MUSEUMS OF SCIENCE. The term "museum" originally meant the "Temple of the Muses," but now the conception is entirely altered. In the ancient world there were collections of paintings and statuary in the temples and palaces of Greece and Rome. Alexander the Great gave large sums of money to his illustrious teacher Aristotle and also sent him Natural History collections from the lands he conquered.
The "museum" at Alexandria was composed of a series of associated colleges which dealt with the muses and the arts. When this museum was burnt down the term fell into disuse, and there is nowhere in the world an institute corresponding to it. Not until the 15th century when there was a revival of interest in classical antiquities was any attempt made to "collect," but about this time one of the hobbies of the wealthy was to assemble together collections of statuary, inscriptions, gems, coins, medals, manu scripts and other relics of the past. This was followed by others who took up the task of collecting plants, minerals and curious animals, and among the more famous early collectors of objects of natural history may be mentioned Georg Agricola (1490–i 555) who has been styled the "father of mineralogy." By his labours the elector Augustus of Saxony was induced to establish the Kunst and Naturalien Kammer, which has since expanded into the various museums at Dresden. One of his contemporaries was Conrad Gesner of ZUrich (1516-1565), "the German Pliny," whose writings are still resorted to by the curious. Others whose names are familiar were Pierre Belon (1517-1564), professor at the College de France ; Andrea Cesalpini (1519-1603), whose herbarium is still preserved at Florence ; Ulissi Aldrovandi ( i522– 1605), remnants of whose collections still exist at Bologna; Ole Worm (1588-1654), a Danish physician, after whom the so-called "Wormian bones" of the skull are named, and who was one of the first to cultivate what is now known as the science of pre historic archaeology. The first person to elaborate and present to modern minds the thought of an institution which should assemble within its walls the things which men wish to see and study was Bacon, who in his New Atlantis (1627) broadly sketched the outline of a great national museum of science and art.
The oldest science museum in Great Britain is the Ashmolean museum which was built in 1679 by the University of Oxford to house the collection of natural history objects and some few archaeological rarities that had been publicly exhibited by the Tradescants in London, and had been made over by deed of gift by the younger Tradescant to his friend Elias Ashmole in 1662.
Under the brothers Duncan, in the first half of the 19th century the museum enjoyed a wide reputation as a natural history museum of importance, and it preserved this character until 186o when the zoological and botanical collections were moved to the New University museum.
In 1925 the old gallery was reopened as a museum for illus trating the history of science, and more especially of science in Oxford, by contemporary scientific instruments. A superb collec tion of ancient mathematical instruments, astrolabes, sundials and other apparatus was given to the university by Dr. Lewis Evans.
The most famous of English collectors in his time was Sir Hans Sloane (1669-1753), whose vast collections, including those of Pitiver, Courten, Merret, Plukenet and Buddle, were by his will bequeathed to the British nation on condition that parliament paid his heirs the sum of L20,000. The bequest was accepted and with the library of George II., which was also bequeathed to the nation, was the foundation of the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Lon don. It was opened in 1750.