Teaching Officers

Nick Hopwood

Senior Lecturer
On leave in Lent Term 2012

Research interests: History of modern medicine and biology; the visual culture of science

I came to history of science and medicine after postdoctoral work in developmental biology. I lectured for two years at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine and became a teaching officer in the Department in 1998. I won a Pilkington teaching prize in 2006.

I am finishing a book, Pictures of Evolution and Charges of Fraud, about Haeckel's embryos, the most controversial and, remarkably, some of the most standard images in the history of science. Linked to a project on Visualizing Development: Anatomies of Human Embryos I am collaborating with Martin Johnson (Physiology, Development and Neuroscience) and Sarah Franklin (Sociology) on a history of mammalian embryology, and especially human IVF, in the UK since 1945.

I am principal holder of a Wellcome Trust strategic award in the history of medicine on the theme 'Generation to Reproduction', advise the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Reproduction Forum and co-direct the Ischia Summer School on the History of the Life Sciences. I sit on the Wellcome Digital Library programme board and advisory committee and the Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Selection Panel.

Selected publications

• 'A marble embryo: Meanings of a portrait from 1900', History Workshop Journal 73 (Spring 2012), in press.
• 'Approaches and species in the history of vertebrate embryology', in Vertebrate Embryogenesis: Embryological, Cellular and Genetic Methods (Methods in Molecular Biology 770), ed. Francisco J. Pelegri, Humana Press, 2011, 1-20. [660 KB PDF file]
• 'Why the Medical Research Council refused Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe support for research on human conception in 1971', Human Reproduction 25 (2010), 2157-2174 (with Martin H. Johnson, Sarah B. Franklin and Matthew Cottingham). [270 KB PDF file]
• Seriality and Scientific Objects in the Nineteenth Century, a special double issue of History of Science 48 (2010), 251-494. Edited and introduced (on pp. 251-285) with Simon Schaffer and Jim Secord. [1.2 MB PDF file]
• 'Embryology', in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 6: The Modern Biological and Earth Sciences, ed. Peter J. Bowler and John V. Pickstone, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 285-315.
• Making Visible Embryos, online exhibition, October 2008 (with Tatjana Buklijas).
• 'Artist versus anatomist, models against dissection: Paul Zeiller of Munich and the Revolution of 1848', Medical History 51 (2007), 279-308. [820 KB PDF file]
  See also 'Model politics', The Lancet 372 (2008), 1946-1947. [300 KB PDF file]
• 'Pictures of evolution and charges of fraud: Ernst Haeckel's embryological illustrations', Isis 97 (2006), 260-301. [1.9 MB PDF file]
• 'Visual standards and disciplinary change: Normal plates, tables and stages in embryology', History of Science 43 (2005), 239-303. [2.4 MB PDF file]
  Shorter and more highly illustrated version: 'A history of normal plates, tables and stages in vertebrate embryology', International Journal of Developmental Biology 51 (2007), 1-26. [2.9 MB PDF file]
• Models: The Third Dimension of Science, Stanford University Press, 2004. Edited and introduced with Soraya de Chadarevian; own chapter on 'Plastic publishing in embryology'.
• Embryos in Wax: Models from the Ziegler Studio, Whipple Museum of the History of Science, University of Cambridge; Institute of the History of Medicine, University of Bern, 2002.
• 'Embryonen "auf dem Altar der Wissenschaft zu opfern": Entwicklungsreihen im späten neunzehnten Jahrhundert', in Geschichte des Ungeborenen. Zur Erfahrungs- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Schwangerschaft, 17.-20. Jahrhundert, ed. Barbara Duden et al., Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2nd edition, 2002, pp. 237-272.
• 'Producing development: The anatomy of human embryos and the norms of Wilhelm His', Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74 (2000), 29-79. [8.9 MB PDF file]
• 'The introduction of Xenopus laevis into developmental biology: Of empire, pregnancy testing and ribosomal genes', International Journal of Developmental Biology 44 (2000), 43-50 (with John B. Gurdon). [342 KB PDF file]
• '"Giving body" to embryos: Modelling, mechanism and the microtome in late nineteenth-century anatomy', Isis 90 (1999), 462-496. [6.1 MB PDF file]
• 'Biology between university and proletariat: The making of a red professor', History of Science 35 (1997), 367-424. [1.6 MB PDF file]
• 'Producing a socialist popular science in the Weimar Republic', History Workshop Journal 41 (Spring 1996), 117-153. [3.8 MB PDF file]