Science History Institute Historic Plaque Collection

The Science History Institute is a museum, archive, and library dedicated to the research and preservation of the history of chemistry, life sciences, and engineering. Located in Philadelphia, the institution began as a joint venture between the American Chemical Society and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). Arnold Thackray, a professor at UPenn and then-curator of their Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection, was an early advocate for the formation of a center dedicated to the history of chemistry. He secured early funders for the institution such as chemist John C. Haas as well as Dow Chemical Company and DuPont. The institution was formally founded in 1982 as the Center for the History of Chemistry and was hosted on UPenn’s campus. The institution would gain the attention of other scientists and entrepreneurs, such as Arnold Beckman and Donald Othmer, who would donate their own money and collections to form the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry and the Othmer Library of Chemical History respectively.

The Center for the History of Chemistry steadily grew, eventually renaming to the Chemical Heritage Foundation and moving to its own building on 315 Chestnut Street. At this new location, the institution was able to build a public museum. The initial museum collection focused primarily on scientific instruments throughout history. In 2015, the institution merged with the Life Sciences Foundation of San Francisco to form the Science History Institute. With this merger, the collecting interests of the institution expanded beyond the history of chemistry to the history of other sciences such as life sciences and biotechnology.