Stories and musings about technicians.
Gladys Owens was just 19 years of age when she arrived to work in the town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It was 1945 and she was to spend 8 months working there as a technician on the Manhattan Project. Gladys would become one of the “Calutron Girls” whose role, though none of them knew it at the time, was key to the building of the first atomic bomb.
Fanny Hesse (1850-1934) was a lab technician and technical illustrator who introduced agar to the study of bacteria revolutionising microbiology.
Otto Baumbach (1882-1966) was a glass blower whose work in Manchester was vital to Nobel Laureate Ernest Rutherford.
Hans Crol (?-1591) was a German goldsmith and instrument maker who worked for Tycho Brahe between c.1584 and 1591.
Joanna Chorley (1925-2019) worked at the code cracking centre Bletchley Park during WW2 on the worlds first electronic computer – Colossus.
Gladys Trim (1915-?) started work in the Veterinary Department at the Wellcome Laboratories aged 15. Initially she was not doing technical work but helping other
women in the office with the filing. After 42 years she had worked her way up to senior technician with her name included on several publications.
Blanche J. Lawrence (1921-?) graduated from Tuskegee University before going on to work as a technician and then junior chemist on the Manhattan Project.
Irène Curie (1897-1956) was the daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie. Hers was a glittering scientific career that started when she was an X-ray radiographer in WW1.
Den Busby (1919-?) worked at the National Institute for Medical Research from the age of 15. He started work there in 1934 so his career spanned a time of great change for science technicians with improving conditions and a breaking down of old social barriers in the laboratory.
Gareth is a sculpture technician at the University of Leeds in the School of Design. He helps students bring three-dimensional fruition to their treasured ideas; ideas that until then have only ever existed in their heads. This is his #TechnicianJourney.
