, 1871-1948.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Bodleian Library, Oxford. Reference code: GB 0161 British Association Mathematical Tables Committee
Title: Papers and correspondence of the British Association Mathematical Tables Committee.
Dates of creation of material: 1896-1960.
Extent: 8 boxes

CONTEXT

Administrative history

The Committee was set up in 1871, 'for the purpose of reporting on Mathematical Tables, which it may be desirable to compute or reprint'; the Committee was re-formed and reorganised at various times but its purpose remained broadly along its original lines. In 1928 Col. A.J.C. Cunningham (member of the Committee, 1895-1901, Secretary, 1896-1901) died leaving in his will 'one-twelfth part (of my residuary estate) for preparing new Mathematical Tables in the Theory of Numbers'. This legacy was used to produce vols III, IV, V, VIII and IX of the B.A. Tables. The B.A. Committee held its final meeting on 23 June 1948, its assets and liabilities, including the residue of the Cunningham bequest, being transferred to the Royal Society on 30 June 1948.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing  in 1976-1977 from Professor M.V. Wilkes who served on the Committee, 1939-1948, who had himself received them from Dr J.C.P. Miller, the last Secretary of the Committee, 1945-1948.  Placed in the Bodleian Library (gift) 1978.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers include minute books, 1929-1948, Annual Reports, 1896, 1923-1939, 1948, and an undated Final report, correspondence and papers relating to elliptic functions, 1925-1943, and correspondence and papers relating to the Cunningham Bequest, 1930-1960.

Arrangement

See Scope and content above.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Entry permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card or an Oxford University Card displaying the Bodleian logo. All applicants for new or replacement cards must apply in person, with a recommendation and payment if required, and with proof of their identity.
Language: English
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of the British Association Mathematical Tables Committee: CSAC catalogue no. 58/2/78, 9 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath

5

Brown, Robert Hanbury, 1916-2002. Astronomer.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: The Library, Royal Society.   Reference code: GB 0117 RHB
Title: Papers and correspondence of Robert Hanbury Brown, 1916-2002.
Dates of creation of material:1911-2007.
Extent: ca 870 items

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Robert Hanbury Brown was born on 31 August 1916 in Aruvankadu, South India, where his father was in charge of a cordite factory. Hanbury Brown was sent to England to be educated and attended Cottesmore Preparatory School in Hove, Sussex, from the age of eight to fourteen. In 1930 he entered Tonbridge School in Kent, switching to Brighton Technical College after only two years. The decision was partly the product of strained family finances - but Hanbury Brown had long shown an active interest in technological matters. His grandfather (the irrigation engineer Sir Robert Hanbury Brown) was one of the early pioneers of radio, and his legal guardian after his parents’ divorce was a consulting radio engineer.  At Brighton Technical College he studied for an external degree in the University of London, graduating BSc with first class honours in electrical engineering at the age of nineteen. At this time appeared also his first publication (with his student friend Vic Tyler), on ‘Lamp polar curves on the cathode-ray oscillograph’. With a grant from East Sussex County Council he then embarked on a postgraduate course in advanced studies on telegraphy and telephony at City & Guilds of London Institute, then part of Imperial College. At the time he hoped to complete a doctorate in radio engineering and to pursue a career that would combine his interest in radio with flying.

 

Hanbury Brown’s involvement both with the new University of London Air Squadron and with cathode-ray tubes drew the interest of the Rector of Imperial College, Henry Tizard. Tizard chaired a committee that had recently been set up by the Air Ministry to find ways of protecting Britain from possible attack from enemy aircraft. Through Tizard’s intervention Hanbury Brown came to be recruited into an experimental project instigated by Robert Watson-Watt, to develop a system of radio-location using pulse/echo technique for aircraft detection. In August 1936 Hanbury Brown joined what would grow into the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) and helped develop Chain Home, an air surveillance system of ground stations along the East and South Coasts that proved vital in the 1940 Battle of Britain. From the autumn of 1937 he worked in the airborne radar group under E. G. Bowen, which transferred to the USA in 1942 for a joint British-American mission on air defence. Returning three years later Hanbury Brown rejoined TRE, helping the Air Historical Branch of the Air Ministry write an account of airborne radar and working on the application of the pulsed navigational aid GEE to civil aviation. A research consultancy set up by Watson-Watt in 1947 offered more interesting prospects for the conversion of wartime developments into peacetime technologies. He allowed himself to be recruited and worked as a consulting engineer until Watson-Watt decided to move the firm to Canada. After pondering a number of career possibilities, Hanbury Brown returned to academia in the autumn of 1949, when he started as a PhD student in radio astronomy at the University of Manchester.

 

His impact at Jodrell Bank, where Manchester’s radio astronomy group was based, was instantaneous. The development for which he achieved his greatest distinction lay in interferometry, indeed in showing how the principle of the intensity interferometer could be applied to optical interferometry. In 1956, he and the mathematician R.Q. Twiss showed on the basis of a laboratory experiment that the time of arrival of photons at two separate detectors was correlated (Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect). Physicists struggled with the idea, photon correlation being inconceivable from a quantum theoretical perspective; yet Hanbury Brown and Twiss proceeded to demonstrate on the example of the star Sirius how the phenomenon could be used in an interferometer to measure the apparent angular diameter of bright visual stars. Their work earned them a Michelson Medal for opening up the subject of quantum optics.

