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Collections Blog

Explore the Institute’s museum and library collections and the stories they tell about the history of science.

illustration of the Colorado River 1899
Natural Passions

How protected lands inspire scientific pursuits.

Letter from the Daniel Sieff Research Institute to Georg Bredig
From Peril to Preservation in the Bredig Archives

Chaim Weizmann, Fritz Haber, and a home for Jewish scientists.

ajinomoto
Who Knew History Could Be So Delicious?

Discovering the history of umami in the Science History Institute’s archives.

Will’s Habitat Map from A Manual of Vegetable Materia Medica written by George Sampson Valentine Wills, 1886.
Around the World in (Almost!) 80 Collections
Collections

Using digitized items and their data to take a global journey.

Books on display in the library
Covering Science
Collections

On the appeal of decorative scientific book cloth bindings.

title page from Utriusque cosmi maioris
A Tale of Two Editions
Collections

Material evidence for a Frankfurt second edition of ‘Utriusque cosmi maioris.’

Kipp's apparatus
‘High’ School Science
Collections

Most object labels tell us what something is. Why one in our collections tells us what something is not.

Letter from Ernst Berl to Georg Bredig
Sustaining a Scientific Mission in Exile
Collections

The correspondence of Ernst Berl and the Bredig family.

Leopold Ruzicka lecturing at ETH Zurich 1911
The Power of a Teacher
Collections

How chemistry offered an international path to survival.

Illustration of lead comparison
The Legacy of Industrial Lead
Collections

Racialized and economically oppressed children are disproportionately poisoned by lead’s remnants in the built environment.

Postcard from Carl Magnus von Hell to Georg Bredig
‘Kurrent’ Events
Collections

Deciphering Old German Script in the Bredig Archives.

Elephants Have Wings cartoon
The Price of Gold in a ‘Golden Age’
Collections

Two humorous poems illuminate the politics of science funding in the 1950s.

Shiny underside of a shaped CD 1990s
There Are More Fish in the C
Collections

The CD drive, that is. Meet some of our newest born-digital collections.

Durkee margarine ad 1955
Stomping the Margarine
Collections

Life when we had to color our food.

Mine Vessel glass sculpture
The Color of Extraction
Collections

Encountering rare earths in art, environments, and the phone in my pocket.

Bee Brand Flea Killer can
The Pets We Love and the Pests that Love Them
Collections

A brief history of flea medicine.

Illustration of the hydrologic cycle
Cycles, Circulations, and Systems
Collections

We live in a relational world. Technoscientific images help us see that way.

engraving of a flying fish from Animal Locomotion 1874
A New Blog Takes Flight
Collections

Meet Gabriela and Jesse, coeditors of the Institute’s new collections blog.

American Aniline Products Dye Sample Box
Science History Institute Launches New Blog
Press Release

Staff and scholars will share stories about our library, archival, and museum collections.