Novelist Funds Scientist Position

In an unlikely alliance between pulp fiction and organic chemistry, Patricia Cornwell, author of the best-selling “Scarpetta” thrillers, will establish a conservation scientist position at Harvard to further close examinations of art materials. The $1 million gift is not the novelist’s first contribution to the University. She previously donated art related to her controversial belief that a well-known Impressionist painter, Walter Sickert, was the 19th-century killer Jack the Ripper. In 2002, Cornwell departed from her usual fiction writing to advance this argument in her book “Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper-Case Closed.” She used forensic research techniques to argue that Sickert, an English painter, was, in fact, the serial killer. For her research on Jack the Ripper, Cornwell used Harvard’s Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, where the new position will be established. She traveled with a team of scientists, including Harvard conservator Anne Driesse, in the fall of 2005 to study papers and inks in England. “We looked at 400 Jack the Ripper letters in the National Archive in London. Cornwell was trying to confirm that most of these letters were by Walter Sickert,” Driesse said. The method they used included looking at the similarities in the inks and papers used by Sickert and people who claimed to be Jack the Ripper. Cornwell recently donated more than 50 works of art by Sickert to the Harvard Art Museum. “She would say that these are Jack the Ripper paintings,” said Henry Lie, director of conservation at the Harvard Art Museum. The search for a scientist to fill the position, known as the Patricia Cornwell Conservation Scientist, will begin as soon as the endowment is complete, Lie said. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will match Cornwell’s gift. That person will join a team of several experts in the analytical lab of the Straus Center. The new researcher will continue work currently being done at the center, which focuses on the close examination of art materials to determine artistic techniques and conservation methods. This conservation work is key to preserving the museum’s collections, said Daron J. Manoogian, a museum spokesman. The Cornwell scientist will likely continue his own research within the museum’s collections as well, Lie said. After receiving funds from the Mellon foundation, the center approached Cornwell, who has given to both the center and the museum in the past. “Ms. Cornwell has been a very generous benefactor,” Manoogian said. In Cornwell’s novels, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a forensic examiner, uses forensic technology to examine crime scenes and solve crimes. Cornwell has written 16 Scarpetta novels, the last of which, “Scarpetta,” will be released Dec. 2.Cornwell’s past gifts, such as a VSC 5000 video spectral comparator that allows conservation scientists to look at paper specimens under different lights, relate to her interest in forensics. The novelist has also given to other universities, including $1 million to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City to open a “Crime Scene Academy,” which will train students and law enforcement officials in forensics. Established in 1928, the Straus Center is the oldest facility of its kind in the United States, Manoogian said. Past projects at the center have included the study of the sculptural characteristics of Mondrian paintings with ex-radiology, Lie said.The establishment of an endowed position will ensure the continuation of such projects, Lie said. The Cornwell scientist, Lie said, “will be protected from the ups and downs that many departments suffer from.”