Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
Level of description
Extent and medium
11,000+ audio and video recordings (1973 to the present day), originally on analogue cassette and other formats; digitised to 96 kHz WAV preservation masters with MP3 access copies. Approximately 8,146 recordings are currently described in this catalogue.
Context area
Archival history
Recorded and assembled over some fifty years by Michael Wright, whose sustained programme of recording preserved a body of scientific and philosophical thought that would otherwise have gone undocumented. The collection is the founding holding of the Archive Trust for Research in Mathematical Sciences & Philosophy (registered charity no. 1141862), which continues to record new material, recover uncirculated recordings, and digitise and publish the collection for free public access.
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
The Michael Wright Collection is the centrepiece of the Archive Trust's holdings. Assembled by Michael Wright over five decades, it comprises more than 11,000 audio and video recordings of academic lectures, seminars, conferences and informal discussions in mathematics, theoretical physics, cosmology and the philosophy of science, recorded from 1973 to the present day and continually added to. It captures many of the most significant scientific conversations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with speakers including Sir Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking, Sir Michael Atiyah, Edward Witten, Alain Connes, Christopher Isham and F. W. Lawvere, among hundreds of others. Where available, recordings are accompanied by contextual documentation such as correspondence, notes and handouts.
This catalogue provides an item-level description of the recordings. The recordings themselves are made available on the Archive Trust website, https://archivetrust.org , where digitised talks stream with synchronised transcripts.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
Arranged as a single series of item-level recordings, each identified by an MW reference number. Two-sided cassette recordings are described per side (-cc-a / -cc-b).
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
These recordings are made available for private study, teaching and non-commercial research, as part of the Archive Trust's charitable work in preservation and public benefit. Where a recording has been digitised, it can be played online via the "listen" link on its record. Recordings not yet available online can be requested by emailing contact@archmathsci.org , and we will do our best to supply a copy. If you wish to reuse material beyond private study, please contact us. We operate a notice-and-takedown policy: if you have a concern about a recording, or wish to request its removal, please contact us and we will respond promptly.
Conditions governing reproduction
Please contact the Archive Trust to discuss any reproduction, publication or broadcast of these recordings.