| History of Physics Group Home page | Return to Archive index | Return to newsletter index |
Dennis and Sylvia Rosen (1994) London Science, Prion
ISBN 1-85375-140-5 RRP £14.99
224 pp.
This is a beautifully produced hardback, covering museums, libraries, and places of scientific, technological and medical interest. It has glorious colour pictures, useful information (such as phone numbers and opening hours), and suggests a series of scientific walks around London. The only drawback is obvious from the title – it is only about London, and it is a shame that there is no similar book for the whole of the UK.
Trevor I. Williams (1996) Our Scientific Heritage: an a-z of Great Britain and Ireland, Sutton Publishing
ISBN 0-7509-0820-3 RRP £20.00
250 pp.
This is a different type of book. It has the obvious advantage of covering a
greater geographical area than just London, and also a greater subject area
(science, technology, archaeology, medicine and engineering). It seems to be
a pretty comprehensive list of places of interest in these subjects, but
there are no pictures, and often only a sentence or two about a particular
place. Nevertheless, the huge number of entries can be searched by
geographical location (there are maps), alphabetical order by person, or
alphabetical order by place. There are also longer entries on places with
very many sites of interest, such as Glasgow, Manchester and Dublin.
Charles Tanford and Jacqueline Reynolds (1995) A
Travel Guide to Scientific Sites of the British Isles: a guide to the
people, places and landmarks of science, John Wiley &
Sons Ltd.
ISBN 0-471-95270-2 RRP £16.99 344 pp.
This pocket-sized book has a good selection of black and white photos, and again covers the whole of the UK. It has a good amount of detail, and starts with a short historical account of different branches of science connected with places in the UK. The main body of the book is a series of entries, grouped by geographical area, with information on, and pictures of, the places to see, but there are also location maps, and indexes of names, places and subjects.
London: city of science
This is a map, published by the British Library with support from COPUS (the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science). On one side it has a map of London showing the locations of sites of interest, and on the other, a few words about what is to be found at these locations. My own copy was obtained in person (they were on display in the lobby) from:
Science Reference and Information Service
25 Southampton Buildings
LONDON WC2A 1AW
(0171) 412-7494
N.B. There is a note on the back of the map saying that all collections relating to science, technology and medicine will be moving in April 1999 to The British Library, 96 Euston Road, LONDON NW1 2DB; (0171) 412-7677
Sophie Huxley The Oxford Science Walk
ISBN 0-952-2671-0 1 £2.00
This is also a map, illustrated with attractive line drawings by Edith Gollnast. They can be bought in Blackwells, Oxford, and also from the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford (closed for renovation until the end of Summer 1999) or from the publisher: ‘Science Walk Publications’ 35 Marston Street, OXFORD OX4 1JU.
The National Portrait Gallery, London
The Royal Society has teamed up with the Gallery to produce a leaflet of those portraits on display with scientific connections. It is available from the Gallery.
with thanks to Kate Crennell
for the last two items
page last updated 24 November2012