Narratives and Copies of Diary Entries, Correspondence and Descriptions Recounting the History of Penicillin Development and Production

This group of files contains typescript accounts (C/1/1-3) by Heatley written in the early 1980s to accompany the first part of the collection given to the Contemporary Scientific Archives Centre (see collection introduction). These explain the methods of recording used in his laboratory notebooks and in making extracts from his diaries and provide a helpful introduction to the use of the documents.

There are also photocopies of extracts from the personal diaries of Norman Heatley covering activity between Sep 1939 and 1942; descriptions of the apparatus used (including some original papers from 1941); and copies of Heatley and Florey's correpondence relating to their work on penicillin 1941-1942 (C/1/4-6).

The material consists of all the files formerly catalogued as sections B, C and D of the Heatley papers transferred to the Wellcome Library in 1983 as GC/48 (excluding the former GC/48/B.8, which is now PP/NHE/C/7/1). Rather than comprising a direct transfer of contemporary letters and papers, it forms a partial 'narrative' of the history of penicillin research, development and production 1939-1942 put together by Norman Heatley for historical researchers.

C/1/7 came from the 2004 deposit.

(Some of the copied documents may now be present in original form in section PP/NHE/B).

1941-1983

17 files