Elsewhere in Europe, a variety of namesake buildings, monuments, and statuary honour two of the greatest Renaissance thinkers, Copernicus and Da Vinci. Warsaw displays one of the most moving monuments. Standing in front of the Staszic Palace, now housing the Polish Academy of Sciences, an enormous 1830 bronze statue of Nicolaus Copernicus depicts him seated holding a compass and an armillary sphere. On the square in front of the monument, a bronze model of his heliocentric solar system reveals a notion then thought radical and blasphemous.
In Milan, a monument to Leonardo Da Vinci towers over the Piazza della Scala. The 4.4-metrehigh statue of Leonardo is surrounded by smaller statues of four of his pupils. On the four sides of the plinth, marble bas-reliefs depict his accomplishments in Milan— painter, sculptor, plumber, architect, and strategist. While Da Vinci is recognized for his achievements as an artist, he has also become known for his notebooks in which he made notes and drawings on astronomy, paleontology, cartography, botany, anatomy, flight, and mechanical inventions.
In Paris, France, about a dozen science museums and various attractions are dedicated to the history of science. At Musée d’ Orsay, renowned for its stunning collection of Impressionist art, an 1895 oil painting by Finnish artist Albert Edelfelt depicts the laboratory of Louis Pasteur— French chemist, pharmacist, and microbiologist celebrated for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, pasteurization, and other medical microbiological findings.
A massive model of the pendulum of Léon Foucault, a French physicist, hangs in Paris’ Panthéon. The device was first suspended from its dome in 1851 to demonstrate the Earth’ s rotation. On a lower floor, French heroes are interred in a mausoleum. Among the eightyone tombs of military leaders and authors, there lie ten scientists and mathematicians such as Cabanis, Berthelot, Langevin, and Perrin. Marie Skłodowska-Curie was the first notable woman to be buried in the Panthéon. A Nobel Prize winner in both physics and chemistry, she is recognized for her pioneering work on radioactivity and the medical use of radioactive isotopes.
The legacies of these great scientists endure in the universities, faculties, and institutes that bear their names. The Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, England, focuses on the application of mathematical sciences to technology. The Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, offers course work in chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine, pharmacy, and global change biology. The Curie Cancer Institute in Paris is a leading research centre in biophysics, cell biology, and oncology. The international and interdisciplinary network of thirty-two Pasteur Institutes is dedicated to biomedical research and public health, with a focus on infectious and neurodegenerative diseases and cancers.
A visit to any of these museums, monuments, or institutions is a powerful reminder of the intellect, innovation, and courage of heroes of science who have greatly advanced society and human health and well-being.
Carol Berndt is an avid traveller who seeks inspirational destinations— places that offer opportunities to reflect on the culture and history of a place and its people. She believes that travelling stimulates curiosity, wonder, and gratitude.
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