| Description | These notebooks, which include Hutchison’s academic, professional, and personal work, arrived labelled with a system ranging from VB 2489 to 2620. The VB system of numbers and letters originates in Hutchison’s primary school science fiction. “VB” stands for “Victor Brown,” the fictional character that accompanies the narrator, David Greene, on journeys through time and space to discover elements of Hutchison’s invention. David Greene and Victor Brown often time travel to the future, and 2484 is thus the first fictional year of their travels.
The notebooks include subject books from Hutchison’s years at Albyn Primary (c. 1950-1954, see volumes 1 to 5) and Blairgowrie High in Perth (1954-1958, see volumes 2496 to 2539), interspersed with Hutchison’s fictional stories, ruminations on space and time, and independent learning in physics. Physics jottings fill some of the margins with complex equations and definitions of elements. The notebooks continue into his time as an undergraduate at St. Andrews (1958-1962, see volumes 2540) where he also undertook a PhD (1962-1967). His PhD work in magnetic resonance led to his recruitment by John Mallard to join the Aberdeen Medical Physics Team in 1967 alongside fellow postdoc ― and Hutchison’s future wife ― Meg Foster. Other members included Bill Edelstein and David Lurie. The late 1970s and early 1980s are the years in which Hutchison worked with the team to develop and perfect the spin-warp technique in MRI imaging. His notebooks from then until 2013 often contain work furthering aspects of MRI imaging as well as various other topics in physics including quantum entanglement and lunar landing simulation models.
Volumes of Note:
The early volumes (1-20) contain many science fiction stories written by Hutchison. These stories are often written in installments, with one chapter in one volume and another in a subsequent or later volume.
See Volume 27 for a lovely passage by Hutchison on the "cycles of life" as he contemplates the different periods of his life, particularly as a scientist and inventor.
Please note this is not a complete or consecutive collection. Volume 5 (2595) mentions the following notebooks which are not present in this collection:
VB 2484
VB 2486
VB 2488
VB 2491
VB 2492
VB 2493
VB 2497
There are also five unnumbered books which appear to be part of this collection.
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