Chemistry

Featured exhibit items for chemistry.

Exhibit Items

1	On the Art of Fire Biringuccio, Vannoccio (1540) When Galileo needed to purchase plates of brass to make his engineering compass or commissioned glass to make better lenses, metalsmith, assayers and craftsmen in Venice employed operations similar to those described in Birunguccio’s metallurgical manual.
3	Natural Magick, 1658 Porta, Giambattista della (1658) In Natural Magick, della Porta described an optical tube he designed to make far things appear as though they were near. The field of optics was often associated with magical tricks and illusions, and for that reason sometimes held suspect among non-mathematicians.
5	On the Snowflake, or the Six-Angled Crystal Kepler, Johann (1611) Kepler’s contributions reached far beyond the realm of astronomy, to meteorology, mathematics, geology, mineralogy and crystallography. Kepler published this 24-page pamphlet, a study of the snowflake, as a New Year’s greeting for a friend.
5	Phosphorescent Rock, or, On the Light of the Bolognese Stone Liceti, Fortunio (1640) Galileo studied the “Stone of Bologna” or “solar sponge,” produced by alchemists from calcining spar (barium sulfide), which glows in the dark. Galileo inferred from its cool luminescence that light is not the same as heat, but a distinct entity, contra Aristotle.
5	Collected Works Paracelsus, (1603) Nieremberg saw an unpublished manuscript of Hernandez. Many of his descriptions of plants and animals relied upon Hernandez and other sources from Mexico and Peru. In classification, Nieremberg retained Hernandez’ use of native Nahuatl names.
6	Essays on Natural Experiences, 1666 Accademia del Cimento, (1666) The Academy of the Lynx (Accademia dei Lincei) dissolved after the death of its founder, Prince Federigo Cesi. In its place, Grand Duke Ferdinand II established the Academy of Experiment in Florence, which carried further the research program of Galileo.
7	Treatise on Fossil Mineral Wood Stelluti, Francesco (1637) The Academy of the Lynx emblem appears prominently on this title page. Although Stelluti once believed that fossils resembling wood originated from buried tree trunks, Cesi persuaded him otherwise.
12	New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air Boyle, Robert (1660) Boyle, who heard of von Guericke’s experiments via Schott, retained Robert Hooke to construct a similar air pump for him. Boyle’s experiments supported his “corpuscular” view of matter, that air is comprised of particles in motion.
13	Opticks Newton, Isaac (1704) Newton’s contemporaries may have first heard of him through articles in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. There he reported his experiments with prisms on the nature of light and color in the atmosphere.
14	Meteorological Essays Dalton, John (1793) Dalton defined the law of partial pressures in the course of his meteorological research. Three years later, his New System of Chemical Philosophy (Manchester, 1808) presented his atomic theory and provided a way to calculate the relative weights of elements and compounds.