Around the turn of the twentieth century, microbiologists in Western Europe and North America began to organize centralized collections of microbial cultures. Collectors published lists of the strains they cultured, offering to send duplicates to colleagues near and far. This essay explores the history of microbial culture collections through two cases: Johanna Westerdijk’s collection of phytopathogenic fungi in the Netherlands and Ernst Georg Pringsheim’s collection of single-celled algae at the German University in Prague. Historians of science have tended to look at twentieth-century biological specimen collections as either repositories of communal research materials or storehouses of economically important biological variation. An examination of Westerdijk’s and Pringsheim’s collections illustrates how collectors, researchers, and patrons ascribed different kinds of value to collections featuring distinctive microbial life forms. This essay argues that characteristics of cultivated microorganisms, such as a fungus’s propensity to infect crops or an alga’s amenability to experimentation, shaped the trajectories of Westerdijk’s and Pringsheim’s collections as these collectors developed relationships with colleagues and patrons. Letters between Westerdijk and Pringsheim open a window onto divergences in their approaches to collecting cultures, while also shedding light on the aspirational internationality of the collections that resulted.
...MoreArticle Brad Bolman (2022) Introduction: What Right? Which Organisms? Why Jobs?. Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 3-13).
Article
Kinukawa, Tomomi;
(2013)
Learned vs. Commercial? The Commodification of Nature in Early Modern Natural History Specimen Exchanges in England, Germany, and the Netherlands
(/isis/citation/CBB001320518/)
Article
Vanderstraeten, Raf;
(2011)
Scholarly Communication in Education Journals
(/isis/citation/CBB001231852/)
Article
MIKE VINEY;
DAGMAR DIETRICH;
JIM MILLS;
SHARON CHENEY;
MIKE RUMSEY;
ROBIN HANSEN;
(2024)
Opalized Wood from Clover Creek, Idaho: How an 1895 Fossil Tree Discovery Became the Standard of Quality for Wood-Opal in Mineralogical Collections
(/isis/citation/CBB628990277/)
Article
Laubacher, Matthew;
(2012)
Fullerton Baird and Specimen Collection in the Hudson's Bay Territory
(/isis/citation/CBB001210161/)
Chapter
Martina Bečvářová;
Eva Kaufholz-Soldat;
Nicola M.R. Oswald;
(2020)
Women and Mathematics at the Universities in Prague
(/isis/citation/CBB057726977/)
Article
Matthew Fishburn;
(2020)
The private museum of John Septimus Roe, dispersed in 1842
(/isis/citation/CBB684808969/)
Article
Dahlbom, Taika;
(2009)
Matter of Fact: Biographies of Zoological Specimens
(/isis/citation/CBB001022474/)
Article
Samyn, Yves;
(2014)
Return to Sender: Hydrozoa Collected by Emperor Hirohito of Japan in the 1930s and Studied in Brussels
(/isis/citation/CBB001321119/)
Article
Till Töpfer;
(2020)
Great auk (Pinguinus impennis) eggs in Bonn: Correspondence between Emile Parzudaki and Robert Champley
(/isis/citation/CBB839355820/)
Chapter
Jorink, Eric;
(2012)
In the Twilight Zone: Isaac Vossius and the Scientific Communities in France, England and the Dutch Republic
(/isis/citation/CBB001200297/)
Article
O'Malley, Maureen A.;
(2008)
“Everything is everywhere: but the environment selects”: Ubiquitous Distribution and Ecological Determinism in Microbial Biogeography
(/isis/citation/CBB000831713/)
Article
Istvan Hargittai;
Magdolna Hargittai;
(2023)
On Edward Teller's Inner World: As Revealed in His Letters to Maria Goeppert Mayer
(/isis/citation/CBB245597711/)
Article
Esposito, Maurizio;
(2014)
Problematic “Idiosyncrasies”: Rediscovering the Historical Context of D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's Science of Form
(/isis/citation/CBB001420395/)
Article
Karl Schulze-Hagen;
Tim R. Birkhead;
(2022)
Nikolaas Tinbergen’s children’s book Kleew (1947): The story of a herring gull
(/isis/citation/CBB861710130/)
Book
Dorsman, Leen;
Knegtmans, Peter Jan;
(2007)
Onderzoek in opdracht: De publieke functie van het universitaire onderzoek in Nederland sedert 1876
(/isis/citation/CBB001232408/)
Article
Orsolya Lukács;
(2020)
Carl Gustav Jung and Albert Einstein: An ambivalent relationship
(/isis/citation/CBB320527576/)
Article
Mineke Bosch;
(2016)
Scholarly Personae and Twentieth-Century Historians: Explorations of a Concept
(/isis/citation/CBB379372360/)
Book
Munns, David P. D.;
(2013)
A Single Sky: How an International Community Forged the Science of Radio Astronomy
(/isis/citation/CBB001320933/)
Book
Alberts, G.;
Zuidervaart, H. J.;
(2009)
De KNAW en de Nederlandse wetenschap tussen 1930 en 1960
(/isis/citation/CBB001021805/)
Article
Philip Stone;
(2020)
Robert McCormick's geological collections from Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, 1839–1843
(/isis/citation/CBB979398368/)
Be the first to comment!