The Science Museum To Get New Gallery... About London

M@
By M@ Last edited 57 months ago
The Science Museum To Get New Gallery... About London
Hooke's illustration of a flea (1665), as glimpsed down the microscope.

A new gallery at the Science Museum will look at the capital's contribution to science.

So many great scientists were also Londoners. Darwin, Newton, Faraday... and those are just the ones who have appeared on banknotes. London is a scientific powerhouse, both historically and right now. So it's welcome news to hear of a new gallery dedicated to the city's experimental side.

Science City 1550-1800: The Linbury Gallery opens at the Science Museum in September 2019. It will 'explore how London’s scientists and artisans transformed our understanding of the world over 250 years'.

Highlights will include a copy of Newton's Principia Mathematica (which some would argue is the most important book ever published), Newton's telescope, and Robert Hooke's microscope and illustrations (which first revealed the hidden world of the small).

Detail of a terrestrial globe, by George Adams,1766.

The gallery draws on three existing collections: the Science Museum Group Collection; the King George III Collection (a wonderful gathering of scientific instruments, about which I waxed lyrical in a previous life); and the collection of the Royal Society.

Halting proceedings at 1800 feels like pulling up a little short, a reflection of the three source collections. We hope the gallery will at some point work up to a sequel for the 19th and 20th centuries. After all, the story of London science is incomplete without the achievements of Davy, Faraday, Darwin, Maxwell, Lyell, Kelvin, Rayleigh, Wilkins and Franklin, to name but a few.

Science City 1550-1800: The Linbury Gallery opens 12 September 2019, when we'll have a full review.

Last Updated 03 June 2019