 

With the controversy over the Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect in full swing, Hanbury Brown proposed a large optical interferometer to measure the diameters of other main sequence stars. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research agreed to fund the initial design costs and a large part of the eventual construction costs for an instrument consisting of two reflectors, mounted on a circular railway track 188 metres in diameter. The instrument was manufactured in Britain and Italy, but built in the Australian bush near Narrabri in New South Wales. The construction of the Narrabri Stellar Intensity Interferometer (NSII) at a fairly remote site was a heroic task, which kept Hanbury Brown full-time in Australia. In 1964, two years into the mission, he resigned from the personal chair which the University of Manchester had created for him in 1960, and accepted an appointment as Professor of Physics (Astronomy) at the University of Sydney. Despite tempting offers to go elsewhere after the NSII was decommissioned in 1974, he stayed on to explore a next generation instrument.  This was not to be another intensity interferometer, but a modernised Michelson interferometer, the Sydney University Stellar Interferometer (SUSI).  The SUSI became the project of his colleague John Davis and it finally opened in 1991, ten years after Hanbury Brown officially retired.

 

Hanbury Brown’s commitments to science manifested beyond the instruments and institutions with which he was most visibly affiliated. His involvements in such ventures of the 1970s as the Anglo-Australian-Telescope (AAT) or the Science Task Force both illustrate in their way how he envisaged future science. For instance, he used a job interview for the directorship of the new AAT to criticize centralist tendencies in Australian science funding, pleading for greater equality of the state universities vis-ą-vis the flagship of Australian academia, the Australian National University. Likewise, as a member of the Science Task Force, a consultative committee of the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration, he expressed his concerns over changes in the scientific ethos under government funding, which had become the norm after World War II. The now classic report of the Task Force, Towards Diversity and Adaptability (1975), was imbued with the ideal of scientific autonomy.

 

Over the years Hanbury Brown also developed his dimension as a public scientist in his writings and his lectures. He became an interpreter of science who explained to non-expert audiences his particular science, interferometry, as well as his views on the scientific enterprise more broadly. His broadcasts and other public performances bear this out, as do such monographs as his account of The Intensity Interferometer (1974) or the more philosophical Man and the Stars (1978) and The Wisdom of Science (1986). In his last publication, There are no Dinosaurs in the Bible, which he had written for his grandchildren and which appeared posthumously, Hanbury Brown returned to a theme that had occupied him over a number of decades, the relations between science and religion. Another subject close to his heart were his wartime experiences. His friendships from the radar days lasted a lifetime, and he continued to explore the history of radar with younger radar buffs, through reunions and celebratory occasions, and in television programmes and sound recordings.

 

Hanbury Brown accumulated many honours during his long career. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1960. In 1986, he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia. He was also rumoured to have been the prototype prompting the expression ‘boffin’ (for a technological expert).  He married Heather Hilda Chesterman in 1952. They had one daughter and two sons (twins). He died on 16 January 2002.

Custodial history

The papers were received from Dr Marion Hanbury Brown, daughter of Robert Hanbury Brown, in August 2003 and August 2006.  Deposited in the Library, Royal Society, London

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

Although there is significant material from Hanbury Brown’s education and early career, including wartime service, the bulk dates from the 1960s to the late 1990s and there is thus a pronounced emphasis on Hanbury Brown’s career following his departure for Australia. His war-time research, the transition to radio astronomy and the intense collaborations in the Jodrell Bank group are more sketchily documented, as is in fact his and John Davis’s quest for an instrument to succeed the NSII.

 

There is a wide range of biographical material relating to Hanbury Brown’s life and career.  It includes the contents of a boxfile of biographical correspondence from the 1930s and 1940s documenting his education, wartime service and immediate postwar career.  There are transcripts of interviews, proceedings of conferences to honour his achievements, and drafts (with correspondence) of his Royal Society/Australian Academy of Science Biographical Memoir and other tributes and obituaries. There are also some family papers including letters to his wife Heather before and after their marriage, certificates of education and of awards, and a run of diaries 1936-1998. There is also photographic material.

 

There is documentation of aspects of Hanbury Brown’s war work on radar from early experiments at Martlesham airfield in Sussex to memorabilia (including a poem on the ‘radar man’). Hanbury Brown’s years with the Combined Research Group at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC are covered by memoranda and photostats of research reports. Of particular interest is the material relating to the claim on the part of the airborne radar team for an award for the design and development of metre-wave airborne radar. This section further includes reunion activities in the 1990s.

 

Jodrell Bank material is not extensive.  It includes an early letter to J.A. Ratcliffe in which Hanbury Brown outlined a radio interferometer of high resolution, pen-recorded inscriptions of signals from Cassiopeia and Sirius, and a notebook with measurements on Sirius that provided practical vindication of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect.  There are memoranda and proposals on instruments, notably the steerable radio telescope and the interferometer that was eventually built in Narrabri.  The development of this latter instrument is further documented by a notebook containing detailed calculations and tests of sample equipment for the future NSII.  A number of photographs show various Jodrell Bank individuals and apparatus.  There is more Australian material, essentially covering three astronomical instruments and their genesis. Correspondence, notebooks, photographs and promotional materials document the NSII. The story of the successor instrument, the SUSI, is represented chiefly by photographs of an early model showing a Very Large Stellar Intensity Interferometer, a subsequent proposal of a Michelson interferometer, and discussions between Hanbury Brown and his long-time collaborator John Davis. There is also correspondence re the AAT and the future of science and engineering in the University of Sydney.

 

Hanbury Brown’s ‘Research Files’ form a substantial component of the archive.  They contain research materials, which Hanbury Brown accumulated over many decades. These files testify to three foci of enduring interest on his part, the story of radar, radio astronomy, and reflections about science.  The history of radar is documented by original documents and pamphlets, correspondence with both fellow radar pioneers and younger radar buffs, memoirs, and drafts of equipment biographies. The radio astronomy group includes literature on various types of interferometers and on quantum theory, correspondence and draft publications on the behaviour of photons (these from the time of the controversy over the Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect), and a special section on Hanbury Brown’s ‘dear friend Sirius’ (Letter to J.M. Bennett, 1 June 1994).  A subgroup is dedicated to historical topics in radio astronomy. Material on reflections about science consists of Hanbury Brown’s notes on science-historical literature; correspondence, notes and literature on science’s relations with religion; and general articles.

