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December 15, 2025
Research and Refugees – Edinburgh genetics during the 1940s
Last Friday I delivered a talk on genetics in Edinburgh during the 1940s as part of the Scotland-wide Festival of Museums, for which Edinburgh University Library and Collections took the 1940s as its inspiration. This was of course a turbulent decade for the world in general, but not least for the science of genetics. In the four decades since the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws in 1900, scientists were gaining a greater understanding of the gene through the chromosome theory of inheritance and mutation studies, yet the discovery of the structure of DNA itself was yet to be discovered. The 1940s represented a crossroads for genetics, and Edinburgh was an important world player in its future.
Let us begin in the year 1939, when Edinburgh’s Institute of Animal Genetics hosted the prestigious 7th International Congress of Genetics. Originally scheduled for Moscow in 1937, the repressive Stalinist regime made this impossible. After some discussion, Edinburgh was chosen as the most appropriate location for the Congress, now rescheduled for the last week in August 1939. Over 40 Russian scientists were to give papers, alongside delegates from all over the world. However, it would not be plain sailing. Shortly before the Congress was due to begin, the director of the Institute Francis Crew received word that the Russians had been forbidden to attend, and the Congress programme had to frantically reshuffled. Things went from bad to worse once the Congress actually began, as war erupted across Europe and delegates from various countries began to return to their home countries while they could. Once the Congress was over, Crew, who was on the Territorial Reserve of officers, was mobilised, and posted to the command of the military hospital at Edinburgh Castle. He left the Institute in the hands of poultry geneticist Alan Greenwood.
The King’s Buildings Home Guard Transport Unit
During the lean five years which followed, the Institute did its bit for the war effort. The land adjoining the Institute building was used for allotments for growing animal feed and planting vegetables. All male staff joined the ARP or Home Guard as well as the Watch and Ward parties for the protection of University buildings, while the women were involved in First Aid work. The annual report for 1940-41 records that everyone was given ‘a daily dose of halibut liver oil to reduce the incidence of winter colds’! Genetics teaching and research continued as much as possible by a skeleton staff, including Charlotte Auerbach, who would make a major scientific discovery during this period.
Charlotte Auerbach
Charlotte (‘Lotte’ to her friends) Auerbach was from a scientific German Jewish family, and had sought refuge in Edinburgh after being dismissed from her teaching job in Berlin under Hitler’s anti-Semitic laws. Once established at Crew’s Institute, she had begun a developmental study of the legs of Drosophila, the fruit fly. But the arrival at the Institute of Hermann Joseph Muller in 1937 changed Auerbach’s career forever. Muller was the outstanding scientist of his generation: he had been part of Thomas Hunt Morgan’s famous ‘Fly Room’ at Columbia University in the 1910s, helping to formulate the groundbreaking chromosome theory; Muller’s later discovery that X-rays cause mutation, gained him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. But he arrived in Edinburgh a broken man after undergoing political and racial persecution in America, Germany and the Soviet Union. Muller had a radical effect on the staff and students at the Institute, and he quickly interested Charlotte Auerbach in mutation studies.
In 1940, the year Muller returned to America, Auerbach and her colleague J.M. Robson were tasked with conducting research into mustard gas. They were not told the true nature of the work, which had been commissioned by the Chemical Defence Establishment of the War Office. Auerbach reported sustaining horrific injuries to her skin from working with the gas with inadequate apparatus, but it shortly became clear that the results were astonishing for the science of genetics. Mustard gas caused mutations in similar ways to X-rays. Although this important discovery had to be kept confidential until after the war, Auerbach would be awarded the prestigious Keith Prize from the Royal Society of Edinburgh for the work.
