Historical archives

Historical Archives of Hellenic Pasteur Institute (HPI)

A 2-year project entitled “rescue and reclaim the HPI Historical Archives” was funded by the Public Benefit Foundation J.S. Latsis in 2009. The realization of this project supervised by Dr Sylva Haralambous was appointed to Mr Andreas Vourtsis,  a historian of Science, who  worked together with experts from the Historical Archives of the University of Athens for the evaluation of the collected documents.

Outline of the project: The General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD), Athens 2002, was followed for the evaluation of the HPI historical documents. A great number of items (photos, old instruments, documents, etc) were scanned or photographed and the images were filed. Research into the archival material of journals of the time (both scientific and popular), as well as in the electronic archives of Eleftherios Venizelos (Prime Minister of Greece in the 1920’s), the Mission of French Army, Sir Basil Zacharoff (Greek benefactor), and of other persons related to the founding of the HPI and its operation in the years that followed, revealed very important hitherto unknown information, subsequently verified through search in the Archives of the IP Paris. By the end of 2011, when the compiling of the records will have been completed, a new insight will have been gained on the history of HPI as well as that of public health and research in Greece from the early 1900’s until 1970.