Industrial Revolution (1750 - 1850)
miners hauling electronics that are causing pollution

Rare Earths: The Hidden Cost to Their Magic

Distillations Podcast
Science history photo collage

Love, Hate, and Sex from the History of Science

Distillations Podcast
19th century breast reliever

Distilled #7: Bicycle Horn or Breast Pump?

Distillations Video

WHYY: Frankenstein, now 200 years old, shows its roots
Media Coverage
stereoscope with stereograph

Distilled #4: Virtual Reality in the 19th Century

Distillations Video

Probing the Mysteries of Human Digestion

Distillations Article

Opioids’ Devastating Return

Distillations Article
A detail of the inside cover art from the 1831 edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Book Club: Frankenstein in the 21st Century

Distillations Article

Philadelphia Inquirer: Scans Reveal Secrets of Medieval ‘Harry Potter’ Book and Medical Texts at Penn
Media Coverage

WHYY: Age of Alchemy a “Must-See New Art Exhibit”
Media Coverage
Portrait of alchemist in his lab

Interview: Curator Elisabeth Berry Drago

Distillations Article

Serious Fun

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

What’s in a Logo?

Distillations Article

Fizzy Water

Distillations Video

Fit as a Fiddle: The Remarkable Lives of Cremonese Violins

Distillations Article
An 1822 star map by Alexander Jamieson shows the constellation Telescopium Herschelii, depicted here, ironically, as a refracting telescope.

A Giant of Astronomy

Distillations Article
Portrait of Ada Lovelace

Labor of Lovelace: A Children’s Introduction to a Programming Giant

Distillations Article
Detail of illustration outside confectionery, 1885

Our Mutual Friend

Distillations Article
A group of Amish people standing in a field

High-Tech and Amish

Distillations Podcast

The Age of Scurvy

Distillations Article
Old soda spray bottles in various colors

Fizzy Water

Distillations Podcast
Amputation

Auld Medicine

Distillations Article
Humphry Davy

Left Behind

Distillations Article
Nitrous oxide party

High Times

Distillations Article
Diagram of sports bra

Second Skin

Distillations Podcast

Second Skin: The Science of Stretch
Museum
Illustration of childbirth

(Natural) Childbirth

Distillations Podcast
Walter Potter's Monkey Riding a Goat

Death and Taxidermy

Distillations Video
Thomas Apel

Thomas Apel

People
Jean-Olivier Richard

Jean-Olivier Richard

People
Lynne Friedmann

Lynne Friedmann

People
Haeckel illustration of hummingbirds

Information Overload

Distillations Article

Learn
Learn

Historical Biographies
Learn
Medusa Nebula

Elements of Invention

Distillations Article
Cottingley Fairy

The Magic of It All

Distillations Article
Esperanto postcard

Speaking in Tongues

Distillations Article

Modern Books and Journals
Collections

Rare Books
Collections
Musée des Arts et Métiers

Pour l’Amour de Lavoisier

Distillations Article
The Laboratorio Chimico at the Museum of Science at the University of Lisbon

Elements of the Past

Distillations Article
Detail of a European stained glass image of St. George from the early 15th century.

From Nanotech to Nanoscience

Distillations Article
Not-so-safe chemistry lab practices, ca. 1910

Not-So-Great Moments in Chemical Safety

Distillations Article
Illustration depicting an early 19th-century London street scene with citizens commenting on the recent invention of gas-lighting.

Bright Light

Distillations Article
Oil rig

Shining Light on the Frontier of Mineral Science

Distillations Article
Portrait of James Smithson

A Gift for the Ages

Distillations Article
Recherches Chimiques

Materials Matter

Distillations Article
Portrait of Berzelius. Edgar Fahs Smith Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.

Jöns Jakob Berzelius
Historical Profile
Portrait of Jane Marcet.

Jane Marcet
Historical Profile
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (left) and Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen.

Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff
Historical Profile
Michael Faraday. Engraved by D. J. Pound from a photograph by Mayall.

