Following on from last week’s mapping meme, Frank Norman of the National Institute for Medical Research provides this illustration of the Mill Hill area of London, where his institute is based.
Click for larger image.
Key (provided by Frank)
NIMR = MRC National Institute for Medical Research. The best research institute in North London, if not the world!
MRCT = MRC Technology. MRC’s technology transfer arm.
Mill Hill School – grand old public school. Francis Crick was a famous old boy there. In 2003 the School purchased a series of Wyllie-O’Hagan’s spectacular prints inspired by Rosalind Franklin, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Crick-Watson DNA paper.
The Scriptorium was also based at the School. Here the Oxford English Dictionary was created by James Murray (1837-1915), who has a blue plaque.
During WW2 the school housed the Maudsley Hospital, hence the “Mill Hill Vocabulary Scale”. (No, I’d never heard of it either but its amazing what you find on Google.)
Peter Collinson (1694-1768) has a blue plaque. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, an avid gardener, and “the middleman for an international exchange of scientific ideas in mid-18th century London” according to Wikipedia. He maintained a plant collection at Mill Hill.
Apex Corner – just a big roundabout, but has a pleasingly mathematical ring to it.
RAF Museum, just down the road at Hendon – not really science, but they do have a helicopter simulator there, where you can get your bones shaken.
Mill Hill Observatory – it is a real live astronomical observatory, part of University College London!
Health Protection Agency, over at Colindale – used to be PHLS, and originally part of the MRC.
NIBSC – National Institute for Biological Standards and Control. Used to be part of NIMR in the old days before moving out to Potters Bar.
CRUK Clare Hall – used to be located next door to NIMR at Mill Hill before moving to Potters Bar.
Wilberforce’s house – as well as his anti-slavery work William Wilberforce was one of the founders of what is now the RSPCA.
Raffles’ house – Sir Stamford Raffles, of Singapore fame, was also the first president of the Zoological Society.
Darlands Lake Nature Reserve is the remains of a man-made lake that was part of a Capability Brown garden and is now a nature reserve. It used to be an SSSI, because of the rare snake’s head fritillaries found there but got downgraded when it was shown that they were introduced rather than native. It is a lovely haven and has a heron in residence.
Hampstead probably deserves its own separate map but but I’ve included it here as it is where the original NIMR was housed, in the Mount Vernon hospital. The house where Henry Dale (first NIMR Director) lived there has a blue plaque.
Sterling work, I think you’ll agree. Please send maps of your own institutions to me, and I’ll post them in future blog entries. If you have your own NN blog, feel free to post there, but tag it sciencemap, so we can pull all these together.