Conrad Hal Waddington
Once the war ended, it was assumed that Crew would return to the Institute and that research would continue much as before. However, Crew felt he had been left behind by recent advances in genetics, and decided to transfer to the Chair of Public Health and Social Medicine at the University. Around the same time, the government were looking to move scientific research into areas of agricultural interest, following the acute food shortage crisis of the war years. It was decided to establish a National Animal Breeding and Genetics Research Organisation (NABGRO, later ABRO), and Edinburgh’s strong track record in genetics, animal breeding research and veterinary medicine made it the obvious choice. Conrad Hal Waddington, a developmental biologist and embryologist, was appointed director of the new Genetics Section of NABGRO, which moved to occupy the more-or-less empty Institute building. Alan Greenwood moved to become director of the newly-formed Poultry Research Centre, next door to the Institute.
Staff socialising at the Institute of Animal Genetics, c. 1955
ABRO’s work was to be split between research into fundamental work on genetics and the applied science of animal breeding and livestock improvement. However, conflict soon arose between the experimental geneticists and the animal breeders, which was not helped by the rather bizarre initial arrangement of Waddington, his staff and their families living together under one roof, taking their meals communally and driving to work together every day. As might be imagined, there were some scandals and arguments, and eventually the arrangement disintegrated and administrative shifts took place to accommodate the rift.
Waddington set about recruiting as many promising research workers as he could, including some of his old army contacts from his days in Operational Research and Coastal Command. One scientist who joined the Institute at this time, Toby Carter, had been in the RAF at the time of the fall of Singapore, and had commanded the only boat to escape towards Java. A diploma course in genetics was established, and laboratory space increased apace. By 1951, Waddington’s staff numbered 90 and the Institute grew to become the largest genetics department in the UK and one of the largest in the world.
By the time the 1950s arrived, molecular biology was on the horizon, paving the way towards advances in genomics and biotechnology which we see today. Edinburgh has consistently remained at the forefront of these advances, but it is interesting to reflect that early organisations such as the Institute of Animal Genetics and ABRO paved the way, and that the 1940s was a hugely important decade for this evolution.
Clare Button
Project Archivist
Data and ethics
As an academic support person, I was surprised to find myself invited onto a roundtable about ‘The Ethics of Data-Intensive Research’. Although as a data librarian I’m certainly qualified to talk about data, I was less sure of myself on the ethics front – after all, I’m not the one who has to get my research past an Ethics Review Board or a research funder.
The event was held last Friday at the University of Edinburgh as part of the project Archives Now: Scotland’s National Collections and the Digital Humanities, a knowledge exchange project funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This event attracted attendees across Scotland and had as its focus “Working With Data“.
I figured I couldn’t go wrong with a joke about fellow ‘data people’ with an image from flickr that we use in our online training course, MANTRA.
‘Binary’ by Xerones on Flickr (CC-BY-NC)
Appropriately, about half the people in the room chuckled.
So after introducing myself and my relevant hats, I revisited the quotations I had supplied on request for the organiser, Lisa Otty, who had put together a discussion paper for the roundtable.
“Publishing articles without making the data available is scientific malpractice.”
This quote is attributed to Geoffrey Boulton, Chair of the Royal Society of Edinburgh task force which published Science as an Open Enterprise in 2012. I have heard him say it, if only to say it isn’t his quote. The report itself makes a couple of references to things that have been said that are similar, but are just not as pithy for a quote. But the point is: how relevant is this assertion for scholarship that is outside of the sciences, such as the Humanities? Is data sharing an ethical necessity when the result of research is an expressive work that does not require reproducibility to be valid?
I gave Research Data MANTRA’s definition of research data, in order to reflect on how well it applies to the Humanities:
Research data are collected, observed, or created, for the purposes of analysis to produce and validate original research results.
When we invented this definition, it seemed quite apt for separating ‘stuff’ that is generated in the course of research from stuff that is the object of research; an operational definition, if you will. For example, a set of email messages may just be a set of correspondences; or it may be the basis of a research project if studied. It all depends on the context.
