Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
screens outside the cases, but in the end the necessary funds were not
available.
The image of chemistry presented in this gallery is a science which
contributes to everyday life in unexpected ways, through quality control
and analysis rather than wonderful new products. It also shows the ability
of chemists to decode the structure of huge molecules such as myoglobin
and the enduring significance and usefulness of molecular models. The
gallery illustrates the enormous changes in chemistry over the last two
centuries but also reveals that many techniques have remained the same,
but in a new casing and with the addition of electronics and then com-
puters, either alongside the instrument or within it as a microchip. This
gallery, probably the last of its kind at the Science Museum, thus stands
in a long tradition of showing the importance of chemistry in understated
terms of its basic utility rather than through spectacular achievements or
amazing products. In historical terms, the 1999 gallery reverts to the late
Victorian presentation of chemistry as a comparatively recent science
rather than one with an ancient lineage. This was partly a result of a se-
vere lack of space but also stems from recent historiography which por-
trays chemistry as a largely nineteenth-century creation which sought le-
gitimacy by claiming an ancestry from alchemy, metallurgy, and natural
philosophy.
5.
Chemistry in the Deutsches Museum
It would be desirable, and indeed logical, to compare the image of chem-
istry presented by the Science Museum with leading science and technol-
ogy museums in other countries. In practice, however, it is only possible
to make a proper comparison with the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
This is partly a matter of available sources, I only have access to an
adequate number of guides for the period from 1930 to the present in the
case of the Deutsches Museum, but also a reflection of the amount of
space devoted to chemistry in other major museums. The Smithsonian
only gave over a small amount of its exhibition space to chemistry, as
opposed to materials, until the opening of 'Science in American Life' in
April 1994. The Conservatoire national des arts et métiers in Paris has
