On last week’s blog we looked at a print of C.H Waddington’s epigenetic landscape, part of our collection of diagrams, illustrations and photographs used in Waddington’s publications.

This picture is also from this collection of illustrative material, being one of the original plates and figures used for Waddington’s 1962 book New Patterns in Genetics and Development (Figure 56 in the book). There are 68 figures and 23 plates present in the collection, out of the total 72 figures and 24 plates which appear in the book. The images, mounted on card, bear the stamp of the book’s publisher, Columbia University Press and are marked with symbols and annotations.

The image shows patterns in the wings of the moth Plodia interpunctella, and is used in the book to illustrate a fundamental question posed by Waddington: ‘How is any individual pattern generated?’ Waddington describes what he calls ‘the superposition of several different patterns, which can be recognised as physiologically distinct from one another, either because they are formed at different times during development, or because they react differentially to experimental treatments.’ The image shows ‘a series of adult wings that have been, as it were, frozen in successive stages in the process of pattern formation’. The normal adult wing at a) on the right, while e), for example, shows the result of heat treatment in wild moths (one way by which one can externally disrupt or divert the process of wing pattern formation during development).

The images were returned to Waddington by Columbia University Press in August 1963, along with the original manuscript, which also forms part of the Waddington archive.

It appears that C.H Waddington’s interest in animals was not merely confined to biology and genetics: the other day I happened across this drawing among some correspondence of Waddington’s about his visit to various Universities and research institutions in India in October 1968 under the auspices of British Council. Waddington seemingly took a fancy to having a statuette of this horse made out of clay ‘by a village craftsman’, a process overseen by his friend Prof R.V. Seshaiya from the Centre of Advanced Study in Marine Biology, Annamalai University, Porto Novo, in South India. A letter from Seshaiya to Waddington on February 27 1969 claims that ‘the ‘horse’ is nearing completion. The only item of work is painting it. The doll-maker tells me that he will hand over the finished model in about a week’s time’ before adding, ‘of course his measure of time is different from ours.’ It would certainly appear so –  the parcel eventually arrived in September!

Waddington’s reply to Seshaiya on 26 September 1969 notes that ‘my wife and I are very pleased with [the horse]. It travelled quite safely except for one or two of the minor ornaments which we can quite easily put back with adhesive. I am very grateful for the trouble you took over this and it will be a wonderful reminder of our pleasant time at Porto Novo.’ We don’t know whether the two wonderfully dressed gentlemen ever formed part of the ornament!

The significance of the horse is not known, and neither is it clear who made this rather accomplished drawing, from which, presumably, the horse was modelled. We’ve seen from previous posts that Waddington could clearly draw, but I suspect even his skills did not extend this far. It could possibly have been his architect wife, Justin Blanco White, or perhaps someone in India. The mystery remains, but it’s certainly interesting to see what can turn up in folders of correspondence!

I was interested to find among Waddington’s typescripts and manuscripts these notebooks containing the printed draft proofs of Waddington’s book New Patterns in Genetics and Development. The book was based on the Jesup lectures Waddington delivered to Columbia University in 1961 and was published by Columbia Press in 1962.

In New Patterns, Waddington not only explores the emergence of patterns in biological development, but also examines the new patterns of thought that had emerged in genetics and biochemistry. As ever though, he pushes forward to working towards developing new approaches, particularly with regard to morphogenesis (the biological process which causes an organism to develop its shape, causing ‘the appearance of organised structure within a vast range of sizes from the cellular organelle to the elephant’).

In typically visual language, Waddington describes the ‘ancient conundrum of morphogenesis’ as having ‘the attraction of a real frontier, a region where one is not just trying to fill in an already existing sketch map, but where one has to try and figure out the bare bones of the geography from scratch.’

I like how ‘patterns’ even find their way onto the covers of these notebooks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in a previous post I mentioned the work our wonderful conservators do to repair, rehouse and preserve archival materials to ensure that they survive for future generations to enjoy.

Possibly the most unique and unusual part of the material that will be catalogued and made available as part of the ‘Towards Dolly’ project is the collection of nearly 4,000 glass positive slides, dating from around 1900. These slides had previously been stored in large poultry sheds on the site of the Roslin Institute, and depict various plant and animal specimens (pictured), some perhaps from breeding competitions, as well as agricultural, scientific and industrial scenes from around the world. Quite a find!

Considering their age and their conditions of storage, the slides were in remarkably good condition, apart from around 200 which were badly damaged and cracked. This is where our conservators come in: Caroline and her assistant Anna (pictured) have been working hard over the past month or so to repair and rehouse these damaged slides, replacing the cracked glass, providing a robust frame for each slide to sit in and housing the slides in new boxes.

At present we have little idea what this slide collection may have been used for, or to whom they belonged. Later on in the project, Rare Books Cataloguer Kristy will be cataloguing these slides and we hope to eventually make them available digitally as a valuable resource not just for scientific research but also for historical, sociological and visual and artistic studies.

If anyone has any idea about these slides, or would like to know more about them, do get in touch!

Conrad Hal Waddington, whose papers I am currently cataloguing, had interests which went far beyond science and genetics, as can be seen from an essay he wrote in 1923 while still at school. Titled ‘Alchemy’, it contains a history of the subject as well as some hand drawn occult illustrations (as depicted).

In fact, Waddington had a wide variety of interests throughout his life, including art – so much so that he published a book on the subject in 1969, Behind Appearance – as well as architecture (he married the architect Justin Blanco White). As well as appreciating art for its own sake, Waddington liked to see the scientific in art and the art in the scientific. In a lecture called ‘Form and Pattern In the Biological World’ (which Waddington delivered to the Architectural Association on 29 May 1958), Waddington commented:

Many recent writers on biological form have emphasised the fact that living things often produce shapes which are rather precisely geometrical, and which in fact come  near to belonging to the realm of intellectual abstract configurations.

And as you can see from the pictures, Waddington was not short of some artistic talent himself!

We are delighted to be the cover feature of this month’s issue of the Scottish Council on Archives‘ Broadsheet newsletter! The rather serious looking gentleman in the picture is zoologist James Cossar Ewart (1851-1933), and his striped companion was one of the animals Ewart used for cross-breeding around the time of his famous Penycuik Experiments (1899). Ewart’s papers will be catalogued later on in the project – in the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for more of our project in print…

‘Towards Dolly’ also features on page 2 of the newsletter – download and read it!

The boxes you can see in the picture (well, not quite all of them!) contain the papers of geneticist C.H Waddington, and, as Project Archivist, it is my job to catalogue and preserve them and to eventually make them available online via an electronic catalogue. This is the first stage of the archival cataloguing aspect of the ‘Towards Dolly’ project – you can read more about what else is to follow in the About Us section.

Conrad Hal Waddington (1905-1975) had a vital role in shaping the course of genetics at Edinburgh University. He first joined Edinburgh in 1947, combining the position of chief geneticist at the Institute of Animal Genetics with the chair of animal genetics at the University. In the 1950s, this grew into the largest genetics department in the UK and one of the largest in the world. Waddington would go on to play a major role in the expansion of the biological faculty at the University, as well as serving on two high-profile government committees and also held positions in many foreign institutions.

Over the next few months I will be sharing some key items within the Waddington papers which hopefully illustrate his importance to genetics within Edinburgh University and beyond, as well as revealing the multi-faceted man behind the science!