BPH has just been made aware of the passing of R Derek Wood. He was an important researcher in to the early history of photography and microscopy, in addition to his day job in medical imaging and research. He maintained an important website that housed his photography papers and writings published from c.1970-2008.
Wood's career was in research on electron microscopy in bio-medical research laboratories in London and he published extensively in this area. Away from work he undertook important and meticulous research into the early history of photography mainly over the period from 1820s to 1860s. His subjects ranged from Niépce, Daguerre, Beard and Talbot, legal disputes, Herschel, J B Reade, daguerreotypy, and others. This was all undertaken at a time when there was little similar research taking place, and when digitisation and online resources were decades away, necessitating long visits to local archives, the Public Record Office, learned societies, and the British Museum reading room. His publications date from 1970 although he had an interest prior to this. His papers remain a valuable source of information.
Wood was a member of the Royal Photographic Society for a time from 1966 and its Historical Group which was founded in 1972. He published a paper with Mrs E D Shorland on 'The Daguerreotype Portrait of Dorothy Draper' in The Photographic Journal, December 1970. His research appeared in a variety publications including Annals of Science, History of Photography, History Today and British Journal of Photography.
He was member of the European Society for the History of Photography from its inception in 1977 and was editor/compiler of the ESHPh’s bibliography Photohistorica 1993/94 and he published in PhotoResearcher. He presented a paper 'Fourteenth March 1839, Herschel's Key to Photography, the Way the Moment is Preserved for the Future' at the ESHP's 30th anniversary congress, Vienna, in 2007.
Rupert Derek Wood
Born: Romney Marsh, 1933- died: Bromley, Kent, 2024)
See archived website with papers at https://web.archive.org/web/20180314160924/http://www.midley.co.uk/
A long list of photography and medical papers can be seen at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UAIzhg4AAAAJ&hl=en
Details of his website archive can be seen here: https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/midley-history-of-early
Thanks for European Society for the History of Photography for the notice of R Derek Wood's death.
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