Interview Dusoulier (2000) Rayward/CNRS

Interview de Nathalie Dusoulier par W. Boyd Rayward en 2000

Entrée au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)

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Science History Institute Sommaire de la version numérique de l'interview de Nathalie Dusoulier par Byord Rayward Intoduction Nathalie Dusoulier, repères biographiques Entrée au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST) Conversation sur diverses organisations Carrière à l'INIST Index

Chemical Heritage Foundation (Science History Institute) Oral program history

Ouvrage en cours de structuration de traduction et de mise en forme

Formation et début de carrière

01

Rayward

Please tell me about your family background and your education.

Dusoulier

Je suis née à Nice, en France de parents russes. I attended school in Nice.

Parcours éducatif

J'ai étudié la pharmacologie à Marseille et obtenu ma thèse de pharmacologie à Paris. Toujours à Paris, j'ai aussi étudié des disciplines complémentaires comme la biologie, la sérologie et la virologie à l'Institut Pasteur.

I decided to study business administration because of my husband. He has a Ph.D. in political science and a diploma in engineering. I received a diploma in business administration when it began in France—during the first year, but I was not very good because law did not interest me much. I was selected because there were not many scientists studying that. There was only one pharmacologist and one veterinarian.

Rayward

Were you the only woman in the program?

Dusoulier

No, there were other women.

Rayward

When was this?

Dusoulier

Vers 1960.

I studied supplementary diplômes (diplomas) in the pharmaceutical industry in order to work in industry; I didn’t want to work in a pharmacy.

Accident de voiture

At the end of 1960, I was in a car accident, and stayed in bed for about a year. After that, the doctor said that I could not work standing up for at least three or four years, so I had to find a new job. I had been working in pharmacy doing biological analysis. I didn’t even know what other jobs I was qualified for that wouldn’t require standing.

Just before my accident, I had found a job at the Laboratoire de la Grange, a pharmaceutical laboratory for the control of drugs.

02

Today, I don’t think the subject is that interesting, but, at the time, I was happy there. Then came the accident, which was just terrible.

My husband and I were in the car with our three children.

Rayward

Were they hurt as well?

Dusoulier

Not really. My husband was hurt; he was pinned in. I was thrown out of the car.

I decided to put an advertisement in Le Monde stating, “Doctor of pharmacy with these diplômes, knowing French, English, German, Russian, and Spanish, would like to find a job that doesn’t require standing.”

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Entrée au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)

Dusoulier

At first, I did not receive a thing. Then, after two weeks, I received a letter from CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) stating that they wanted me to analyze, abstract, and index Russian and German journals in pharmacology, biochemistry, and biophysics. I thought, “That’s stupid.” [laughter] “I could never do that kind of job.” But I decided to go and see what it was like anyway.

When I arrived at CNRS headquarters, I was horrified! The main office was a large room with people sitting around at desks, as if they were in a classroom. These were people with Ph.D.s and master’s degrees in various disciplines. They told me, “Oh, we want you, absolutely.” They asked me to do some corrections to a manuscript—correct the mistakes. I had never done that before, but I must have done well because they were very happy with that stupid work. [laughter] Then they said, “We want you to start next week.” I responded that I couldn’t because my husband was traveling for his work and I wanted to talk it over with him first. But they said, “If you don’t like it, just leave. No obligation. Your contract will be processed, but that takes two or three months—don’t worry.” So, I gave in and started working there. As it turns out, it was, in fact, quite interesting. The work was slightly difficult. I knew Russian, but they gave me Bulgarian, Polish, and many Czech-related languages. I told them, “I know Russian, not Ukrainian or any of these other ones.” They answered, “Yes, but if you cannot do it, who can?” So I tried and I ended up doing that for a little more than a year.

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Early indexing methods

Rayward

Were you preparing abstracts?

03

Dusoulier

I was preparing abstracts and creating indexes or the index matière (subject index). I told myself, “All right, I’ll do this for a while, recover, and then try to do something else.” At that time, Jean Wyart was director of CDST [Centre de Documentation Scientifique et Technique]. His deputy was a high-level, Spanish researcher.

CDST had several departments. The official director of Bulletin Signalétique, the largest department, was a Spanish man named Dr. Garrids. Garrids decided to leave for Spain to continue his research and a researcher from Institut Pasteur called Dr. [Pierre] Brygoo replaced Garrids. Brygoo’s job was to make CDST more fashionable. By more fashionable, I mean to incorporate automation—not the creation of online files or anything like that, but the automation of daily operations. Bulletin Signalétique, as you know, was a very large operation. We were doing half a million author indexes. Back then twenty or thirty people sat at very long tables— A, B, C—working in alphabetical order like that.

Rayward

On cards?

Dusoulier

Yes. Even on stamps. We had a piece of paper to do the abstracts. On the top were the authors on small stamps ; on the side, the subjects; and on the middle, the abstracts. Then people cut all these small pieces and classified them—first, by the authors, and then by the indexes. Then they put all the indexes on tables. On other tables, they put the authors. Clerical people classified the authors, and scientists classified the subject indexes. They tried to organize it. You know, it was not a machine. The computer would reject the work if one thing were wrong. The idea was to try to automate these operations. Dr. Brygoo only knew a little about automation. This was during 1962 and 1963. At that time, Compagnie de Saint-Gobain, a very large chemical company, had started the automation of their documentation. That was the first time that had ever happened in France. One of the people in charge of that was Monsieur Pigagniol, a friend of Brygoo. Brygoo, after a few months, decided that I was going to help him with the automation operation. So I was put in charge of one department of Bulletin Signalétique. As we didn’t have a lot of space, I sat with Brygoo in a very large office. In France, that arrangement was unusual because people liked their privacy; they liked to have their own offices. However, Brygoo wanted to work in the same space so that we would able to exchange information. That was how we started talking about automation. Then, Dr. Brygoo was offered a job in [the United States of] America by a large American laboratory—Eli Lilly [and Company]—so he decided to go to America. [laughter] He left us with all of our problems and without a chief of biomedical sciences. There were three departments at that time; one dealt with everything associated with biology: agriculture, medicine, biology, pharmacology, and biophysics. Another dealt with mathematics, physics, chemistry, et cetera. The chief was a lady named Madame Duval. The other department dealt with les sciences humaines (social sciences). There were three separate Bulletins Signalétiques. Brygoo was in charge of the biology department. After he decided to leave, the biology department stayed without a chief for maybe three or four months.

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