Calling Collectors: U of T to Catalogue Historical Scientific Instruments and Artifacts
Research, Faculty & Staff
By
Heidi Singer
If you have interesting scientific artifacts, University of Toronto researchers would like to know about them. A group of science historians is working to develop the university’s first complete digital catalogue of historical artifacts for future research use.
Right now, more than a dozen collections of fascinating instruments and papers exist in private storage rooms across the university and Toronto’s hospitals. Taken together, these tell a story about our scientific heritage in a way that nothing else can.
“Collections provide insight into the life of a university,” says Erich Weidenhammer, an Associate in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. “They reveal the global flow and knowledge and technological insight. By collecting, we preserve the memory of today’s research cultures for future generations. And we bring the university community together.”
Weidenhammer, who holds a PhD in the social history of medicine, would like to ultimately create a museum of scientific instruments and artifacts at U of T and its medical partners. But the first step is to organize the relics of Toronto’s scientific history in a digital catalogue. If you have a medical or other scientific instruments or artifacts that you consider important to the history of research and teaching at U of T or Toronto hospitals, please contact Weidenhammer at erich.weidenhammer@utoronto.ca.
In order to start the conversation about how best to organize the instruments and artifacts of U of T’s scientific community, Weidenhammer and Professor Pier Bryden, of the Faculty of Medicine, will host the (Im)Material Culture symposium on Saturday, Nov. 11.
Hosted at U of T’s Medical Sciences Building, the conference is open to all. A dozen medical artifacts will be on display. High-school students of Black and Indigenous ancestry from the Faculty of Medicine’s Summer Mentorship Program researched the history of the instruments, and have prepared information about them.
Professor Sioban Nelson, U of T’s Vice-Provost of Academic Programs and Faculty and Academic Life, will deliver the keynote address. A panel on rethinking health collections will include Lisa O’Sullivan of The New York Academy of Medicine, Francois Dansereau, Archivist at the RBC Art and Heritage Centre of the McGill University Health Centre, and Professor Shelly McKellar, a medical historian from Western University. Other speakers will focus on representing disability, mental illness and the history of sexuality in health collections. Weidenhammer will moderate a panel on collecting living artifacts such as human tissue.
Nineteen researchers at the University of Toronto and partner hospitals have received almost $60 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation through its Innovation Fund.
Twenty faculty members from the University of Toronto — including seven at Temerty Medicine — have been awarded Canada Research Chairs in support of their research, in areas ranging from LGBTQ2S+ youth mental health to quantum photonic technologies and sustainable suburban housing.
The Centre for Research and Applications in Fluidic Technologies, or CRAFT, is a partnership between U of T, the National Research Council of Canada and, now, Unity Health Toronto.