 

There is extensive documentation of Hanbury Brown’s publications and lectures, the largest component of this collection.  A considerable variety of publications are represented including scientific papers, books, reviews and newspaper articles, starting with Hanbury Brown’s 1935 paper on the cathode-ray oscillograph.  Hanbury Brown’s speaking engagements are documented by drafts, outlines and index card notes over almost five decades, and include his broadcasts. This material is qualitatively heterogeneous, ranging from expert conference papers to light-hearted dinner toasts. Sound recordings of some of these can be found with the non-textual media in the archive.

 

There is documentation of Hanbury Brown’s involvements with only a few societies and organisations.  These include the Astronomical Society of Australia, Institution of Electrical Engineers, National Centre for Basic Sciences in Calcutta, India and Royal Society.  Material includes copies of reports (co-authored by Hanbury Brown) to the International Scientific Radio Union and to the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration.

 

There are several series of correspondence, which together span six decades. There are three alphabetical sequences, one dating from the 1940s to the early 1950s, the second consisting of named correspondents, the third dating chiefly from the 1980s and 1990s (with a few earlier letters). The first sequence includes family letters and correspondence about the Sir Robert Watson-Watt & Partners consultancy. Hanbury Brown’s named correspondents in the second sequence are colleagues and friends from the days of radar and early radio astronomy, and his colleague John Davis. The third sequence ranges over a multitude of correspondents and topics. It reflects chiefly Hanbury Brown’s activities after his return from Australia in 1991.

 

Non-textual media spans audiotapes, videotapes, visual material, and computer disks. The audiotapes date from 1973 to 1999 and include recordings of Hanbury Brown’s wife Heather. Videotapes are principally of Hanbury Brown’s contributions to television documentaries and interviews on his wartime work.  The visual material ranges over photographs, graphs, transparencies and an extensive slide collection, which appears to have served Hanbury Brown as a store on which to draw for his lecturing activities. The computer disks reflect both Hanbury Brown’s changing word processing equipment and his diverse activities, from his writings to his correspondence with colleagues, friends, institutions, businesses and so forth.

Arrangement
By section as follows: Biographical, Radar, Jodrell Bank, Australia, research files, Publications, lectures and broadcasts, Societies and organisations, Correspondence, Non-textual media. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: .
Language: English
Finding aids: Printed Catalogue of: NCUACS catalogue no. 151/1/07, 160pp..  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath

ALLIED MATERIALS

In other repositories

A substantial portion of Hanbury Brown’s personal archive was destroyed in 1961 owing to a misunderstanding (letter to J.P. Wild, 16 January 1974).  Some material relating to his Jodrell Bank period can be found in the papers of A.C.B. Lovell in the Jodrell Bank Archive at the John Rylands University Library of the University of Manchester. Hanbury Brown left many of the documents relating to his work in astronomy in Australia to the University of Sydney, where he thought they belonged. These are in the University Archives of the University of Sydney and include correspondence regarding the intensity interferometer at Narrabri, technical papers, funding and general correspondence, 1957-1983. There is also correspondence on the AAT, 1967-1974, and an audio tape interview on his retirement in 1981. Further material, notably 27 scrapbooks compiled by Hanbury Brown’s wife Heather, are in the hands of the family. It is anticipated that they will be deposited at the Royal Society to join this collection in due course.

 

5

Bryce, Alexander Graham, 1890-1968. Thoracic surgeon.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Library, Royal College of Surgeons of England, London.  Reference code: GB 0114 Add Mss 50
Title: Papers and correspondence of Alexander Graham Bryce, 1890-1968, and the Society of Thoraic and Cardiovascular Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland
Dates of creation of material: 1931-1959
Extent: 2 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bryce was born in Southport and educated at Manchester University Medical School from which he graduated in 1912. Apart from wartime service in the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1915-1919, he spent most of his professional career in the Manchester area, holding appointments at the Manchester Memorial Jewish Hospital and the Manchester Royal Infirmary where he was appointed to the honorary staff in 1934. Bryce was a founder member of the Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland. He was the Society's first Secretary and Treasurer until November 1946, when he was elected Vice-President, a position he held for three years; he served as President of the Society, 1949-1951. Bryce was also President of the Thoracic Society and of the Manchester Surgical Society. He retired in 1955.

Custodial history

Received for catalgouing in 1985 from the Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland via the Royal College of Surgeons.  Placed in the Royal College of Surgeons 1985.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers relate exclusively to Bryce's service for the Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons. The material is principally correspondence but includes minutes, agendas and circulars and a sequence of printed membership booklets, 1934-1958. There are papers relating to the foundation of the Society in 1933, including the replies to the original invitations to join the Society (sent out by Bryce), to relations between the Society and the American Association of Thoracic Surgeons, and to overseas visits of the Society to Switzerland in 1934 and to Berlin and Bruges in 1937. Later material reflects the adjustments necessitated by the Second World War and the establishment of the National Health Service.

