Abercrombie, Professor Michael L , and M L J ("Jane") (nee Johnson)

The following is an interim description which may change when detailed cataloguing takes place in future:

26 transfer boxes of Michael Abercrombie's papers include lectures, notes, grant applications, research notebooks and other material, reprints, photos, correspondence with institutions and colleagues, and files relating to his period at the Strangeways Laboratory

47 transfer boxes of Jane Abercrombie's papers include lectures, writings (notes, drafts, manuscripts, etc), including The Anatomy of Judgement, notes, lists of contacts, correspondence with individuals and institutions (including substantial amounts relating to the Architectural Educational Research Unit and the Group Analytic Society), tests, recordings, reprints, material relating to her work on education, including her involvement in the Enquiry into Dental Education

Michael L Abercrombie (1912-1979), was the son of the poet Lascelles Abercrombie and nephew of the pioneer town planner Patrick Abercrombe. He attended Liverpool College, from 1922 Leeds Grammar School, and in 1931 proceeded as top Hastings scholar to Queen's College, Oxford, where he read zoology under the tuition of Gavin de Beer. De Beer arranged for him to work for a period at the Strangeways Research Laboratory in Cambridge under C. H. Waddington on the early development of the domestic chicken, work leading to a first-class honours degree in 1934. He could have extended his studies for a PhD but, at the time, it was not fashionable in Oxford to do so. He engaged in research on the degeneration of peripheral nerves under the direction of J. Z. Young before becoming a lecturer in zoology at Birmingham University, 1938, where he met and married Jane Johnson. Together they edited the Penguin New Biology series from 1945 to 1960. In 1946 Abercrombie relocated to the Department of Anatomy at University College London, where he did important work on cellular movement and interaction, leading to his becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1958. In 1970 he accepted the Directorship of the Strangeways Laboratory Cambridge as successor to Dame Honor Fell, a post he held until 1977.

Minnie Louie Johnson "Jane" Abercrombie (1909-1984) initially studied zoology and taught it at Birmingham University, where she met her husband. Along with him she edited the Penguin New Biology series from 1945 to 1960, and also the Penguin Dictionary of Biology (first published 1951)Following their move to University College London, she became involved in the selection and training of medical students and this led her into developing influential innovations in small-group teaching in medical and architectural education, and to become interested in perception and reasoning, leading to the publication of her much reprinted The Anatomy of Judgement (1960). She was a founder member of the Group Analytic Society, and its president 1980-83.