Title
Letter from Geoffrey Parr, February 1946
Reference
BURD/A/01/GP8
Production date
01-02-1946 - 19-02-1946
Creator
- Parr, GeoffreyBiographyBiography
(1899-1961), electrical engineer
Geoffrey Parr was born in Muswell Hill, London, on 29 December 1899. He was educated at Finsbury Technical College, receiving his college certificate in electrical engineering in 1917. Between 1917 and 1919, he worked as a technical assistant for the Admiralty in Portsmouth. He returned to London in 1919 to take up the post of lecturer and demonstrator at the City and Guilds Technical College.
In 1926, Parr joined the Edison Swan Electric Company as a research engineer in the Valve Department. He was promoted to Head of Technical Services in the Radio Division in 1932. In the 1940s, he turned to technical journalism and publishing, serving as Editor of the Electrical Engineering journal between 1941 and 1949, and later Technical Editor of the science and technology publishing house Chapman and Hall, Ltd, a position he held until his death. He also became a Fellow of the Television Society in 1934, the honorary editor of its journal from 1944, and was elected its honorary secretary in 1945.
During the interwar period, Parr developed a close friendship with neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (1910-1977) and corresponded closely with him regarding the technical aspects of his research in electroencephalography (the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol.
Parr died on 30 May 1961.
Scope and Content
Describes attempts to arrange meetings and finances for the disorganised members of the EEG Society.
Extent
1 letter
Language
English
Level of description
ITEM
Repository name
Science Museum, London
Associated people and organisations
- Aldridge, Vivian JoanBiographyBiography
(1915-1980), radiographer
Vivian Joan Aldridge (née Vivian Joan Dovey, later Vivian Joan Walter) was born in Edmonton, Middlesex on 12 August 1915. She trained as a radiographer and received a diploma of M.S.R. (Membership of the Society of Radiographers) before taking up a position as scientific officer at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders.
After the Second World War, Dovey played a key role in the Burden’s expanding electroencephalographic (EEG, relating to the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) research programme. She collaborated closely with colleagues on the use of the EEG to identify sub-cortical tumours, as well as in investigations of the effect of stroboscopic light on the electrical activity in the human brain. In 1946, Dovey was part of the Burden team which discovered that seizures similar to those encountered in cases of epilepsy could be produced in ‘normal’ subjects when flickering lights were applied at particular frequencies. She also co-authored several key papers which helped to establish the Burden’s credentials in these areas, including in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry (1944) and Nature (1946).
Dovey married neurophysiologist and Burden colleague William Grey Walter (1910-1977) in 1947, with whom she had one son, Timothy Walter (1949-1976). The couple separated in 1960, and later divorced in 1973. Following her separation from Walter, Vivian lived with greengrocer Keith Aldridge, whose surname she eventually took. She died in 1980.
Conditions governing access
Open Access
Conditions governing Reproduction
Copies may be supplied in accordance with current copyright legislation and Science Museum Group terms and conditions
Finding aids
Box 1 - BURD A1 - A6/59