Vida Milovanovic finds a wealth of interesting material in the recently-acquired papers of physiologist Douglas Wilkie FRS.
I’ve been cataloguing a recently-acquired collection of the papers of physiologist Douglas Robert Wilkie FRS (1922-1998).
Wilkie’s early work provided the best data available even now on the force-velocity, active-state and series-elastic characteristics of muscle. He investigated the mechanics and thermodynamics of muscle contraction, and became renowned for his work on the thermal, mechanical and chemical changes in a wide variety of types of contraction.
Wilkie in the laboratory, June 1956 (DRW/4/2)
Wilkie’s papers reveal a man with a palpable curiosity for the mechanisms governing muscle function and human movement. An early research file on ‘Human power production’ demonstrates his interest in investigating the ability of human beings to generate mechanical energy, and associated experiments with bicycle ergometers to test the mechanical power of racing cyclists:
His curiosity extended to the idea of human aero-engines, assembling a sizable file combining research documents and notes on people as a source of mechanical power. He produced a report on the subject in 1959, intended for the Journal of Applied Physiology, and was involved with the Royal Aeronautical Society, playing an active role in the establishment of the Kremer prize for benchmarking human-powered flights.
Inspired by the work of A V Hill FRS on the mechanics of muscle, he became fascinated with the application of thermodynamics to muscle contraction. A file in his papers pertains to his research and work on this topic, including a 1972 draft manuscript entitled ‘Thermodynamics Does Work'. Chapters in this unpublished article cover the first and second laws of thermodynamics, isothermal systems, heat engines, chemical reactions, isothermal processes, and the thermodynamics of open systems.
Wilkie’s lifelong association with University College London began in 1945, when he was appointed to an assistant lectureship in the Physiology department. Within a few years he was promoted to a readership, which saw him take charge of organising the teaching of physiology. A discrete series of teaching material in this collection offers a glimpse of talks and lectures he planned and delivered on muscle function, body temperature, metabolism and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). In 1969, he took over from Sir Andrew Huxley FRS as head of the UCL Physiology department.
Douglas Wilkie in his office at UCL (DRW/4/4)
Later in his career, Wilkie turned his attention to Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and its practical application, studying the brains of newborn infants following perinatal hypoxic-ischaemic episodes, in collaboration with George Radda FRS, David Gadian and Edward Reynolds FRS. A file of photographs features a Science Museum display on nuclear magnetic resonance from 1982, including a reaction chamber developed by Wilkie:
Wilkie’s reaction chamber exhibited at the Science Museum (DRW/4/9)
Wilkie was also a great enthusiast for travel and sailing. An early photograph album he compiled whilst studying for his Rockefeller scholarship at Yale documents his numerous leisure trips, activities, and portraits of friends, taken while journeying across America and Europe in his youth:
Album section entitled ‘Retrospect’, comprising photographs from a trip to Switzerland taken in spring 1938, when Wilkie was just 15 (DRW/4/1)
This collection is particularly special as Wilkie also retained the papers of his former wife, June Rosalind Wilkie (née Hill, 1925-1996). The couple divorced in 1982, but reunited later in life. June was a scientist herself, having trained as an anaesthetist at the Royal Free Hospital before becoming a Registrar in Anaesthetics at UCH. June later turned to academic work, where her research focused on heat balance in newborn and premature infants, a topic on which she published numerous papers demonstrating the importance of maintaining body heat by keeping the environmental temperature high.
Portrait of June taken by Anthea Sieveking (DRW/4/6)
Cataloguing papers such as these is never predictable, with personalities emerging even in the most ‘administrative’ of records. And I was amused to see that Wilkie retained a sense of humour right up to the end of his life:
Epitaph suggestions for a gravestone in Highgate Cemetery, from a file on posthumous arrangements (DRW/2/3/9)
