National Museums of Scotland

 History of Science, Natural History, Technology  No Responses »
Apr 192016
 

Chambers Street, Edinburgh EH1 1JF

National Museum of Scotland

The oldest part of the building that houses the National Museum of Scotland was called the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art when it was opened by Prince Albert in 1866. Construction had began in 1861 and work was to continue on the first phase of the building until 1888. It was renamed the Royal Scottish Museum in 1904 and became the National Museum of Scotland in 2004. Initially much of the collection came from the University of Edinburgh’s natural history collection, which had become too big for the University’s own museum in what is now the Talbot Rice Gallery.

Free entry, although some temporary exhibitions may charge.

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Surgeon’s Hall Museums

 History of Medicine, History of Science  No Responses »
Apr 192016
 

Nicolson St, Edinburgh EH8 9BZ

Surgeons' Hall Museums

The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh was founded in 1505. Its Museum began to amass anatomical specimens in 1699 and it grew rapidly in the 19th century through the donations of the collections of the famous Edinburgh anatomists Sir Charles Bell and John Barclay. Perhaps the museum’s most famous curator was Robert Knox, who worked here from 1825 until 1831, when  enemies within the College used his association with the murders committed by Burke and Hare to force his resignation. Today the museum is open to the public for a small fee.

Robert Knox (1791–1862).

Robert Knox (1791–1862).

Surgeons' Hall, 1890.

Surgeons’ Hall, 1890.

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Old College, University of Edinburgh

		

					 History of Medicine, History of Science
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Apr 192016

	

	 	

		


South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL


Old College, University of Edinburgh


The University of Edinburgh was first established on this site in 1582. Unusually, it was founded by the town council of Edinburgh and most of its professorial chairs remained in the gift of the  council until the reforms brought in by the Universities (Scotland) Act in 1858. Work on the building we see now was started in 1789 and it was more or less completed by 1827. The original design was by Robert Adam. Adam died in 1792 and the building was completed by William Henry Playfair. The dome was only added in 1887.


With the exception of the Talbot Rice Gallery, the interiors of the University buildings are not open to the public.




		

	


	

	



	

		
General Register House

		

					 History of Science, Technology
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Apr 192016

	

	 	

		


General Register House, 2 Princes Street, Edinburgh EH1 3YY


General Register House


James Tytler, who made the first successful balloon ascent in Britain in Edinburgh, exhibited and tested his ‘Grand Edinburgh Fire Balloon’  in the uncompleted dome of Robert Adam’s Register House in 1784 before making a successful public ascent at Comely Garden on 6 August.  Tytler was a multi-talented individual who had made a living at various times as a surgeon, writer, publisher, composer and poet before his foray into aeronautics. He had to flee to Ireland in 1792 after being arrested for producing subversive pamphlets, before emigrating to America a few years later.


The General Register House houses the National Records of Scotland and is open to the public.


James Tytler (1745–1804).
James Tytler (1745–1804).


James Tytler's 'Edinburgh Fire Balloon', 1784.
James Tytler’s ‘Edinburgh Fire Balloon’, 1784.


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Old Edinburgh cistern, Castlehill

		

					 History of Science, Mathematics, Technology
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Apr 192016

	

	 	

		


555  Castlehill, Edinburgh EH1 2ND


Old Edinburgh cistern


This ornate drinking fountain marks the site on Castle Hill where the mathematician George Sinclair constructed a cistern to supply water to the city of Edinburgh in around 1675. The original reservoir was demolished to make way for a new, larger one in 1849. Sinclair was professor of Mathematics at the University of Glasgow from 1654 to 1666.  In 1655 he made some very early descents in a diving bell off the Isle of Mull. He was not only a leading mathematician and engineer, but also an expert on demonology and author of Satan’s Invisible Works Discovered (c.1685).


Nineteenth-century drinking fountain on the site of the old Edinburgh cistern.
Nineteenth-century drinking fountain on the site of the old Edinburgh cistern.


 


High Street cistern, 1675
The one surviving wellhead on the High Street, originally connected to Sinclair’s Castlehill cistern. It was designed by Sir William Bruce to provide water to the people of the Old Town and built in around 1675.


