Artifacts and Instruments

Art, Portraits and Prints

Two collections of portraits are held in the Collections. In addition, portraits can of course be found within many of the printed books within the Collections, often as frontispieces within individual texts, collected works or biographical accounts. A variety of broadsheets, prints and individual works of art are also included as holdings.

Ephemera

Facsimiles

As a supplement to the Collections' substantial holdings of original primary source materials, some medieval works and many early printed books are available in facsimile editions.

Incunabula

Dozens of incunabula are held in the History of Science Collections. Included among these are some of the earliest printed editions of ancient and medieval authors such as Aquinas, Aristotle, Hildegard of Bingen, Isidore of Seville and Plato.

Manuscripts

Manuscript materials are found in a variety of forms within the HIstory of Science Collections, including manuscript books, individual leaves and tipped-in materials in printed books. Many early printed books include manuscript materials in their bindings and covers.

Maps

Most maps held within the Collections are found within printed books, but there examples of stand-alone broadsheets or prints.

Periodicals

In addition to substantial runs of the earliest scientific journals like the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the Collections contain proceedings and publications from a wide range of disciplinary, national and topical societies and organizations, from the 17th through the 20th centuries.

Printed Books

Printed books comprise the bulk of materials within the History of Science Collections. Since these items span the period from the beginning of printing in the 15th century to the present time, the Collections' holdings provide a rich foundation for study of the printed book over time.  These materials include incunabula, pamphlets, periodicals, reprints, and other formats. In addition to treatises on a wide range of scientific, medical and technological subjects,  holdings include works in the following areas and genre: diaries, collected correspondence and life stories; dictionaries, encyclopedias and lexicons; governmental and institutional reports, popular works and textbooks.

Darwin

Galileo