David Miller
History & Archives Committee, The Physiological Society

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.98.36

The Oral History project, conducted by History & Archives Committee, interviews senior members of The Society, generally after they have retired. The interviewee talks freely about his or her career and science, their background, collaborations, friendships, The Society and other memories. The recordings of these free-ranging interviews and full transcripts are then lodged in the Society’s archive held at the Wellcome Library. In several cases there are contemporary photos lodged with the text.

To make these fascinating personal accounts of lives in physiology more accessible, we have started to place edited versions online. In a few cases some of the audio files will be accessible too. Those versions can now be accessed at www.physoc.org in the Society’s History section.

Amongst recent examples, in 2013 our immediate past President, Jonathan Ashmore interviewed Paul Fatt. (Sadly, Paul died a year later). At that session, Jonathan took the photo of Paul reproduced here. Last year he also interviewed David Colquhoun. Oral Histories currently available via the website now also include Ann Silver, Sally Page, Gerta Vrbová, Andrew Huxley, Otto Hutter and others, with more in progress.

Lynn Bindman’s portrait of David Colquhoun on this page is one of several she has made of her former colleagues at UCL. Lynn herself will be interviewed for the Oral History project later this year. We are indebted to David and to Lynn for permission to reproduce the image.