Art & Literature | Science History Institute

Art & Literature

Bloomsday 2023

Event

portrait of Oppenheimher sitting down smoking

The Real Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer

Distillations Podcast

Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of a man inside a circle with outstretched arms and legs

The Brilliant, Groundbreaking, and Wildly Overrated Leonardo da Vinci

Distillations Podcast

Charming Disaster duo

Charming Disaster: Super Natural History

Event

Roy Eddleman

Science History Institute Mourns Death of Philanthropist Roy Eddleman

News

Start Talking Science

Start Talking Science

Visit

A horse trotting. Photogravure after Eadweard Muybridge.

The Murderer Who Made Movies Possible

Distillations Podcast

Color abstract landscape painting

Claude Monet and Bee Purple

Distillations Podcast

Creative Commons contest graphic

Institute’s Digital Collections on List of ‘Hidden Gems’ in Creative Commons Open Culture Remix Art Contest

Press Release

Illustration of fairies around water

River Gods, Lake Monsters, and the Abiding Power of Myth

Distillations Article

Impressionist painting of a lily pond

Could Claude Monet See Like a Bee?

Distillations Article

Screenshot from A Discovery of Witches TV show

What the All Souls Trilogy Teaches Us about Alchemy, Family, and Knowledge Hierarchy

Distillations Podcast

Vampire preys on a sick woman

Vampire Panic

Distillations Podcast

Cover of Lady Ranelagh book by Michelle DiMeo

New Biography by Institute’s Library Director Unveils Life and Legacy of Unknown Woman Scientist

Press Release

A nurse in a mask

Between Us and Catastrophe

Museum

Cartoon of mechanic getting electricuted

Comics: Old-School Distance-Learning Tools

Distillations Article

Engraving showing tableau of injected vessel and infant skeletons by Frederick Ruysch,

Collecting Monstrosity

Distillations Podcast

Black and white movie still image

A Silent, Savage Menace: Reassessing "Panic in the Streets"

Distillations Article

Woodcut of medieval printers at work

Would a Book Lie?

Distillations Article

Photo of Anton Chekhov with glasses and hat

The Death of Anton Chekhov, Told in Proteins

Distillations Article

The Alchymist (1775), an engraving

Hennig Brandt and the Discovery of Phosphorus

Distillations Article

Still from Where Are My Children: At the end of the film the Waltons are visited by the spectral images of their offspring, first as children and then as young adults.

Where Are My Children? Public Health in the Movies

Distillations Article

Saving Old Movies

Distillations Article

Close up of Johannes de Sacrobosco’s astronomy textbook, De Sphaera Mundi (On the Sphere of the World).

Distilled #6: A 17th-Century (Interactive!) Astronomy Textbook

Distillations Video

Snakes and Letters

Distillations Article

An early 20th century porcelain painting kit

Distilled #5: Porcelain Painting

Distillations Video

Object Explorer

Museum

stereoscope with stereograph

Distilled #4: Virtual Reality in the 19th Century

Distillations Video

Oil painting of an alchemical scene

The Masters of Nature

Distillations Article

18th century book gnawed by bookworms

What’s That Smell You’re Reading?

Distillations Article

The Alchemist and His Wife, ca. 1928, by Jacques Hammerer, after 17th-century original by David Ryckaert III.

Age of Alchemy

Museum

Old Friends

Distillations Article

Portrait of chemist Dorothy Hodgkin

Sketch of a Scientist

Distillations Article

Vintage poster of people watching TV

Sci-Fi Radio Drama

Distillations Podcast

Fit as a Fiddle: The Remarkable Lives of Cremonese Violins

Distillations Article

The Art of Memory

Distillations Article

Stradivari and the Search for Brilliance

Distillations Article

Portrait of refugee doctor

Refugee Doctors

Distillations Podcast

Prosthetic arm with strings

ExhibitLab

Museum

Still image from Rethinking Ink animation

Rethinking Ink

Distillations Video

A History of Violence

Distillations Article

Before and after of laser tattoo removal

Rethinking Ink

Distillations Podcast

Scent of Mystery ad

The Third Sense

Distillations Article

Rachel Carson on Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania, 1945.

