Science Archive

Cabinets of Curiosities

Posted on May 23, 2010 | No Comments
Two of the most famously described 17th century cabinets were those of Ole Worm, known as Olaus Wormius (1588–1654) (illustration, above right), and Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680). These seventeenth-century cabinets were filled with preserved animals, horns, tusks, skeletons, minerals, as well as other types of equally fascinating man-made...
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Dissection rooms

Posted on March 26, 2010 | 2 Comments
During the 18th century, the population of London was expanding and new hospitals were added to St Bartholomew’s and St Thomas’s: Guy’s (1726), St George’s (1733), the London (1740) and the Middlesex (1745). In the provinces, most cities and large towns opened hospitals or infirmaries:...
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The Hunterian Museum

Posted on March 26, 2010 | No Comments
In 1799 the government purchased the collection of the surgeon and anatomist John Hunter (1728-1793). It was placed in the care of the Company (later the Royal College) of Surgeons. Hunter’s collection of around 15,000 specimens and preparations formed the nucleus of one of the...
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Dr Kahn’s Museum: obscene anatomy in Victorian London

Posted on March 26, 2010 | No Comments
Dr Joseph Kahn’s Anatomical and Pathological Museum was the 19th century’s best-known and most visited public museum of anatomy. Established in England in 1851, at the height of popular interest in anatomy, Kahn’s museum was intended to show the ‘wondrous’ structure of the body and...
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Room 3327

Posted on March 22, 2010 | No Comments
Tesla died of heart failure alone in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, on 7 January 1943. Despite having sold his AC electricity patents, Tesla died with significant debts. Later that year the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla’s patent number 645576 in a ruling...
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Nikola Tesla

Posted on March 13, 2010 | No Comments
Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was an inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. He was one of the most important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity, and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of...
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Phlogiston

Posted on February 21, 2010 | No Comments
The phlogiston theory (from the Ancient Greek φλογιστόν phlŏgistón “burning up”, from φλόξ phlóx “fire”), first stated in 1667 by Johann Joachim Becher, is a defunct scientific theory that posited the existence of a fire-like element called “phlogoism” that was contained within combustible bodies, and released during combustion. The theory was an...
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Lazarus Taxa

Posted on May 9, 2009 | No Comments
In paleontology, a Lazarus taxon (plural taxa) is a taxon that disappears from one or more periods of the fossil record, only to appear again later. The term refers to an account in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus miraculously raised Lazarus from the...
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Extinction

Posted on May 9, 2009 | No Comments
168 In biology and ecology, extinction is the death of every member of a species or group of taxa. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species (although the capacity to breed and recover may...
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Quotes of Charles Darwin

Posted on February 3, 2009 | No Comments
Various quotations of Charles Darwing the naturalist
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