Arrangement

The material is not sectionalised. See Scope and content above.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Open to bona fide researchers by written appointment.
Finding aid: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Alexander Graham Bryce and the Society of Thoraic and Cardiovascular Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland: CSAC Catalogue no. 109/6/85, 12 pp. Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath
Link to catalogue ¯ (a2a)

ALLIED MATERIALS

In same repository

Add Mss 547: The London Society of Thoracic Surgeons ('Charlies Club') 1952-1992
Add Mss 548: The Cardiothoracic Society ('Pete's Club')

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Bullard, Sir Edward Crisp, 1907-1980. Knight. Geophysicist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Churchill  Archives Centre, Cambridge.  Reference code: GB 0014 BLRD
Title: Papers and correspondence of Sir Edward Crisp Bullard, 1907-1980
Dates of creation of material: 1916-1984.
Extent: 117 boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Bullard was born in Norwich and educated at Repton School and Clare College, Cambridge where he read Natural Sciences, 1926-1929. His first graduate research was at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge working under the direction of P.M.S. Blackett (q.v.) and in collaboration with H.S.W. Massey, on electron scattering in gases. In 1931, partly because of the economic depression, he accepted a post under G.P. Lenox-Conyngham in the Department of Geodesy and Geophysics at Cambridge. Here he worked on geophysical instrument design and development, gravity determination in Britain and Africa, explosion seismology including the first British expeditions to study the Atlantic seafloor, and heat-flow in South Africa bore-holes. During the Second World War he was seconded to the Admiralty, working on anti-mine protection, operational research and intelligence. After the war he returned to Cambridge but in 1947 he moved to the University of Toronto, Canada as Professor of Physics and while there, but on a summer vacation visit to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California he did some of his most important work on the design of equipment for the measurement of heat-flow at sea. In 1950 he returned to Britain as Director of the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington where despite administrative and official duties he continued to work on marine heat-flow, building apparatus and taking part in sea-going expeditions, and also developed his dynamo theory of terrestrial magnetism.

In 1956 Bullard returned to the Department of Geodesy and Geophysics, Cambridge as Assistant Director of Research (Reader in Geophysics 1960, Professor 1964). His research interests now included continental drift and plate tectonics as well as continuing work in seismology and geomagnetism, and the development of computer programs for processing large amounts of observational data. During this period he was very active as consultant and adviser to Government Departments (notably the Admiralty, Foreign Office, Ministries of Defence, Science and Supply), to professional and learned societies such as the Institute of Physics, Royal Society and the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, and to industrial firms principally Shell and IBM UK. He was also a founder member of the Natural Environment Research Council. On retirement from Cambridge in 1974 Bullard moved to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography where he continued his research and took part in expeditions and teaching and lecturing programmes. He added a last research topic to his interests - energy sources and nuclear waste disposal - in his capacity as consultant to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology.

Bullard was elected FRS in 1941 (Bakerian Lecture 1967, Hughes Medal 1953, Royal Medal 1975) and was knighted in 1953.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1981-1984 from Dr Belinda Bullard, daughter.  Placed in Churchill Archives Centre 1984.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The surviving papers cover almost every aspect of Bullard's career. The chief lacunae are his wartime papers which he destroyed in 1945 and his official papers at Toronto and the National Physical Laboratory. There are biographical and personal material, diaries, personal and family correspondence and photographs, records of the Cambridge Department of Geodesy and Geophysics including the original correspondence leading up to its foundation in 1921, and documentation of his connection with the University of California, chiefly the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The largest body of material relates to Bullard's many research interests from early work on gravity to the last uncompleted book on energy sources and nuclear waste disposal, and includes full documentation for his work on dynamo theory and on computing applications. There is much material on Bullard's service on committees and as consultant, and relating to learned societies and professional organisations, to publications, lectures and broadcasts, and to visits and conferences. Bullard's surviving scientific correspondence is somewhat disappointing and contains a high proportion of material dating from his later years.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical and personal, Cambridge, California, Research, Committees and consultancies, Societies and organisations, Publications, lectures and broadcasts, Visits, Correspondence. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Readers intending to use the Archives Centre must write in advance to the Keeper of the Archives giving details of their research subject and listing the collections they will wish to consult. New readers should also provide a letter of introduction and some form of identification (such as a passport or driving licence).

Open except A.135-A.137 (to 2034), A.146-A.149 (to 2014). Closed on grounds of personal sensitivity.

Finding aid: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Sir Edward Crisp Bullard: CSAC catalogue no. 100/4/84, 373 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath
Link to catalogue ¯ (a2a)

ALLIED MATERIALS

In other repositories

Certificates and scrolls of honour remain in family hands.

Material relating to the Anchor Brewery (the Bullard family firm) is held at the Norfolk Record Office, Norwich.

Material assembled by Bullard for his memorial writings on W.M. Ewing is at Columbia University, New York.

Correspondence exchanged with W.H. Munk and others, and a little other material, is in the Archives of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.

Official papers relating to Bullard's service on government committees are held at the Air Historical Branch, Ministry of Defence, London.

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Burch, Cecil Reginald, 1901-1983. Physicist and engineer.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Bristol University Library. Reference code: GB 0003 DM1138
Title:  Papers and correspondence of Cecil Reginald Burch, 1901-1983.
Dates of creation of material: ca 1852-1983.
Extent: 17 archive boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Burch was born in Oxford and educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, 1907-1914, and Oundle School, 1914-1919. He then entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (with his elder brother Francis) to read for the Natural Sciences Tripos, 1919-1922. On graduating Burch and his brother joined the Research Department of the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company, Trafford Park, Manchester where he spent eleven years until, after the distressing death of his brother in 1933, he felt compelled to leave Metropolitan-Vickers. He moved to the Physics Department, Imperial College, London, as a Leverhulme Fellow in Optics, 1933-1935 and then Bristol University where he spent the rest of his life, first as a Research Associate, then as a Fellow of the H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory and from 1948 to 1966 as Royal Society Warren Research Fellow. He continued to do research in the laboratory to within the last few weeks of his life.

