When travelling abroad, it’ s a pleasure to visit museums, galleries, and public monuments to gain insight into the people who inspire a nation’ s pride.
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European Monuments:
CELEBRATING SCIENTISTS
Carol Berndt Article and Photos
When travelling abroad, it’ s a pleasure to visit museums, galleries, and public monuments to gain insight into the people who inspire a nation’ s pride.
In European cities, many of the heroes being honoured are the giants of science who have profoundly altered the trajectory of human understanding.
At the Museum of Natural History in Oxford, England— a Victorian“ cathedral to science”— there are twenty-eight statues and busts around the main courtyard portraying great scientists, often shown with a symbol or object related to their work. These are science’ s most innovative thinkers of the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Industrial Revolution( Newton, Bacon, Harvey,
Priestley, Linnaeus, Ørsted, Watt, and Darwin, to name a few) who among them advanced knowledge of anatomy, astronomy, physics, optics, chemistry, electricity, magnetism, dynamics, gravitation, taxonomy, botany, geology, biology, kinematics, and engineering. These foundational discoveries, many of which were controversial at the time, have enabled the modern world we enjoy today. Their methods encompassed the central tenets of science— keen observation, experimentation, measurement, reasoning, and the gathering of empirical evidence.
Foucault’ s pendulum in Paris
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