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Seeley, Nigel, 1942-2004 (Forensic scientist and Head of Conservation at the National Trust)

 Person

Dates

  • Existence: 25 April 1942 - 21 June 2004

Biography

Nigel Seeley was born in 1942 in Worcester Park, in London, and grew up in New Malden. He was educated at King's College School, Wimbledon, then briefly at Queen Mary College, and finally at Birkbeck College, where he took a joint BSc in Physics and Chemistry in 1966, following it with a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry in 1970.

His first job was as a Senior Scientific Officer in the Home Office Forensic Department. He was instrumental in planning the Video Spectral Comparator (VSC), using the combination of ultra-violet and infra-red light to reveal obliterated or erased writing, in a collaboration between the Scotland Yard and the British Library.

In 1973 he left the Home Office to become Head of the Department of Archaeological Conservation and Materials Science at the Institute of Archaeology in London University (from 1986 part of University College London). This involved teaching a large number of postgraduate students as well as continuing research. He published many important papers, mostly on minerals in an archaeological context, including "Identification of Ancient Heat Treatment in Flint Artefacts by ESR Spectroscopy" and "Trapped Methyl Radicals in Chert", in Nature.

In 1976 he undertook a wide-ranging survey of the huge conservation needs facing the newly formed British Library, and took part in a research project on the consolidation of degraded paper (whose completion still awaits funding). He was on the Mary Rose Trust conservation panel, and was Consultant to the Unesco-Sri Lanka "Cultural Triangle" Project.

Nearly fifteen years later, in 1989 he became Surveyor of Conservation at the National Trust to coordinate the intitution's conservation efforts, and from 1999, when his post was renamed as Head of Conservation, he was responsible for all the work undertaken both locally and nationally by the several advisers on specific fields of conservation. Nigel Seeley left the National Trust in 2002, and next year became Visiting Professor, UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage, at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies.

He died on the 21st of June 2004, at the age of 62. He was married to Mary-Ann Seeley (née Pullé), with whom he had three sons.

Citation:
Barker, Nicolas, "Nigel Seeley" (2004) in The Independent, available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/nigel-seeley-730649.html (accessed 4 November 2020)

Found in 1 Collection or Record:

Palm-leaf manuscript collection of Nigel Seeley

 Fonds
Identifier: Coll-1970
Content Description

Palm-leaf manuscript collection of Nigel Seeley, consisting of 13 palm leaf manuscripts from Sri Lanka. There exists little information on their nature and their content, but they are probably Buddhist works in the Pali language (the language of the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism) dating from the mid 18th to late 19th century CE, and were collected by Nigel Seeley in the mid-late 20th century. Most of them have interesting and varied decorative wooden covers.

Dates: mid 18th-late 19th century