The Committee on ChronoHistory is charged with identifying, evaluating, recommending and implementing initiatives and mechanisms to ensure preservation of the history of our discipline, Chronobiology. The relative youth of our field and its growth and richness are counter-balanced by the aging and loss of founders and early contributors.

Preserving this history provides a basis for conceptual understanding of our field, and a sense of intellectual kinship. In addition, Chronobiology is viewed as a field of remarkably fast growth in integrative power since its formal foundation in the 1950s. Preserving materials that document this process are therefore valuable for a more general understanding of the generation of new ideas and research fields.

Aims of the ChronoHistory Committee include:
a) Developing a historical record, including scanned photos with identification of individuals, and commissioning essays
b) Developing and implementing an archive, including recommendations as to where and how it is established and maintained.
c) Identifying opportunities to interview and record salient figures in our history
d) Soliciting input from the SRBR membership regarding their ideas, wishes and ways the history may be used
e) Producing recommendations for further weaving ChronoHistory into our SRBR website
f) Identifying and securing sources of financial support to ensure accomplishment of these aims.

We encourage SRBR members to contribute to this effort through the submission of historical documents, photographs, texts and/or anecdotes, references and other material, including multimedia files. 

To ensure the quality of material within ChronoHistory, the content of contributions for public collections will be curated by the ChronoHistory committee of the SRBR. Please contact anna.wirz-justice@unibas.ch to submit materials for review.

Currently, ChronoHistory materials reside on (1) EUCLIS, a website for chronobiologists; (2) in individual scientists’ possession; (3) in document respositories at the Max Planck Institute Radolfzell, Germany and other facilities.  The EUCLIS ChronoHistory site will contain an inventory of these materials (currently under development).

To access ChronoHistory on EUCLIS, simply register with EUCLIS (http://www.bioinfo.mpg.de/euclis/).

Available on EUCLIS:

o   Modules for ChronoHistory

o    ChronoHistory aims to document the development of chronobiology through a collation of digitized materials associated with landmarks in the field. Currently, it forms a special collection in the Clock Museum module, where collections of slideshows, images, user-contributed notes and links to references are stored. This platform enables members of the chronobiology community to add their collections of photographs, videos, essays, references and anecdotes on important landmarks and people in chronobiology history. EUCLIS also gives users the option to restrict the visibility of their respective collections to a select group of colleagues, or to make the collection publicly available.

o    Clock Museum

o    Clock Images

o    Clock References offers a repository of bibliographic entries of chronobiologists, particularly Endnote files, and hard-to-access documents such as old manuscripts and PhD theses. So far all available papers of Aschoff and Wever, Pittendrigh, Hastings, Gwinner, Bünning and Engelmann have been collected and scanned.  Registered users may export selected bibliographic entries to an EndNoteXML file.

o    Clock Family Trees (interactive, and updated from Elizabeth Klerman’s original Family Trees of chronobiologists created for the 2004 SRBR meeting) allows chronobiologists to input information on their scientific genealogy, specifically their PhD advisors (chronoparents), their PhD advisees (chronochildren) and related information.

o   Modules for Chronobiologists

o    Clock Tools is a repository of software tools used in chronobiology for analyzing and simulating experimental data and producing graphs and pictures.

o    Clock Genes is openly available for EUCLIS Registered Users. They may access references and data such as the repository for confirmed and putative genes involved in establishing circadian rhythms in model organisms, Neurospora crassa, Synechococcus, Arabidopsis thaliana, Drosophila melanogaster, Mus musculus, and Homo sapiens.