Burch made important research contributions in industry and university to a number of very different fields. His main activities lay in the industrial development of induction heating applied to electric furnaces; in the evaporative distillation of organic substances, leading to a range of low vapour pressure oils and greases, and its application to the pharmaceutical industry; and in the construction of vacuum pumps and of thermionic power valves. In university research he worked principally in optics, especially in the figuring of aspheric surfaces to extremely high degrees of accuracy, leading to the production of reflecting microscopes of wide aperture, and then, while continuing to make valuable contributions to this subject, he gave his primary attention to mineral dressing, inventing new classifiers and separators. He was elected FRS in 1944 (Rumford Medal 1954).

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1985 via the Physics Department, Bristol University, from T.E. Allibone who had assembled the papers while preparing the memoir of Burch for the Royal Society.  Placed in Bristol University Library 1986.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The papers contain biographical and personal material, notably records of other members of Burch's family including his father, George James Burch, Professor of Physics at Reading University, 1882-1909, and his brother, Francis Parry Burch who worked with him at Metropolitan-Vickers. There is substantial research material relating to his university-based work in optics and mineral dressing and his late medical interests, especially vitamin B-group therapy and inositol. Almost all the surviving material from the Metropolitan-Vickers period relates to the work of Francis Parry Burch. There are conference talks and invitation lectures, 1932-1981 and some publications material. The surviving correspondence is not extensive though there is one relatively substantial sequence of letters on aspects of mineral dressing and mining.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical, Research, Lectures and talks, Publications, Correspondence, Bibliography. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: No known closure or restrictions.  Visits by appointment.  Some form of identification required.
Finding aid: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Cecil Reginald Burch: CSAC catalogue no. 110/1/86, 73 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath

ALLIED MATERIALS

In same repository

DM1196 (added to DM1138). 'Uncle Bill'. By Peter Beaumont Morice, 1985.

References to Burch in DM365 (Tyndall papers: Department of Physics) and DM1462 (Honoary Degree oration for Burch, 1966)

In other repositories

The prototype Ultra-Violet Reflecting Microscope, made by Burch c.1946 for use with short wavelength ultra-violet radiation and used by R. Barer in the Department of Anatomy, Oxford University, is in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford.

The grinding and polishing machinery used in the manufacture of the aspherical mirror for the microscope is in the Science Museum, London.

The tape-recording of Burch's lecture 'MetroVick Memories' is held at the Royal Society, London.

Additional biographical material relating to George James Burch, including letters of condolence to Mrs Burch, is in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford.

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Burhop, Eric Henry Stoneley, 1911-1980. Physicist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Library, University College London. Reference code: GB 0103
Title: Papers and correspondence of Eric Henry Stoneley Burhop, 1911-1980
Dates of creation of material: 1948-1980
Extent:

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Burhop was born on 31 January 1911 in Hobart, Tasmania, the son of Salvation Army officers. He was educated at Ballarat and Melbourne High Schools and in 1928 entered Melbourne University where he specialised in physics. In 1933 an Exhibition of 1851 Overseas Scholarship took him to the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge where he carried out experimental research in nuclear physics with Rutherford, subsequently returning to Melbourne as Research Physicist and Lecturer. During the Second World War he joined the British team working on the atomic bomb project in the USA; he worked on isotope separation in the group led by H.S.W. Massey. After the war Burhop spent the rest of his career at University College London, first in the Mathematics Department, transferring to Physics in 1950. In 1960 he became Professor of Physics by conferment of title. He researched widely in atomic and nuclear physics including the Auger effect and electronic and ionic impact phenomena. He was a founder member of the European K meson collaboration and played a leading role in the UCL Bubble Chamber group.

Burhop was strongly committed to the political left and sought rapprochement between the Soviet bloc and the West during the Cold War. He was actively involved in the work of the World Federation of Scientific Workers, of which he was President for many years. Burhop played an important role with Bertrand Russell, C.F. Powell and J. Rotblat in the organisation of the first Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs which met in July 1957 at Pugwash, Nova Scotia. The conference brought together senior scientists from East and West to discuss the dangers of nuclear war, and provided the model for a series of similarly organised Pugwash conferences on this and related topics. In consequence of these activities Burhop was awarded the Joliot-Curie Medal of the World Peace Council in 1966 and the Lenin International Peace Prize in 1972.

Burhop was elected FRS in 1965. He died in 1980.

See Sir Harrie Massey & D.H. Davies, 'Eric Henry Stoneley Burhop', Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, vol 27 (1981), 131-152.

Custodial history:

Received for cataloguing in March 1993 from Dr Brenda Swann.  Placed in University College 1993

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

This small collection contains biographical material relating to Burhop's interest in furthering rapprochement between East and West, and documentation of the first Pugwash Conference. There are no records of his scientific research or scientific correspondence. The biographical material principally relates to the 'passport case' when the Foreign Office withdrew Burhop's passport on the eve of a visit to the Soviet Union in 1951 and the award of the Lenin Peace Prize. There is also a little correspondence in 1957 on the possible nomination of Bertrand Russell for the World Peace Council's International Peace Prize. The Pugwash material includes documentation of the role of the World Federation of Scientific Workers in the organisation of the first conference, and manuscript notes of the proceedings of the first conference.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Contact the repository for details.
Finding aid: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Eric Henry Stoneley Burhop: NCUACS catalogue no. 40/2/93, 15pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath

Link to catalogue ¯ (a2a)

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Burn, Joshua Harold, 1892-1981. Pharmacologist.

