Dr Simon Chaplin is Director of Culture and Society at the Wellcome Trust in London.
Prior to that he was Head of the Wellcome Library. He was formerly Director of Museums and Special Collections at The Royal College of Surgeons of England, where he managed the Hunterian Museum - an accredited public museum containing the designated collection of the surgeon John Hunter (1728-1793) - and the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology.
His first degree is in Natural Sciences, and his PhD, completed at King's College London, dealt with the relationship between dissection, collecting and display in late 18th-century London.
Simon has a deep interest in memory institutions and the histories of health, science, medicine and art.