History and Sociology of Science Special Collections

[note: revisions to this webpage are in progress.]

Holdings in the History of Science in the Kislak Center cover many topics and stretch across all time periods. They include printed volumes and archival collections in biomedicine, chemistry, veterinary medicine, engineering, and math, physics, and astronomy. Manuscript collections include works of medieval and Renaissance science; the Edgar Fahs Smith Collection devoted to the history of chemistry, comprising early and modern works on chemistry, alchemy, early medicine and pharmacology, dyeing, metallurgy, mineralogy, and pyrotechnics; biographies of chemists; works on the chemical industry; and the history of chemical education. Other collections relate to science, technology, industry; and the history of computing. The Walter Lear collections document social activism and modern American medicine.