But recently we have become uneasy with this definition when engaging with certain communities, such as the Edinburgh College of Art. They have a lot of digital ‘stuff’ – inputs and outputs of research, but they don’t like to call it data, which has a clinical feel to it, and doesn’t seem to recognise creative endeavour. Is the same true for the Humanities, I wondered? Alas, the audience declined to pursue it in the Q&A, so I still wonder.
“The coolest thing to do with your data will be thought of by someone else.” – Rufus Pollock, Cambridge University and Open Knowledge Foundation, 2008
My second quote attempted to illustrate the unease felt by academics about the pressure to share their data, and why the altruistic argument about open data doesn’t tend to win people over, in my experience. I asked people to consider how it made them feel, but perhaps I should have tried it with a show of hands to find out their answers.
Quote by John Perry Barlow, image by Robin Rice
I swiftly moved on to talk about open data licensing, the choices we’ve made for Edinburgh DataShare, and whether offering different ‘flavours’ of open licence are important when many people still don’t understand what open licences are about. Again I used an image from MANTRA (above) to point out that the main consideration for depositors should be whether or not to make their data openly available on the internet – regardless of licence.
By putting their outputs ‘in the wild’ academics are necessarily giving up control over how they are used; some users will be ‘unethical’; they will not understand or comply with the terms of use. And we as repository administrators are not in a position to police mis-use for our depositors. Nevertheless, since academic users tend to understand and comply with scholarly norms about citing and giving attribution, those new to data sharing should not be unduly alarmed about the statement illustrated above. (And DataShare provides a ‘suggested citation’ for every data item that helps the user comply with the attribution requirements.)
Since no overview of data and ethics would be complete without consideration given to confidentiality obligations of researchers towards their human subjects, I included a very short video clip from MANTRA, of Professor John MacInnes speaking about caring for data that contain personally identifying information or personal attributes.
For me the most challenging aspect of the roundtable and indeed the day, was the contribution by Dr Anouk Lang about working with data from social media. As an ethical researcher one cannot assume that consent is unnecessary when working with data streams (such as twitter) that are open to public viewing. For one thing, people may not expect views of their posts outside of their own circles – they treat it as a personal communication medium. For another they may assume that what they say is ethereal and will soon be forgotten and unavailable. A show of hands indicated only some of the audience had heard of the Twitter Developers and API, or Storify, which can capture tweets and other objects in a more permanent web page, illustrating her point.
While this whole area may be more common for social researchers – witness the Economic and Social Research Council’s funding of a Big Data Network over several years which includes social media data – Anouk’s work on digital culture proves Humanities researchers cannot escape “the plethora of ethics, privacy and risk issues surrounding the use (and reuse) of social media data.” (Communication on ESRC Big Data Network Phase 3.)
Robin Rice
Data Librarian
Preserving the Dumfries Presbytery Library for the future
A guest post from Finlay West, Funk Projects Cataloguer
The recently completed cataloguing of the Dumfries Presbytery Library Collection housed at New College Library, finally allows the volumes to be readily available after an often fractured history .
Originally held in the Dumfries Presbytery Library until 1884, the collection had to be moved after the roof was damaged and the library was flooded. The volumes were kept in storage until 3rd March 1885 when they were lent to General Assembly Library. There they stayed until 1958 when the entire General Assembly Library was transferred to New College Library where they were dispersed by subject.
It was after John Howard became Librarian in 1965 that he noticed there were many items that had marks of provenance in the form “Ex libris bibliothecae presbyterii Dumfriesiensis ex dono Joan. Hutton M.D. 1714”, and that many were distinctive because of the water damage they received in the flooding a century before. Intriguingly almost all had the words “Ta ano” (ta ano) inscribed on the title page. Having identified them as part of a distinct collection he brought them together again.
