The Wellcome Trust

Carole Reeves, The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, London, UK

Published online: April 2007

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0003554

The Wellcome Trust is one of the world's largest and most diverse independent biomedical charities, supporting a spectrum of activity from basic science to history of medicine. Total charitable expenditure in 2005 was £483 million and investment assets were £12.3 billion. Currently, about 90% of its funds support UK activities while most of the remainder underpins research and capacity building in developing and restructuring countries. There are over 3000 Wellcome Trust funded researchers in more than 40 countries.

Keywords: biomedical; charity; medicine; history of medicine; science

Figure 1. The Wellcome Building, 183 Euston Road, in London's Bloomsbury district (1980). Photograph, Wellcome Library, London.
Figure 2. The Wellcome Library, reading room on the ground floor. Photograph, Wellcome Library, London.
Figure 3. George H Hitchings and Gertrude B Elion at the time of their Nobel Prize (1988). Photograph, Archives and Manuscripts, Wellcome Library, London.
Figure 4. The genome sequencing room at the Sanger Institute (2000). Photograph, Wellcome Library, London.
Figure 5. The Gibbs Building, headquarters of the Wellcome Trust, at 215 Euston Road, 2005. Photograph, Wellcome Library, London.
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 Further Reading
    book Arnold K and Olsen D (eds) (2003) Medicine Man: The Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome. London: British Museum.
    book Church RA and Tansey EM (2006) Burroughs Wellcome & Co: Knowledge, Trust and Profit, and the Transformation of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, 1880–1940. Lancaster: Crucible Books.
    book Fletcher L and Porter R (1997) A Quest for the Code of Life: Genome Analysis at The Wellcome Trust Genome Campus. London: The Wellcome Trust.
    book Hall AR and Bembridge BA (1986) Physic and Philanthropy: A History of the Wellcome Trust, 1936–1986. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
    book James RR (1994) Henry Wellcome. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
    book Lilja R (1997) International Equity Markets: The Art of the Deal. London: Euromoney Books.
    ePath Wellcome Trust web site: www.wellcome.ac.uk.
    book Williams PO (1994) The Wellcome Trust Story, 1960-1991: Personal Recollections. London: Wellcome Trust.
    Williams PO (1988) A personal history of the Wellcome Trust in tropical medicine. Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 82: 1–2.

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Article Title: The Wellcome Trust
 
How to Cite close
Reeves, Carole(Apr 2007) The Wellcome Trust. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0003554]