Wellcome Trust announces appointment of first Library Fellow
26 October 2011
The appointment is for two years, during which time Dr Aicardi will work on the Crick papers and other collections held in the Library and elsewhere, as well as obtain oral testimony from working and retired scientists. The Crick papers form the centrepiece of the Library's strategic digitisation project, 'Modern Genetics and its Foundations'.
This project will create an integrated online research resource devoted to the history of the study of inheritance in biology and the development of genetics as the principal intellectual and scientific framework for such study, and the fellowship will support the project by drawing attention to the research value of the digitised collections. The results of Dr Aicardi's work will be disseminated via journal articles and conference papers.
Dr Aicardi is particularly interested in how scientists work, collaborate and interact, and believes that the traditional biographical and institutional focus of scientific historiography often fails to identify the most significant interactions and relationships. She views Francis Crick, a physicist who became a molecular biologist and later turned his attention to neuroscience and consciousness research, as an especially fruitful focus of her research in view of his career profile, his broad scientific network and influence, and the rich documentary inheritance provided by his papers.
"I am delighted to have the opportunity to pursue my research interests as the Wellcome Library's first fellow," Dr Aicardi said. "The appointment provides an invaluable stepping stone for my academic career; it will enable me to develop my research questions and methodologies, and assemble and evaluate data from the archives and elsewhere, leading - I hope - to a book on the role of interdisciplinarity in the modern life sciences. Being able to call myself Wellcome Library Fellow will give me added status in approaching scientists and others to obtain interviews to support my research."
Dr Aicardi expects to spend most of the first year of her fellowship working in the archives and conducting oral history interviews in the UK and USA. The second year will see the dissemination of research results through publications and conference papers. She intends also to organise a two-day academic meeting on the history of biophysics in postwar Britain.
"We appointed Christine from a quality field of applicants because she presented the most persuasive research proposal in the context of the archival collections that we are including in Modern Genetics and its Foundations," said Dr Richard Aspin, Head of Research and Scholarship in the Library. "Her intellectual focus, appetite for archival research and strong recommendation from her sponsoring department at UCL made her an obvious choice. We are looking forward immensely to supporting her work over the coming two years and to the cross-fertilisation with our digitisation programme that her appointment is designed to encourage."
Image: The Wellcome Library. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.
