GenMedHist
Aims
Records of British Human Geneticists
The Wellcome Genetics Archives Project, Special Collections and Archives, Cardiff University
The personal scientific records of workers in human and medical genetics form a key element in the history of the field, but in contrast to basic molecular biology, there has been no initiative until recently to ensure they are preserved.
In 2006-2009 a collaborative venture between the National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists (University of Bath) and Professor Peter Harper, largely funded by the Wellcome Trust, ensured three collections of significant figures (J.H Renwick, C.A.B Smith, M.A Ferguson-Smith) were catalogued, and Dr Powell, then Senior Archivist of the NCUACS, began to survey archives in this field.
With the closure of NCUACS at the end of 2009, Peter Keelan, Head of Special Collections and Archives (SCOLAR) at Cardiff University headed a new venture to ensure that the work of cataloguing archives of eminent human and medical geneticists could be continued. In November 2009 the Research Resources in Medical History strand of Wellcome Trust funding gave nearly £100,000 to SCOLAR to support a project to catalogue the archives of medical geneticists John Edwards and George Fraser, and the Medical Research Council's Unit of Human Biochemical Genetics at the Galton Laboratory; and to safeguard the archives, mostly in electronic form, of the Cardiff University clinical geneticist Peter Harper.
The project, under the title Wellcome Genetics Archive Project, began at Cardiff University in February 2010. It will preserve and make accessible important records of this area of this study of profound impact on human health and scientific understanding. Areas covered of particular significance include aspects of human and medical genetics such as clinical genetics, population genetics, cytogenetics, enzyme polymorphisms and the foundations of molecular medicine.
The Cardiff University Genetics Records Project Team.
From left: Tim Powell, Peter Keelan, Peter Harper, Simon Coleman
The Project Archives
Current Project (List of Significant Record Sets)
- Archival Resources - Cataloguing Complete (NCUACS)
- Project Archives - Cataloguing in Progress at Cardiff
Other UK geneticists' archives
Archives of Early Basic Geneticists Involved in Human Genetics