Workshop: The history of genetics in Edinburgh
Organisers: Soraya de Chadarevian, Miguel Garcia-Sancho, Steve Sturdy
Date: 27 June 2017
Venue: University of Edinburgh, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
Aim:
Edinburgh has been an important centre for the development of the science and practice of genetics (broadly understood to include animal breeding, clinical genetics and molecular genetics) since the early twentieth century. However, it has not received the attention it deserves from historians of science, medicine or agriculture. Yet there are reasons to believe that the institutional and perhaps scientific configuration of Edinburgh genetics may have differed in interesting ways from developments in more thoroughly studied centres, in particular Cambridge and its environs. This informal workshop will bring together a number of historians and sociologists who have looked at or are currently investigating various aspects of Edinburgh genetics, with the aim of exploring what, if anything, might be distinctive about it.
Participants will make short presentations of 15-20 mins outlining what they know of the sites in which genetic work (including but not confined to research) were undertaken in Edinburgh, and how those sites related to one another. As much time as possible will be given over to round-table discussion. No specific outcomes are currently envisaged beyond mutual enlightenment, though we will consider at the end whether there is anything worth taking forward as a group from the workshop.
Programme:
9.00-9.30 Coffee and Welcome
9.30-11.00 Steve Sturdy – On “civic science” in Edinburgh University from the nineteenth century
Clare Button – The establishment of the Department of Animal Genetics
Salim Al Gailani– Teratology and reproduction in Edinburgh around the turn of the twentieth century
11.00-11.30 Coffee
11.30-12.30 Soraya de Chadarevian – Court-Brown and the establishment of human genetics, 1950s-1960s
Paula Blair– The development of AFP screening and serum screening in Edinburgh
12.30-14.00 Lunch
14.00-15.30 Tatjana Buklijas – Edinburgh, CH Waddington and the origins of modern epigenetics
Ben Martynoga– The establishment of molecular biology in Edinburgh
Farah Huzair, Steve Sturdy– Ken Murray and the development of the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine
15.30-14.00 Tea
16.00-17.00 Dmitriy Myelnikov – ABRO in Edinburgh: location and transformation
James Lowe – Roslin and the pig genome project
Miguel Garcia-Sancho – brief commentary
17.00-17.30 Reflections, future directions