European Collections of Scientific Instruments, 1550-1750

These selected studies on sixteenth and eighteenth centuries European collections of scientific instruments, which were part of the princely ‘wunderkammern’, delineate an up-to-date-panorama about the formation of the most important museums of the history of science.

Giorgio Strano, Ph.D. (2003) in History of Science, University of Florence, is Curator of the Collections at the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence. He has published extensively on the history of astronomy, including Galileo’s Telescope (2008).Stephen Johnston, Ph.D. (1994) in History of Science, University of Cambridge, is Assistant Keeper at the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford. His publications focus on instruments and practical mathematics from the sixteenth to the ninetheenth centuries.Mara Miniati, Curator emeritus at the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence, has authored more than one hundred publications. In March 1993, she was awarded the Paul Bunge Prize, an international award for historians of scientific instruments.Alison Morrison-Low, D. Phil (2000) in Economic History with Physics, University of York, Principal Curator of Science at National Museums Scotland since 1980. Her recent publications explore the English instrument trade, for which she won the 2008 Paul Bunge Prize.