Drop-In Tours

Visit

The Alchemist in His Study with a Woman Making Lace

The Art Detective

Distillations Article

Filippo Marinetti, 1934

Food Fight

Distillations Article

Just what is it . . . (1956)

Richard Hamilton’s Plastic Problem

Distillations Article

Walter Potter's Monkey Riding a Goat

Death and Taxidermy

Distillations Video

Roderick Coover at the Sensing Change exhibit opening, 2013

Estuary/Toxi*City

Research

Coloring Chemistry

#ColorOurCollections

Learn

About Sensing Change

Research

Edward Dunlea calibrating an aerosol mass spectrometer at the Storm Peak Laboratory.

Scientists

Research

Behind the Beaker

Research

The Alchemical Quest

Museum

Roald Hoffmann

Roald Hoffmann

Historical Profile

Plan Your Visit to the Museum

Museum

James R. Voelkel

People

Elisabeth Berry Drago

People

Painting Like It’s 1699

Distillations Video

Artwork from the graphic novel Trinity

Graphic History

Distillations Article

Carl Djerassi.

Carl Djerassi

Historical Profile

Louis Fieser in Harvard University laboratory, December 1950.

Louis Fieser and Mary Fieser

Historical Profile

Portrait of Jane Marcet.

Jane Marcet

Historical Profile

Rachel Carson.

Rachel Carson

Historical Profile

Permanent Exhibition

Museum

Fine Art

Collections

Science on Tap audience members

Science on Tap

Visit

Transmutations: Alchemy in Art

Museum

Fellow in Focus

Visit

Conferences and Symposia

Visit

The Whole of Nature and the Mirror of Art

Museum

Petrus Bonus, Pretiosa margarita novella [The Precious New Pearl], ca. 1450.

Books of Secrets: Writing and Reading Alchemy

Museum

Research fellow Roger Eardley-Pryor.

Research Activities

Research

Making Modernity exhibit at the Science History Institute

On View

Museum

Add to Our Collections

Give

Cottingley Fairy

The Magic of It All

Distillations Article

Making a homunculus from an 1899 edition of Goethe's Faust

Man Made: A History of Synthetic Life

Distillations Article

The Alchemist in His Laboratory

Distillations Video

Louis Pasteur pursuing a rabies vaccine in this etching by Léopold Flameng.

The Artist in the Laboratory

Distillations Article

Real Fairy Folks

Distillations Video

Portrait of Dorothy Sayers, progenitor of forensic-based crime fiction. (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Forensic Chemistry in Golden-Age Detective Fiction: Dorothy L. Sayers and the CSI Effect

Distillations Article

Joe Palca, NPR

Distillations Video

Cloth of the World

Distillations Article

Spherical space colony

A Future without Limits

Distillations Article

A 19th-century advertisement for dynamite by the Giant Powder Company.

Meeting the Miner’s Friend

Distillations Article

Margaret Cavendish frontispiece

First Lady

Distillations Article

The Secrets of Alchemy

Distillations Article

Mujeres Celebres (“Famous Women”) comic

Stories of the Great Chemists

Distillations Article

Satirical illustration from Erwin Weinbrenner’s illustrated poem KZL und Morgenthau.

Factory to Farm

Distillations Article

Pandora, That Is, the Noblest Gift of God

Pandora’s Secrets

Distillations Article

Cropped image of La Bella Principessa

The Da Vinci Question

Distillations Article

Back cover image of Louis Pasteur, Benefactor de la Humanidad.

Graphic Knowledge

Distillations Article

Daguerreotype of Boulevard du Temple, Paris

Silver and Sunlight

Distillations Article

Page from Chimie du goût et de l'odorat

The Key to Good Taste

Distillations Article

Albert H. Munsell

A Colorful Life

Distillations Article