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Focus on a LAHRI Postdoctoral Researcher – Nicola Williams

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This month’s blog comes from Dr. Nicola Williams. Nicola has been a LAHRI Postdoctoral Fellow since April 2021, and is a researcher working in the areas of History of Science, Women and Science and Feminism.

 

During my time as a LAHRI postdoc, I’ve been working on a publication about the introduction of the electron microscope into biology in the 1940s and early 1950s. The paper has a focus on gender. It is a localised study, a micro-history pertinent to the University of Leeds context.

 key figure of the narrative is the Leeds Professor of Botany, Irene Manton (1904-1988), whose pioneering use of the electron microscope led to fundamental discoveries in cell biology. The findings of this research were that Manton was able to gain access to the electron microscope, as a botanist, and without direct input from a physicist (which would normally have been the case back then). Manton was in a rare position of seniority at that time. Notwithstanding her success in the quest to enter the new and exciting field of ‘biological electron microscopy’ Manton nevertheless still encountered problems on account of her gender.

It is inevitable that in any study of the introduction of a new scientific technology into the laboratory setting there are likely to be localised variations. The available scholarship on early electron microscopy and laboratory culture, thus far, indicates there were variations at the national level. The results of the above research at Leeds are fascinating, but at present it is unclear whether these are applicable more widely.

Another goal of my postdoctoral research has been to begin the process of thinking about my next project. This postdoctoral project will involve an element of upscaling on the project given above. Here I aim to include other women and other centres in Britain. I also intend to move beyond the boundaries of the university laboratory and into the clinic, with the aim of making a comparison between these two different settings.