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Library for the History of Neuroscience, Sherrington Room, University Laboratory of Physiology, Parks Road, Oxford. Reference code: GB 0483 BURN
Title: Papers and correspondence of Joshua Harold Burn, 1892-1981.
Dates of creation of material: 1932-1984.
Extent: 1 box

CONTEXT

Biographical history

Burn was born in Barnard Castle, Co. Durham and educated at Barnard Castle School, 1903-1909, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge where he read for the Natural Sciences Tripos, 1909-1912, specialising in physiology for Part II. He began research at Cambridge with J. Barcroft and F.G. Hopkins, before moving in January 1914 to the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories, London, at the invitation of H.H. Dale. He joined the army in October 1914 and served in the Signals Corps in France until 1917 when he returned to England to complete his medical studies at Guy's Hospital, London and Cambridge University.

He undertook research at the Department of Pharmacology, National Institute for Medical Research, London, at the invitation of H.H. Dale, 1920-1925, and became Director of the Pharmacological Laboratories at the Pharmacological Society of Great Britain, London, 1926-1937. Burn was subsequently Professor of Pharmacology, Oxford University, 1937-1959, and Visiting Professor in Pharmacology, Washington University, St Louis, 1959-1968.  He was a founder member of the British Pharmacological Society in 1931.  His principal research interests were in the autonomic nervous system.

He was elected FRS in 1942.

Custodial history

Received for cataloguing in 1984 from Professor Edith Bülbring. Placed in Library for the History of Neuroscience 1985.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

This small group of papers consists of material assembled by Professor Edith Bülbring for her Royal Society memoir of Burn and includes biographical recollections by Burn, colleagues and friends, some originals, some photocopies from various sources. Many of the documents bear her annotations or editorial indications for use in the memoir. The correspondence, though very scanty, is of interest, for its scientific content.

Arrangement:

By section as follows: Obituaries and tributes, Autobiographical and biographical, Correspondence.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Access on enquiry to the Librarian and only between the hours of 8am-4pm.
Finding aid: Printed Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Joshua Harold Burn: CSAC catalogue no. 107/4/85, 8 pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath
Link to catalogue ¯ (a2a)

 

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Butterfield, William John Hughes, Baron Butterfield of Stechford, 1920-2000, medical researcher and administrator

IDENTITY STATEMENT

Repository: Cambridge University Library. Reference code: GB 0012 W.J.H. Butterfield
Title: Papers and correspondence of Butterfield, William John Hughes, Baron Butterfield of Stechford, 1920-2000, medical researcher and administrator
Dates of creation of material: 1945-2000
Extent: ca 5,500 items. boxes

CONTEXT

Biographical history

(William) John (Hughes) Butterfield was born on 28 March 1920 at Stechford in the West Midlands.  He was educated at Solihull School, Warwickshire, Exeter College Oxford and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (MD 1944, conferred 1951).  After returning to Britain in 1944 he did his junior appointments in pathology, medicine and surgery, was on the staff of the Medical Research Council from 1946 at the Clinical Research Unit at Guy’s Hospital under R.T. Grant, and did his national service, serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1947-1949.  Butterfield worked on burns, specifically on attempts to estimate the effects of nuclear explosions, continuing his work as a research fellow at the Virginia Medical College, Richmond, 1950-1952.  In 1952 and 1956 he witnessed the British nuclear tests in the Monte Bello islands off the north-west coast of Australia.  While working on burns, unexpected observations of the effect of the poison gas antidote British anti-lewisite on blood glucose levels initiated his lifelong interest in diabetes.  

 

Butterfield returned to mainstream medical research at the Clinical Research Unit at Guy’s Hospital.  In 1958 he was appointed professor in the newly established Department of Experimental Medicine at Guy’s.  For the next twelve years he led a highly successful diabetes research team.  He pioneered automated chemistry to measure blood sugar and in 1962 with his Guy’s team Butterfield conducted a large-scale epidemiological study in Bedford which revealed many people with undiagnosed diabetes, decisively influenced the prevailing views of diabetes and led to internationally-accepted diagnostic standards for the disease.  Alongside his research programme, he maintained a first-class clinical diabetes unit, general medical service and bedside clinical teaching programme.  During his time at Guy’s Butterfield developed interests in community medicine and medical planning (general practice), for example in respect of the creation of the Thamesmead new town.

 

In 1971 he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of Nottingham University, a difficult time because of widespread student unrest.  Nottingham already had a medical school for pre-clinical students, and Butterfield set out during his Vice-Chancellorship to create a clinical school for fourth and fifth year students.  He took on an increasing number of public responsibilities including the chairmanship of the Council for the Education and Training of Health Visitors, 1971-1976, and chairmanship of the East Midlands Economic Council, 1974-1976.  Butterfield maintained his contacts with Guy’s as Consultant Professor Emeritus and from 1974 as a member of the Council of Governors (later Chairman of the Council of Governors of the United Medical Schools of Guy’s and St Thomas’s).

 

During Butterfield’s period at Nottingham he was much involved with planning the extended clinical school at Cambridge and he moved to Cambridge to lead the new School of Clinical Medicine as Regius Professor of Physic, 1976-1987.  Here he presided over an impressive range of new developments and appointments, despite a less favourable financial situation than originally envisaged, and continued his clinical and research interests.  He was Master of Downing College, 1978-1987 and served the wider university community as Vice-Chancellor, 1983-1985.  As a student at Oxford, 1940-1942, he was a triple blue, playing against Cambridge at rugby, hockey and cricket - captaining the Dark Blues in the latter two sports.  In Cambridge he was an active supporter of student sport as patron, chairman and president of sports clubs and in offering his advice and experience to appeals for better facilities.  He also supported the development of sports medicine in Cambridge in the form of a clinic to treat sports injuries at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.           

