History of the Whipple Library
The origins of the Whipple Museum and Library lie together in a bequest made by Mr Robert Stewart Whipple to the University of Cambridge in 1944. R.S. Whipple (1871-1953) was Managing Director of the Cambridge Scientific Instruments Company and had a personal interest in the history of science.
Over the course of his life, Whipple collected scientific instruments, models, and books. In 1944, he donated his collection of approximately 1000 scientific instruments and 1400 early printed books to the University of Cambridge with the intention that they would become the nucleus of a History of Science Museum and Library.
After a short period in storage on Madingley Road and Girton College the instruments and some books were transferred to premises in Corn Exchange Street where a small museum was opened in 1951 by the first Curator of the collections, Mr A. Rupert Hall. Eight years later, the collections moved again, this time to their permanent home on Free School Lane, in the old Perse School Hall, freed up by the removal of the laboratory of Physical Chemistry to new premises on Lensfield Road. By 1972, History and Philosophy of Science was an independent Department in the University, and the Whipple collections were managed in close contact with its teaching and research activities.
As the Department grew, a modern collection of books was established to complement Whipple's historic bequest. This was housed from the 1970s in an extension behind the Perse Room. Here it remained and grew to become one of the largest and most comprehensive libraries for the History and Philosophy of Science in the UK.
Further reading
J.A. Bennett, 'Museums and the establishment of the history of science at Oxford and Cambridge', British Journal for the History of Science 30 (1997), 29-46.
F. Willmoth & L.C. Taub (eds), The Whipple Museum of the History of Science: Instruments and interpretations, to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of R.S. Whipple's gift to the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 2006).