The Practice of Piety / Lewis Bayly, 1672. New College Library DPL 912
The aforementioned John Hutton was born in Caerlaverock, Dumfriesshire and donated his book collection to the Dumfries Presbytery Library in 1714. He had an interesting history being personal physician to William of Orange and was with the King as his physician and advisor during the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
The collection is made up of around 1500 volumes from the 16th to 18th century, with a range of subjects including, science, medicine, philosophy, politics, history , travel, and of course bibles, biblical studies and theology. It contains numerous interesting items such as “The Booke of Common Prayer and Administration of the sacraments …” (Edinburgh : Robert Young, 1637). This is the famous “Laud’s Liturgy”, the service book forced on the Church of Scotland by Charles I’s bishops.
After the collection was catalogued, it was surveyed by Caroline Scharfenberg, a specialist book conservator based at the University of Edinburgh’s Main Library, who made a number of recommendations for the future conservation and preservation of the collection.
Serenissimi et potentissimi Principis Iacobi, Dei gratia, Magnae Britanniae, Franciae, et Hiberniae Regis, fidei defensoris, opera …
New College Library DPL.25
Both the cataloguing and the conservation survey for this collection were made possible by the generous donation of the Rev. Dr Robert Funk.
Finlay West, Funk Projects Cataloguer
Meet Holly, Our Skills for the Future Placement
My name is Holly and I am currently on a two week placement at ECA Archives as part of my Skills for the Future Collections Trainee programme at RCAHMS.
I began my placement here on Monday and was introduced to the department and given a tour of the CRC by Rachel Hosker, the ECA Archivist, as well as an introduction to the great art collection by Neil Lebeter , the Art Collections Curator.
Over the next couple of weeks I will be working with the ECA’s typography collection, cataloguing and researching the material produced by the ECA’s typography department between 1930 and 1970. The collection is a varied and visually exciting one with items ranging from book covers to 3D menus for the student’s Diploma Luncheon. The material provides a good opportunity to get to grips with a collection of which little is known. A lot of the material is not attributed to a person and there is very little research material available about the work of the typography department at ECA. It is therefore important to spend time trying to understand the archive and to cataloguing it to increase public access.
The college ran The Eagle Press, named after a statue of an eagle that sits atop the press. Hopefully I will get the opportunity to see The Eagle Press at some point over the next two weeks which still resides at ECA. It is not known when The Eagle Press started however the earliest date I have found so far on a printed item from The Eagle Press is 1948.
As well as producing students work the college also printed commercial work. Amongst the collection there are an array of leaflets, menus and brochures for various businesses.
Whilst looking through the collection I found a lot of illustrated booklets that contain extracts from well-known texts such as Moby Dick and The Wind in the Willows. These booklets often have the name of a student from ECA as well as their class year and kind of typography they used printed on the back, providing an insight into the typography class. Some of the booklets have beautiful illustrations and are printed on a range of interesting papers.
Whilst I have only just begun sorting through the collection I already have some favourites. I particularly like a series of colourful prints with the words A Long, Slow Repeat. There are sixteen prints in total, each using different combinations of coloured ink and papers that really give you the sense of a student experimenting and trying out different combinations in a typography class.
Holly Watson
Drupal Camp Scotland 2014
Last weekend saw Drupal Camp Scotland (http://dcedinburgh.drupalscotland.org) take place in Edinburgh, billed as ‘The premier training and promotional event for Drupal in the Scottish calendar’. In case you didn’t know, the University is currently in the process of migrating from Polopoly to Drupal as its choice of Content Management System for the University website. The Library’s webpages are regularly amongst the most popular of the University website so it is important that we have a good working knowledge of the software.
Friday was a ‘Training Day’, but as seems to be becoming increasingly common the WiFi couldn’t cope with the number of people trying to logon at once. I abandoned ship at lunchtime.
Saturday, on the other hand, was far more successful, consisting of an eclectic mix of presentations followed by a social event. If I had to pick out a couple of take home points from the day then they would be for web designers and developers…
– Mobile First. Which is shorthand for saying develop for mobile devices first and add features as device size increases.
– Responsive design. Websites should adjust, or respond, to the device being used.
– Declutter websites.
Nothing new but these points were hammered home repeatedly.