 

His public responsibilities continued to grow in number including Chairman of the Medicines Commission, 1976-1982, member of the Medical Research Council, 1976-1980, and Chairman of the Health Promotion Research Trust, 1983-1993, a controversial appointment because of its tobacco industry funding.  Indeed, throughout his career and well past formal retirement age, Butterfield gave an enormous variety of service to professional bodies, medical and educational charities, the pharmaceutical industry, government advisory boards and the scientific advisory committees of research institutes, often as a highly regarded chairman.  His last major project was raising money to establish the College of Teachers, in an attempt to improve the public standing of the profession.       

 

Butterfield’s distinguished career was recognised by many academic, professional and public honours including visiting professorships, invitations to deliver named lectures and honorary degrees.  He was awarded an OBE in 1953 and knighted in 1978.  In 1988 Butterfield was made a life peer and he took an active role in the House of Lords in such areas of policy as higher education, medical research and the National Health Service. 

 

Butterfield married Ann Sanders in 1946 but she died while giving birth to their son.  In 1950 he married Isabel-Ann Foster Kennedy, the daughter of an eminent New York neurologist, and they had two sons and a daughter.  He died on 26 July 2000.   

Custodial history

The papers were received from Lady Butterfield in 2004 and 2005.

CONTENT HISTORY

Scope and content summary

The collection is substantial and covers the period 1945-2000, though the bulk dates from Butterfield’s years as Cambridge Regius Professor of Physic, 1976-1987, and his very active years of ‘retirement’ to 2000.

 

Biographical material consists principally of long sequences of diaries, message books and personal notebooks.  There is sequence of diaries in a variety of smaller formats 1951, 1960 - 1993-1994 used by Butterfield for a personal record of engagements.  From 1975-1976 Butterfield used Cambridge University pocket diaries.  There is a series of large format office diaries for engagements kept by secretaries, 1962-2000, and also a series of message books kept by secretaries, 1976-2000.  Although what is recorded in these books varies over time, their contents may include records of telephone and other messages for Butterfield and records of telephone calls made by secretaries on his behalf.  An important series of personal notebooks was initiated by Butterfield in 1968 to record ideas including research ideas, plans, personal diary and reflections, and drafts.  Drafts include letters and talks, addresses and lectures and there are also many notes of meetings attended and visits made.  These notebooks are particularly important for Butterfield’s last years at Guy’s Hospital and his Vice-Chancellorship of the University of Nottingham, which are not well documented elsewhere in the archive.  Butterfield continued to use these notebooks for the rest of his life, the last one covering the period 1998-2000. 

 

In addition to these series of diaries and notebooks, biographical material includes obituaries, curricula vitae and entries for biographical directories, papers relating to the Old Silhillians Association (for Old Boys of Solihull School) and a selection of menu cards, often signed, and related material, for social occasions in Cambridge and elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s.

 

The record of Butterfield’s years at Guy’s Hospital London is not extensive but is diverse in topic and character.  It includes a number of items relating to Butterfield’s diabetes research including two notebooks, 1954-1956, while he was working at the MRC Clinical Research Unit at the Hospital.  There is scant documentation of his Professorship of Experimental Medicine at Guy’s, though there is a little material reflecting his interest in the running of one of the hospital wards and in computer requirements at the hospital.  There is, however, correspondence relating to his position as Consultant Professor Emeritus, which he held after his departure for the Vice-Chancellorship at the University of Nottingham in 1971, and correspondence and papers relating to the Council of Governors, of which Butterfield was a member from 1974.  Presented in the alphabetical series of societies and organisations material (see below) are records of the Thamesmead new town project in which Butterfield and Guy’s were very much involved, the University of Essex / Guy’s General Practice Computer Unit, and also the Council of Governors of the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospitals.  Thamesmead and the Essex / Guy’s General Practice Computer Unit are also documented in the archive of the University of Essex computer scientist, Keith F. Bowden, deposited in Essex University Library (CSAC 105/2/85).

 

There is extensive documentation of Butterfield’s period as Regius Professor of Physic, University of Cambridge, 1976-1987, especially important for the development of the School of Clinical Medicine.  Much of the Clinical School material is organised by department including old established departments such as Medicine (I.H. Mills) and Surgery (R.Y. Calne), including support for transplantation studies, and new developments and appointments including Clinical Biochemistry (C.N. Hales), Clinical Pharmacology (M.J. Brown), Community Medicine (R.M. Acheson), Haematological Medicine (F.G.J. Hayhoe), Paediatrics (J.A. Davis), Psychiatry (M. Roth) and Radiology (T. Sherwood).  Other Clinical School papers are organised under such headings as: Clinical Dean, Committees, Examining, Funding, Special Projects and Teaching.  Special projects include a curriculum monitoring and evaluation project in the new Clinical School (R.E. Wakeford) funded by the Nuffield Foundation.  There is documentation of Butterfield’s relations with other University departments such as Anatomy, Engineering (proposed postgraduate degree in biomedical engineering and research projects with medical applications), History and Philosophy of Science, and Pathology; with Hughes Hall where the Health Education Studies Unit was based; and with the MRC Dunn Nutrition Unit.  There is extensive material relating to the key role of the Regius in relation to the NHS Regional and Area Health Authorities including hospital developments in Huntingdon and Peterborough and the Regional Cardiac Unit at Papworth Hospital.  Butterfield’s Mastership of Downing College, 1978-1987, and Vice-Chancellorship, 1983-1985, are principally represented by files of ‘personal’ correspondence.  Butterfield’s support for sport in Cambridge is well represented including the great number of sports clubs of which he was chairman, president or patron, and campaigns for improved sports facilities.  Of particular interest are the records of his support for the development of sports medicine in Cambridge, especially the early years of the clinic established at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in 1978 to treat sports injuries and the 1995 Appeal to support its expansion.     