Michael Faraday
Historical Profile
John Dalton, F.R.S., engraved by William Henry Worthington after an 1814 painting by William Allen, published June 25, 1823, in Manchester and London. Note the charts with Dalton’s atomic symbols lying on the table.

John Dalton
Historical Profile
An 1830 engraving of Sir Humphry Davy, by G. R. Newton, after a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830).

Humphry Davy
Historical Profile
Louis Pasteur in his laboratory, holding a jar containing the spinal cord of a rabbit infected with rabies, which he used to develop a vaccine against the disease.

Louis Pasteur
Historical Profile
Amedeo Avogadro. Edgar Fahs Smith Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.

Amedeo Avogadro
Historical Profile
Lavoisier. Engraved by François Séraphin Delpech, after a drawing by Belliart, after the painting by Jacques Louis David.

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
Historical Profile
Professor Gay-Lussac, F.R.S.: Membre de l'Institut, Professor at the University of Paris &c.

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
Historical Profile

Joseph Priestley
Historical Profile
Engraving of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, after a painting by Rembrandt Peale.

Eleuthère Irénée du Pont
Historical Profile
Justus von Liebig.

Justus von Liebig and Friedrich Wöhler
Historical Profile

Collections
Collections
Making Modernity

Making Modernity
Museum
Science at Play Exhibit

Science at Play
Museum

Fine Art
Collections
Our library collections span nearly six miles of shelves

The Othmer Library
Research

Synthesis Book Series
Research

Archives
Collections
Puck magazine cover, March 12, 1884.

Science, Protector of the Common Good

Distillations Article
Barnum & Bailey Poster

Strange Things

Distillations Article
When William Aspdin stumbled on the secret to modern concrete, it was the first and one of the few fortuitous steps in an unsteady life.

Hard-Headed Man

Distillations Article

Two Tales of Ballooning

Distillations Video
Blockade Against Blockade or John Bull a Match for Boney

The Blockade Runner

Distillations Article

Brave New Butter

Distillations Article

Up in the Air

Distillations Video
Neanderthal skull

Ancient DNA

Distillations Article
The line between chemistry and biology first began to blur in the 19th century. (NIAID)

Border Crossing

Distillations Article
Detail of a burlap sack for H. Kohnstamm and Company’s Simplex Soap. When recently laundered clothes started to disintegrate in the early 20th century, angry customers turned to laundries, which in turn looked to soap manufacturers, such as Kohnstamm, for

Going to Pieces: A Detective Story

Distillations Article
Joseph Wright's An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768) housed at the National Gallery, London.

Pumped Up

Distillations Article

Cabinets for the Curious

Distillations Article
Yellow Fever

Yellow Fever Fiend

Distillations Article

Whales in Space

Distillations Article
Trading cards

Where’s the Beef?

Distillations Article
Early Hot-Air Ballon French Postcard

Up in the Air

Distillations Article
St. Clair’s Defeat

Fresh Start

Distillations Article
English royal gardens at Kew, Richmond

No Ill Nature: The Surprising History and Science of Poison Ivy and Its Relatives

Distillations Article
Guano ad

Dirty Business

Distillations Article
Lancets and a blood collecting bowl

Let It Bleed

Distillations Article

Fairyland of Chemistry

Distillations Podcast
Slide Rule detail

The Golden Rule

Distillations Article
Ernest Solvay at the 1911 Solvay Conference

Making the Process

Distillations Article
Joseph Black

That Beautiful Theory

Distillations Article
Sir Joseph Banks

High Society

Distillations Article
A treatise on adulterations of food, and culinary poisons

Secret Ingredient

Distillations Article

An Everyday Poison

Distillations Article
Ptolemaic armillary sphere

Out of Obscurity

Distillations Article

A Notorious Life

Distillations Article
A watercolor of five surgeons participating in an amputation without anesthetic.

Painless Dreams

Distillations Article
Sausage formula from August Kekulé

The World Inside

Distillations Article
Alfred Swaine Taylor on poisons

Palmer the Poisoner

Distillations Article
Intubation set

Instrumental to Survival

Distillations Article