Commemorating Oliver Rackham: Part Two

Prof Oliver Rackham & colleagues.
Note the Prof's famous
red socks & sandals combo!
Image courtesy of J. Moody

Last month, we reported on plans under way for events to commemorate Prof Oliver Rackham, including a Commemorative Symposium to be held in Cambridge over the weekend of 13-14 August 2016. If you would like to attend, you will need to indicate interest here before the end of September.

There is more info here on the University of Cambridge's Dept of Plant Sciences website. The team behind the Rackham commemoration events have also released this pdf which gives links to conferences and other international events dedicated to Prof Rackham's memory.  

A Facebook page for Oliver has been set up and the pdf also gives details of another upcoming event: the inaugural National Coppicing Day, which will take place on what would have been Oliver’s 76th birthday, 17 October 2015. Events are planned at various woods around Britain and there is another Facebook page for more information about them.

Prof Oliver Rackham 
Image courtesy of J. Moody

The pdf also explains what is happening to Prof Rackham's herbarium and archive. Good to see that his specimens have been relocated to the Cambridge University Herbarium, where they now sit alongside specimens collected by Darwin and Henslow. 

Photography of the herbarium specimens is apparently well under way, with over 1000 specimens already digitised. If you are interested in viewing the Herbarium, please email Christine Bartram to arrange a visit. 

The pdf also explains that "Oliver's archive - notebooks, papers, slides, photos, etc - is moving to Corpus Christi College as The Rackham Archive, where it will be under the care of Dr Lucy Hughes, the college archivist, and eventually accessible to scholars. 

"If you have a story or memory about Oliver that you would like to contribute to the Rackham Archive for posterity, please write it up and send it to Dr Lucy Hughes."