Beautiful Science: Ideas that Changed the World

Name: Beautiful Science: Ideas that Changed the World | The Huntington
Start: Sun, Nov 16 2008 - Tue, Mar 17 2020
Location: The Huntington

Exhibitions

"Beautiful Science" features hundreds of artifacts that tell the stories of the breakthroughs, discoveries, and people at the forefront of astronomy, natural history, medicine, and light.

This award-winning exhibition encouraged visitors to think about the beauty of science in a historical context—the elegant breakthroughs, the remarkable discoveries, and the amazing people and stories behind them. New materials from the collections were routinely rotated on and off display to minimize light exposure and share the variety of the collections with visitors. The exhibition is arranged around four areas of exploration: astronomy, natural history, medicine, and light.

Beautiful Science: Astronomy

The sky above—eternal and seemingly serene, yet intricate and mysterious—has always piqued both reverence and curiosity. As we have developed new tools and new models, our understanding of the heavens and our place in them has grown more accurate. The exhibition Beautiful Science: Ideas that Changed the World, charted the trajectory from the Ptolemaic system through the Copernican revolution to modern astronomy.

Letter to George Ellery Hale, 1913, Albert Einstein

In this letter, Einstein asks George Ellery Hale, director of the Mount Wilson Observatory and a renowned solar astronomer, whether it would be possible to measure starlight bending around the sun during the day.

Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (Mathematical principles of natural philosophy), 1687, Isaac Newton

The publication of this work revolutionized astronomy, providing mathematical models of the physical workings of the universe in more detail and with more accuracy than its predecessors.

Sidereus nuncius (Starry messenger), 1610, Galileo Galilei

In this birth announcement of the telescope, Galilei made the startling claim that heavenly objects were not perfect spheres. The illustrations shown in this book are the first ever made of the Moon under magnification.

Almagest (The greatest book), 1279, Claudius Ptolemy

Completed around 150, Ptolemy's description of an Earth-centered system remained unchallenged for more than 1,400 years. This copy of the Almagest, one of The Huntington's oldest science manuscripts, was written on parchment made from animal skins.

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the revolution of heavenly bodies), 1566, Nicolas Copernicus (Edwin Hubble's copy)

Copernicus' De revolutionibus demoted Earth from its position in the center of the universe. The work was declared heretical by the Roman Catholic Church but Catholics were permitted to read it once censors marked out prohibited passages, as they did in this copy.