		

	


	

	



	

		
House of Fleeming Jenkin

		

					 Biology, History of Science, Natural History
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Apr 192016

	

	 	

		


3 Great Stuart Street, Edinburgh EH3 6AP


Fleeming Jenkin's house


Fleeming Jenkin was appointed by Queen Victoria as the first Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. He is now best known for raising an important objection to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1867 Jenkin argued that any favourable mutation that arose in one individual of a species would  be rapidly swamped by interbreeding with a large population of normal individuals. This argument depended on the belief that characteristics of parents  were simply ‘blended’ in the offspring. The rise of modern genetics, which invalidated the ‘blending’ model of inheritance, eventually resolved this problem, but it presented a serious problem for Darwin’s theory at the time.


No public access.


Fleeming Jenkin (1833–85).
Fleeming Jenkin (1833–85).


 


 


		

	


	

	



	

		
Sir David Brewster’s Edinburgh residence

		

					 History of Science
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Apr 192016

	

	 	

		


10 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh EH3 7AL


David Brewster's house


This house was Sir David Brewster’s Edinburgh residence until his death in 1868. Brewster is today best known as the inventor of the kaleidoscope. His invention could have made him a very wealthy man, but he neglected to patent it soon enough, and so earned very little  from his invention. He was also a pioneer photographer and friend of William Henry Fox Talbot. Brewster made important contributions to the science of optics, but his reputation suffered because he continued to champion the particle theory of light after the wave theory had been accepted by most other physicists.


No public access.


David Brewster (1781–1868).
David Brewster (1781–1868).


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Peter Higgs plaque

		

					 History of Physics, History of Science
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Apr 192016

	

	 	

		


5 Roxburgh Street, Edinburgh EH8 9TA


Peter Higgs' former house


Peter Higgs is famous for predicting the existence of a new fundamental subatomic particle, now named in his honour the ‘Higgs boson’, while a Lecturer at the Tait Institute of Mathematical Physics in Edinburgh. Its existence solves the problem of why electrons and quarks have mass. He predicted its existence in 1964 in a paper written in a flat at 5 Roxburgh Street. However, was not until 2012 that it was confirmed that it existed by the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest scientific instrument, near Geneva. This discovery earned Higgs the Nobel Prize for Physics.


No public access.


Peter Higgs (1929– ).
Peter Higgs (1929– ).


 


Peter Higgs plaque
Peter Higgs plaque.


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Birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell

		

					 History of Physics, History of Science
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Apr 172016

	

	 	

		


14 India Street, Edinburgh EH3 6EZ


Birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell


Now home to a museum of his life and work, this was the childhood home of James Clerk Maxwell, famous for his revolutionary work on electromagnetism and the kinetic theory of gases. Maxwell was born here in 1831. His A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (1865) demonstrated that both electric and magnetic fields and light travel through space as waves at the speed of light. This work laid the foundations for the invention of the radio. Clerk Maxwell’s was perhaps the most important contribution to theoretical physics between Newton and Einstein.


The house is now owned by the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation and my be visited by appointment.


 


Statue to James Clerk Maxwell by Alexander Stoddart, George Street, Edinburgh, unveiled 2008.
Statue to James Clerk Maxwell by Alexander Stoddart, George Street, Edinburgh, unveiled 2008.


James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79).
James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79).


Plaque at the birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell.
Plaque at the birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell.


 


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Challenger Expedition offices

		

					 History of Science, Natural History, Oceanography
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Apr 172016

	

	 	

		


32 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JX


Challenger Expedition offices


Between the December 1872 and May 1876 the Challenger Expedition circumnavigated the globe and laid the foundations for modern oceanography. It had been organised by the Royal Society of London at the suggestion of Charles Wyville Thomson, Edinburgh University’s professor of natural history, and its offices were here at 32 Queen Street. The expedition took soundings, samples of sea water and collected specimens of marine life while traversing 68,890 nautical miles across the oceans of the world. The  report of the expedition, which was published between 1885 and 1895, came to 50 fat volumes.


No public access.


The HMS Challenger.
The HMS Challenger.


Charles Wyville Thompson (1830–82).
Charles Wyville Thompson (1830–82).


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