The Origins of Agar

Ella Watkins-Dulaney for Asimov Press.This essay will appear in our forthcoming book, “Making the Modern Laboratory,” to be published later this year.In 1942, at the height of British industrial war mobilization, an unlikely cohort scavenged the nation’s coastline for a precious substance. Among them were researchers, lighthouse keepers, members of the Royal Air Force and the Junior Red Cross, plant collectors from the County Herb Committee, Scouts and Sea Scouts, schoolteachers and students. Th...