A 1905 dissertation by Albert Einstein was among an estimated 400 000 uncatalogued dissertations found in the library of Leiden University in the Netherlands.
The collection, dating from 1580 to 1990, included theses by other Nobel laureates such Henri Bergson, Niels Bohr, Émile Durkheim, Otto Hahn, Kurt Lewin, J Robert Oppenheimer, Max Planck, Helmuth Plessner, Luigi Pirandello, Gustav Stresemann, Otto Warburg, Max Weber and even Carl Gustav Jung.
The dissertation of Marie Curie, which was among the piles of paper, won her the Nobel Prize in the year of its publication. It had been filed under ‘S” among the Paris dissertations of the year 1903.
In the 100 years since then no one thought of looking under Curie’s maiden name, Skodowska. The belated discovery came about because library staff held a targeted search for about 100 named authors among the uncatalogued dissertations.
This led to dozens of amazing finds and maps, the first steps on the research path of many eminent scientists and scholars. There are more dissertations in the library and in total they number around 600 000 in three collections.
The first 100 000 were from Dutch universities such as Leiden, Utrecht and Amsterdam between 1575 and 2010. Most have been catalogued.
The second collection consists of another 100 000 or so from Germany, France, the United States and other countries. They can be found among the books in the library.
The third collection comprises the 400 000 uncatalogued dissertations and these are stored in 700 bookcases equivalent to a 4km row of books. They are from about 170 cities including Algiers, Baltimore and Johannesburg.
Most are from 70 German universities and 35 in France. Most of the dissertations appeared to have found their way to Leiden as part of exchange with other universities.
They were probably not catalogued because at the time they were not considered to be of great importance. The collection can be used for various types of research.
Per city, per region or per period, a researcher can see how a specific field developed; how research in a certain specialty reached a deadlock or, conversely, made advances; what issues were considered of academic interest in a specific decade.
If a researcher wants to browse through German dissertations from between, say, 1930 and 1944, Leiden is the place to be. It is possible to research the development of medical science in France between 1900 and 1920.
The thousands of dissertations from the 16th and 17th centuries open up huge possibilities. Some of the dissertations from other universities no longer exist in their place of origin.
This may be because not all old dissertations were retained; because the universities no longer exist; because the library in question was destroyed, as happened in some German cities in World War II; or because geographic changes meant that preserving the ‘old” cultural legacy was not a priority. — University World News
Leiden University’s library website has a list of the cities plus the periods covered of the uncatalogued dissertations that are available. Jos Damen works in the African Studies Centre at Leiden University