Bibliographic Forensics

Unlocking the Universe: bibliographic forensics applied to important scientific papers. A presentation to CILIP in London by Julian Wilson of Christie's at the Square Tavern, Tolmers Square, NW1 on Thursday 12th April 2012

In the New Elizabethan age of the 1950s science was often presented as sprung Minerva like, complete and beautiful from the cloven head of the Second World War. But an interest in the history of science had been growing. In 1936 the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History was founded, mainly to elucidate first published names for species of animals and plants. In 1938 Robert K. Merton published the influential  Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England.

From the 1960s onwards the history of science became a growth industry. The proliferation of scientific journals, and their embodiment in digital form today have raised all the questions of increasing costs and freedom of access, but such information is now available more widely and more simply than ever before. 

One of the services offered to authors from the end of the eighteenth to the present day is the provision of a set of offprints that may be distributed to colleagues to publicise the author's work. In the days of hot letter press the type would be set up specifically to produce these offprints, and so the typography and design of the page would usually differ from the first page of the article as printed in the journal itself, and can be identified by those differences.

The production and distribution of these offprints is important both for the history of scientific thought, and in giving value to the objects themselves as collectors items. In the case of James Hutton's “Theory of the earth”, which was presented in two papers to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1875, an abstract was required to be prepared in advance and circulated to members before the paper was actually read. The paper itself was not published until 1788 and in book form not until 1795. When the book was published the language was so opaque that its ideas were generally ignored, until they were re-presented in more comprehensibe language by John Playfair in 1802.

 The usual state of affairs was for the author to be sent a limited number of copies for distribution, further copies being available on payment. Charles Darwin, apparently, was noted for never buying additional copies of his articles, so if an offprint turns up, it is pretty certain to be one of fifteen; a limited edition which increases its collectability.

 The separates can be inscribed by the sender and annotated by the recipient. And these manuscript annotations can vary from the terse to the fulsome. If we consider the networks of scientists, for instance the informal Lunar Society, with members such as Josiah Wedgewood, Matthew Boulton, James Watt and Erasmus Darwin, an inscription from one member to another not only illuminates the processes of scientific communication, but adds a degree of uniqueness to the item, making it more desirable for a collector. The speaker had examples to offer, some resulting in auction prices that far exceeded the estimates in the auction catalogue, because a specific personal connection had been missed. Even standard issues of Nature were selling at high prices where they contained a classic article.

 The most recent example to be given by Julian Wilson was that of the Newman collection of papers by Alan Turing. Max Newman was a teacher and later a colleague of Alan Turing, he was the first to read the manuscript of Turing's essay “On computable numbers” a solution to (or perhaps a bypassing of) the “Entscheidungsproblem“ which launched Turing's mathematical career, and which, with all due regard to Charles Babbage, is the origin of modern computing. Turing sent his close friend Newman inscribed copies of his offprints, and after Turing's tragic death (after what can only be regarded as a state witch hunt) Newman collected further Turing items. In 2010 private donations, and the Heritage Lottery Fund stepping in at the last moment were able to secure the collection for Bletchley Park.

 We were sent on our way with the recommendation to scrutinise our pamphlet collections carefully for these value adding associations, and make sure that such items were discretely, but securely, marked with institutional ownership!