WHIPPLE MUSEUM

Discover a vast array of scientific instruments dating from the Middle Ages to the present day. From microscopes and telescopes to pocket calculators and slide rules, find out more about the tools that scientists have used to understand the world around us.

The Museum forms part of the?Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and plays an important part in the Department’s teaching and research. The Department includes a working?library?with a large collection of early scientific books.

The museum’s holdings are particularly strong in material dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries, especially objects produced by English instrument makers, although the collection contains objects dating from the medieval period to the present day. Instruments of astronomy, navigation, surveying, drawing and calculating are well represented, as are sundials, mathematical instruments and early electrical apparatus.

Collection Highlights:

• Papier-maché anatomical model of a human, c. 1890?– When Dr. Louis Auzoux created these dissectible anatomical models with a revolutionary technique, he expanded the possibilities for learning about the human body.

• The Grand Orrery, c. 1750 –?This ornate model of the solar system, as it was then known, used a complex clockwork mechanism to demonstrate the relative orbits of the planets around the sun.

• Planispheric Astrolabe, 14th century –?The earliest known English astrolabe in existence. Astrolabes have been used by astronomers and navigators for almost two thousand years to measure the position of celestial bodies.

• Charles Darwin’s microscope, c.1846 –?Darwin purchased this impressive microscope to process samples he collected on the HMS Beagle. He used the microscope to focus on his “beloved cirripedia” – barnacles – the study of which informed his theories on species variation.

• Ingeborg Brun’s Mars Globe, c. 1930 –?Brun created her globes using Percival Lowell’s popular maps of Mars. Lowell claimed he could see evidence of life on Mars, in the form of canals. Brun was inspired by the fair and cooperative communities Lowell’s observations suggested.

The Whipple Museum was founded in 1944 when Robert Stewart Whipple presented his collection of scientific instruments to the University of Cambridge.

Since Robert Whipple’s initial gift of the collection, the Museum has come to house many instruments formerly used in the Colleges and Departments of the University of Cambridge. Find out more about these on the?Special Collections page.

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