Lastly, a quick nod to our colleagues at the University Website Programme who not only presented at the event but were also one of the main sponsors.
The Universal Herbal
Fascinating book of the month requested for digitisation in the DIU goes to Thomas Greens “The Universal Herbal; or, botanical, medical, and agricultural dictionary. Containing an account of all the known plants in the world, arranged according to the Linnean system. With the best methods of propagation, and the most recent agricultural improvements.” The book is lyrically illustrated with basic but pragmatic hand colouring befitting it’s dictionary status. However it is a visually delicious looking two volume set with some unusual and intriguing entries as can be seen below. Broad-leaved Bastard Parsley is certainly a new one to me.
- Location Information:Main Library – Special Collections
- Shelfmark: K*.19.54-55
Malcolm Brown, Deputy Photographer
Casting in Retrograde
Deborah Marshall is a final year Sculpture student at Edinburgh College of Art. Deborah discusses her work for the ECA Degree Show 2014, which investigates the Cast Collection.
Casting in Retrograde – a diptych, 2014 is a work that connects and transposes the vast sculpture court and the diminutive casting room of ECA through the medium of sound. It emerged in response to a double opportunity – that of a live vocal performance in the sculpture court on the degree show opening night and the casting room as my show space for a yet to be conceived audio-based work.
The placement of a figure from the cast collection within the casting room as part of the installation has brought the process of display, reserved for the sculpture court, into the space historically assigned for back-room production of cast works. Likewise, my recorded audio – an excerpt from Purcell’s Dido’s Lament, scored and sung in reverse as a six-part canon – that I performed and pre-recorded with an amateur choir in the beautifully resonant sculpture court – is now embedded in the tall but comparatively tiny casting room for continuous play-back. Through this score, with its references to antiquity via Virgil’s epic poem and Purcell’s Baroque reinterpretation, I am playing with ideas of direction, time, appropriation and narrative.
Importantly, on one level the work questions the place of an historic cast collection within the context of contemporary, conceptual art and its education. For much of my time at ECA, the casts, have seemed an historically interesting but largely architecturally and decoratively appropriate presence beyond the periphery of my current sculptural education – an anachronism in short.
It is curious then that the simple re-placement , or repositioning of the cast figure has proved so unexpectedly transformative both with regard to the evolution of this work, and to the place that is still the working casting room within the college. The installation, with its embedded audio and visual references to the timelessness of the casting process itself, has brought a meditative stillness to the room in which the presence of the past, in the form of the cast figure, is powerfully felt.
The live performance of the audio will be performed on the evening of 22nd May, 2014 in the sculpture court of ECA.
Deborah Marshall
New e-resources trials available
The Library has set up trial access to a number of online resources that may be useful for those studying politics and international relations. These include:
Declassified Documents Reference System
Allows researchers to easily and quickly access and review selected previously classified government documents. This digital collection fills an important gap in post-World War II domestic and foreign policy studies and provides unique opportunities for undergraduate and graduate comprehensive research in a rich primary source. In addition, it provides basic research for journalism, public policy studies, international law and security, and other disciplines. Available until 9th June 2014
Peace Research Abstracts
Includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to peace research, including conflict resolution, international affairs, peace psychology, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline. The index contains more than 267,000 records which are carefully selected from the most important sources within the discipline, such as: Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Journal of Refugee Law, etc. Available until 12th June 2014
Yearbook of International Organizations Online
Compiled by the UIA (Union of International Associations) the Yearbook of International Organizations Online is the most comprehensive reference work and information resource on international non-profit organizations and associations worldwide. The Yearbook includes detailed descriptions of international organizations, and also includes relationships and cross-links with other listed international organizations. In addition, biographical information is provided on principal officers, as well as bibliographical information on the organization’s main publications and information services. Available until 9th June 2014.