 

There is a substantial record of Butterfield’s lectures, visits and conferences covering the period 1963-1999.  The material is presented in three main sequences: a sequence of ‘lectures, conferences and symposia’ material, 1963-1972 and separate sequences of lectures material, 1970-1999, and visits and conferences material, 1964-1993.  A little material relating to Butterfield’s contributions to radio and television programmes, 1967-1973, is also presented here for convenience.  The material may include drafts of Butterfield’s conference papers, speeches and addresses, typescripts of the contributions of others, correspondence about arrangements and arising from meetings, programmes and lists of participants.

 

Publications material includes drafts, editorial and advisory correspondence and a box of Butterfield’s offprints with a list of offprints and a supplementary list of ‘undated papers’.  The drafts cover an extended period of over forty years to 1994 but are unrepresentative of Butterfield’s publication record, especially in diabetes research.  There is, however, significant material relating to Butterfield’s early work on flash burns from atomic bombs.  There are also undated drafts of work with L.P. Krall for a proposed publication or publications on ‘Living with Diabetes’.  The editorial correspondence covers a relatively short period, 1970-1985, and chiefly documents Butterfield’s relations with the publisher John Wiley & Sons, especially in respect of the International Dictionary of Medicine and Biology (IDMB), for which Butterfield was a member of the Advisory Board.          

 

Societies and organisations material forms by far the largest component of the archive.  It documents, often very extensively, some 124 professional bodies, medical and educational charities, government advisory boards, industry organisations, research institutes and the like, to which Butterfield gave service over a period of almost fifty years including the last year of his life.  Only a small number of these bodies can be highlighted here.  Professional bodies include the College of Teachers, medical Royal Colleges and the British Medical Association.  Medical charities include Age Research / British Foundation for Age Research, British Diabetic Association, British Heart Foundation, Help the Aged, Save the Children (in respect of its Stop Polio Campaign) and Tommy’s Campaign (for research into the causation and prevention of poor fetal growth, prematurity and stillbirth).  He was associated with a large number of pharmaceutical companies during his career, for example Beecham Group plc, Boots Company plc, Hoechst UK Ltd, Miles Laboratories Ltd, Upjohn Ltd, Warner Lambert Company and the Wellcome Foundation Ltd and more generally British Insulin Manufacturers and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and its Animals in Medicine Information Centre.  Government appointments included the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy, the Council for the Education and Training of Health Visitors, the East Midlands Economic Planning Council, the Health Promotion Research Trust, and the Medicines Commission.  Research Institutes include the Cambridge branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (K. Sikora) and the William Harvey Research Institute (J.R. Vane).  A number of topic folders were found in the alphabetical sequences of societies and organisations and have been retained with societies.  These include ‘Action Learning’ which reflects Butterfield’s interest in the work of R.W. Revans, and ‘Aptitudes’, which reflects his interest in surveying the skills and aptitudes of school leavers.  Additionally Butterfield was a member of a number of dining and other clubs and had a particularly long and well-documented association with the Medical Pilgrims. 

         

House of Lords documentation records Butterfield’s engagements with the business of the House including his maiden speech, 25 January 1989 on the second reading of the Junior Hospital Doctors (Regulation of Hours) Bill, and the work of Select Committees such as Science and Technology and the European Communities.  Apart from his maiden speech there are also drafts for a number of speeches in the House on topics such as NHS reform, education (student loans), health issues in the European Community and the teaching profession.  Butterfield’s correspondents include fellow peers, government ministers, civil servants and individuals and organisations interested in the business before the House.   

 

Butterfield’s correspondence files form a substantial record of his activities covering an extended period 1945-2000, though the great bulk dates from Butterfield’s period as Regius at Cambridge and the years of his formal retirement.  Much of Butterfield’s correspondence was kept in various alphabetical sequences of ‘miscellaneous’ correspondence for particular chronological periods.  ‘Miscellaneous’ correspondence for Butterfield’s last years at Guy’s and his period as Nottingham Vice-Chancellor survives for only a handful of letters of the alphabet ‘A’, ‘E’, ‘R’ and ‘W’.  Three further organised sequences cover very approximately the period from his arrival in Cambridge to his becoming Vice-Chancellor in 1983, the first half of his Vice-Chancellorship, 1983-1984, and the years from his retirement as Regius to 2000.  The end of his Vice-Chancellorship, 1985, and his last years as Regius, 1986-1987, seem less well covered.  However, these miscellaneous correspondence sequences are supplemented by carbons of outgoing correspondence, 1981, 1986-1987, ‘personal’ correspondence, 1978-1986, and correspondence arranged by topic, for example ‘Education’ and ‘National Health Service’, 1976-1999.  Additionally there is a significant record of his relations with patients, and references and recommendations material.  It should be noted that there is also important and extensive correspondence throughout the archive, notably University of Cambridge and Societies and organisations.

Arrangement

By section as follows: Biographical, Guy’s Hospital London, University of Cambridge, Lectures, visits and conferences, Publications, Societies and organisations, House of Lords, Correspondence. Index of correspondents.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS & USE

Access: Access to holders of full Reader's Tickets from Cambridge University Library.
Finding aid: Printed catalogue of the papers and correspondence of: NCUACS catalogue no.  157/7/07, 470pp.  Copies available from NCUACS, University of Bath.  

 

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Last updated 30 April 2008. T.E.Powell@bath.ac.uk