Gerrylynn Roberts, AB (Chemistry) Vassar College, PhD (History of Science) The Johns Hopkins University, joined the former Department of History of Science (later History of Science, Technology & Medicine) in 1972 as a researcher. She was appointed to a lectureship in 1983 and became a Senior Lecturer in 1996. She is a Council Member of The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry and sits on its Executive Group; she was formerly Hon Secretary of the Society and Hon Editor of its journal.
Social History of 19th- and 20th-century science and technology. She has contributed to all history of science and technology courses produced in the Arts Faculty, as well as a number of interdisciplinary courses, most recently, A207, From Enlightenment to Romanticism, c. 1780-1830. She currently chairs AT308, Cities and Technology: from Babylon to Singapore and AT272, Ancient and Medieval Cities: a technological history. She has been involved with a number of IT developments in the Arts Faculty. AT308 was one of the earliest courses in the Faculty to deploy information technology in its teaching.
Social history of British chemistry, especially its institutionalisation and professionalisation, and chemical education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A particular focus is the relationship between industry and academia. She is currently working on the history of the Chemistry Department at University College London and, with Robin Mackie, a long-term project initiated with Leverhulme funding, ‘Studies of the British Chemical Community, 1880-1971: The Principal Institutions'. Collective biographical methods are at the core of their work. See their Biographical Database of the British Chemical Community, 1880-1970.
Recognizing that, though their own focus on chemists is quite particular, many researchers around the Open University deploy biographical methodologies, Mackie and Roberts initiated the interfaculty Biographical Methodologies Research Cluster. Gerrylynn Roberts is the Cluster's Convenor.
Four of her research students completed PhDs between 2001 and 2006. Dr Anna Simmons (2004, co-supervisor, Deborah Brunton) delivered the prestigious Gideon de Laune Lecture, Faculty of the History and Philosophy of Medicine and Pharmacy, The Society of Apothecaries (26 April 2006). Dr Yoshiyuki Kikuchi (2006, co-supervisor Professor Ian Inkster, Nottingham Trent University) was, in 2007, joint recipient of the first Young Researcher Award (Gakujutsu Shorei Sho) of the History of Science Society of Japan in recognition of his thesis.
Roberts may be contacted for access to the collection established by Emeritus Professor Colin Russell, who directed the former History of Chemistry Research Group. It includes an important microfilm archive collection - including the scientific correspondence of the Victorian chemist, Sir Edward Frankland, with a computerised index; as well as the records of some chemical firms and institutions. There are also collections from several donors including the late Dr Archie Clow and the late Dr N V Heathcote, as well as runs of certain chemical periodicals.
'Christopher Kelk Ingold' in Noretta Koertge (ed), New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, (Farmington Hills, MI: Charles Scribner's Sons/Thomas Gale), 2007.
(with Colin A Russell) (eds), Chemical History: Reviews of the Recent Literature (Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry), 2005. [DOI: 10.1039/9781847552631]
(with R L Mackie) 'La professionalizzazione della chimica' in Sandro Petruccioli (editor-in-chief), Storia della Scienza, vol. VII, La Scienza dell '800, sez. E., D M Knight, ed., Chemistry (Roma, Istituto dell Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani), chapter 50, section 7, 2003, pp. 520-26.
(with Susanna Reece) '"This Electric Age is Woman's Opportunity": The Electrical Association for Women and its All-Electric House in Boston, 1935', Local Historian, 1998, 38, pp.94-107.
'Dealing with Issues at the Academic-Industrial Interface in Inter-war Britain, University College London', Science and Public Policy, 1997, 24, pp. 29-35.
'C K Ingold at University College London: Educator and Department Head,' British Journal for the History of Science, 1996, 29, pp.65-82, reprinted in Bulletin for the History of Chemistry, 1996, 19, pp.2-12.
See also publications arising from the project Biographical Database of the British Chemical Community, 1880-1970.
See also Open Research Online for further details of Gerrylynn Roberts's research publications.