Congressional Record 1789-1997
ProQuest Congressional is a comprehensive resource for all congressional activities, providing users access to the most comprehensive collection of historic and current congressional information available anywhere online. Available until 5th June 2014
Armed Conflict Database (ACD)
ACD monitors armed conflicts worldwide, focusing on political, military and humanitarian trends in current conflicts, whether they are local rebellions, long-term insurgencies, civil wars or inter-state conflicts. Available until 11th June 2014
PAIS International
This resource covers issues in the public debate through selective coverage of a wide variety of international sources including journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference papers, web content, and more. PAIS International is the current file covering 1972 to present. Available until 13th June 2014.
Europa World Plus
Europa World Plus is the online version of the Europa World Year Book and the nine-volume Europa Regional Surveys of the World series. First published in 1926, the year book is renowned as one of the world’s leading reference works, covering political and economic information in more than 250 countries and territories. Available until 22nd June 2014.
These can all be accessed via the E-resources trials website: www.ed.ac.uk/is/databases-trials
There are feedback forms available and we would welcome feedback as this a key part of making a case to subscribe to resources like these.
Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for Social and Political Science
Researchers – what’s new for you from the Library
“Researchers – what’s new for you from the Library” is an event being held in the Murray Library at the King’s Buildings to highlight some recent developments in Library services and resources for researchers. Places are bookable for all University of Edinburgh staff and research postgraduates via MyEd (see booking links below) or just drop into the Murray Library Ground Floor. Coffee and buns will be available from 12.30.
When: Wednesday 28th May
Where: Murray Library, Ground floor
Programme of talks
Each session is 15 minutes each plus 5 minutes Q&A. Pick and choose which talks you fancy or come along to the whole event:
13:00 – 13.20 – Research Data Management https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleID=9667
13.30 – 13.50 – Open Access: an overview
https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleID=9669
14.00 – 14.20 – Post 2014 REF: Open Access requirements
https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleID=9670
14.30 – 14.50 – Library support for researchers – overview
https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleID=9671
15.00 – 15.20 – Centre for Research Collections: Science and Engineering historical collections
https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleID=9996
If you’ve not been along to the Murray Library before then this is a great excuse to come and check out the new building and it’s excellent facilities. Also, did we mention the free Tea/Coffee and Doughnuts?
Towards Molly*
In this morning’s RLS team meeting, head of department Stuart Lewis laid down an unusual gauntlet: come up with blog posts related to (tomorrow’s) Eurovision Song Contest. Ever gluttons for punishment, we in the Library Digital Development team have attempted to trawl the collections looking for links. It’s fair to say that we’ve not done very well.
We started looking for unusual musical instruments in the MIMEd collection, but we can’t find any evidence of a pochette, serpent or ratchet ever having been used in Eurovision. We did find a harpsichord, but only in the orchestra pit of the 1969 event.
This, unfortunately, forces us to be particularly tenuous. Here’s a cringeworthy selection of links for you…
- Boom Bang-A-Bang! Here’s a link to our kettledrums.
- Puppet On A String? (if you only open one link, make it this one)
- We’ve got a barrel organ, which, looking at the selection of tunes it plays, is a veritable European jukebox.
- And, for no better reason than showing you this moonwalking Romanian chap, we also have some bagpipes.
Perhaps a more sensible angle would be to remind everyone that our musical instruments have undergone something of a Eurovision-esque journey, by virtue of their harvesting in the MIMO Project, joining up with representatives from juries in Sweden, France, Germany and Belgium, to name but a few. The vast majority of the instruments can now be found in Europeana, a resource which appeals to all continentophiles, and has everything you could wish for, bar the sarcastic Terry Wogan voiceover.
OK, that’s our attempt. Anyone care to top that? Enjoy yourselves tomorrow…
All at the Library Digital Development Team
* Allegedly, Molly is the name of this year’s UK entrant for Eurovision. Timely, eh?
…and if you’re STILL confused by the title, click here!
DISCLAIMER: Stay tuned for the full MIMEd collections in the new collections portal and LUNA imaging platform, which should arrive in the next few weeks!
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