Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1934-1991 (Creation)
Level of description
Extent and medium
1127 files or items.
Context area
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Repository
Archival history
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Content and structure area
Scope and content
Research has been arranged as follows:
1-67: Experimental Notebooks: These notebooks chiefly cover experimental work carried out at the Physiological Laboratory, University of Cambridge, and the Marine Biological Association laboratory, Plymouth, Hodgkin's first summer at the MBA was in 1939 when he worked for the first time with A. F. Huxley on squid nerve fibre. After the interruption of the war years their work resumed at Plymouth in 1947 and was completed by the publication of five papers in 1952. Contents are chiefly tables of experimental results, often with notes on the details of particular experiments, with diagrams and calculations etc. Dates, where found, are sometimes inscribed at the top of a page or on the cover, though some notebooks have no dates. Intercalated pages of notes and graphs are also found. Entries in the hands of others, chiefly A. F. Huxley and B. Katz, frequently found.
68-105: Theoretical and General Notebooks: These notebooks chiefly contain theoretical notes, usually with reference to published work by others, as background to Hodgkin's experimental work. Intercalated notes etc are found.
106-1127: Files for Experimental and Theoretical Work further divided: 106-156: Early research (1935-1939);
157-308: Various topics (1942-1991). A small amount of material relating to Hodgkin's work during World War II is included at C/157.; 308A-1120: Later experiments and theory (1960-1988). Much of this material was found organised in a rough chronological sequence. It chiefly consists of experimental data (manuscript and computer-generated), calculations and theoretical notes. A large proportion of the experiments are on vision; 1122-1127: 'Circuits' (1939-1960). Contents of a box so inscribed. The material appears to be chiefly c 1945 and to relate to Hodgkin's work in designing electrical circuits. It appears to cover some of his later wartime work on airborne radar at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) 1940-1945, and work on the nerve impulse, which he resumed with A. F. Huxley in 1946. It is probable that some of the circuit diagrams represent Hodgkin's preparations for the resumption of the nerve impulse research.