Notes on Contributors
Robert G.W. Anderson
spent practically his whole career working in museums, after having taken a doctorate in physical chemistry at Oxford University. First, he worked as a science curator, later becoming director of the National Museums of Scotland (Edinburgh), the British Museum (London), and the Science History Institute (Philadelphia), from which he retired in 2020. From 1982 he was President of the SIC for fifteen years, and at other times of the British Society for the History of Science and of the Society for History of Alchemy and Chemistry. He holds the Dexter Award (American Chemical Society) and the Bunge Prize (German Chemical Society). He is an Emeritus Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge and Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. When time allowed, his research was focused on early chemical instruments and apparatus, and on the Scottish Enlightenment chemist, Joseph Black (1728–99), whose correspondence he published in 2012. Throughout his life he has suffered from ICS (incurable collecting syndrome).
Jim Bennett (deceased)
was Keeper Emeritus at the Science Museum, London. He was formerly Director of the Museum of the History of Science and Professor of the History of Science in the University of Oxford. He was a previous President of the Scientific Instrument Commission.
Julia Bloemer
(ORCID: 0000-0002-0246-9684) is a historian of physics working at the European University of Flensburg, Germany. She received her PhD in Munich with a dissertation on experimental philosophy in southern German monasteries in the eighteenth century and spent a decade at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Her research focuses on the history of experimentation, scientific instruments, and the relationship between science and religion. Together with three colleagues, she conducts an annual international seminar on material culture for graduate students and museum interns.
Marvin Bolt
was formerly Vice-President for Collections and Director of the Webster Institute for the History of Astronomy at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and first Curator of the History and Technology of Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass. For more than twenty years he has teamed together with Michael Korey to pull telescopes apart. He has most recently been extending and summarising this work while on research fellowships at the Technische Universität in Berlin and the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. For his outreach and interpretation work he was awarded the Hazen Education Prize of the History of Science Society in 2017.
Randall C. Brooks
spent twenty years in a Canadian university astronomy department designing and servicing research instruments before turning his attention to the history of scientific instruments and technology. He then spent the next twenty years in a museum environment, beginning as the curator of physical sciences and space at the Canada Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa and ending as the Vice President of Collections and Research of the Ingenium, the institution which operates three Canadian national museums related to science and technology, aviation, and agriculture. He also served as the editor of Rittenhouse and eRittenhouse.
Terje Brundtland
(ORCID: 0009-0008-4872-4549) is a former laboratory technician, specialised in modern vacuum technology. He has previously worked at the University of Tromsø, Norway. Later, turning from technology to history, he did his DPhil at Linacre College, Oxford, on the history of scientific instruments. He is author of “A Description of the Vacuum Chamber for the Blaamann Plasma Experiment,” Vacuum, 1998; “After Boyle and the Leviathan: The Second Generation of British Air Pumps,” Annals of Science, 2011; and “Francis Hauksbee and his Air Pump,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 2012. A coming study is planned on Emanuel Swedenborg’s air pump.
Ileana Chinnici
(ORCID: 0000-0002-3536-1709) is an astronomer at INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo. Her main research field is the history of nineteenth-century astronomy and astrophysics. Her volume, Decoding the Stars. A Biography of Angelo Secchi, Jesuit and Scientist (Leiden: Brill, 2019) was awarded the 2021 Osterbrock Book Prize from the American Astronomical Society. Her interests include studies on historical scientific collections of instruments, books and archives. A member of the IAU C3 (History of Astronomy) Organising Committee in the last two triennia, she was elected incoming President of the Scientific Instrument Commission for the years 2025–2029.
Gloria Clifton
(ORCID: 0000-0002-1566-7911) is a PhD, and curator emeritus of Royal Museums Greenwich, after retiring as senior curator of the Royal Observatory. She published the Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers, c. 1550–1851 (1995) and continues to add material to the database of makers, extending to 1914. She is President of the Scientific Instrument Society and also of the Hakluyt Society, which publishes original historical accounts of travel, voyages and exploration.
Tiemen Cocquyt
(ORCID: 0000-0002-5426-4162) is curator of early modern natural sciences in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, the Dutch national museum for the history of science and medicine in Leiden. He has held this position since 2010. Before, he worked at Utrecht University Museum. He primarily researches seventeenth-century optical instruments and cabinets of experimental philosophy. In this research, he has repeatedly applied forensic methods, such as interferometry, neutron tomography and XRF analysis, to query historic instruments.
Gaye Danışan
(ORCID: 0000-0002-8888-6533) is an assistant professor at Istanbul University, Department of the History of Science. Her research focuses on Ottoman history, particularly calendars, portable astronomical instruments, volvelles, navigation, and astrometeorology. She is currently working on the project Portable Astronomical Instruments: The Processes of Adaptation and Diffusion of Medieval Islamic and European Examples in the Ottoman Geography (1500–1700), funded by the Turkish Academy of Sciences – Outstanding Young Scientists Awards Program (TÜBA-GEBİP).
Richard Dunn
(ORCID: 0009-0006-2613-6477) is Keeper of Technologies and Engineering at the Science Museum, London. He was previously Senior Curator for the History of Science at Royal Museums Greenwich. His publications include The Telescope: A Short History (2009), Finding Longitude (2014, with Rebekah Higgitt), and Navigational Instruments (2016).
Jean-François Gauvin
(ORCID: 0000-0001-9426-8726) is a professor of history, scientific heritage, and museum studies at Université Laval in Québec City, Canada. He has published numerous articles on scientific instruments, two frequently-cited edited volumes on globes and abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700–1770), and curated and/or oversaw award-winning exhibitions in Canada and the United States. His recent book, Instruments of Knowledge: Finding Meaning in Objects, Habits, and Museums (Brill, 2023) explores the relationships between instruments (organum), scientific practices (habitus), and collections (museum). He is a member of the Centre de recherche Cultures-Arts-Sociétés (CELAT).
Neil Handley
is a PhD, AMA, FRSA, and is Curator of the British Optical Association Museum at the College of Optometrists, London. He is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers and current Chairman of the Scientific Instrument Society (SIS).
Rebekah Higgitt
(ORCID: 0000-0001-9387-4150) is Principal Curator of Science at National Museums Scotland. She did her PhD at Imperial College, London, and has previously worked at the University of Edinburgh, Royal Museums Greenwich, and the University of Kent. She is author or co-author of Recreating Newton (2007), Finding Longitude (2014), and Metropolitan Science: London Sites and Cultures of Knowledge and Practice, c.1600–1800 (2024). In 2024 she was awarded the Paul Bunge Prize for her work on the history of scientific instruments. She is one of the editors of the Brill series, Knowledge Infrastructure and Knowledge Economy.
Boris Jardine
(ORCID: 0000-0002-9590-0102) is a rare book dealer, writer, and historian. Before entering the book trade full-time, he worked as a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, and Curator of History of Science at the Science Museum, London.
Floor Anna Koeleman
(ORCID: 0000-0001-8176-4544) received the Excellent Thesis Award from the University of Luxembourg for her dissertation “Visualizing Visions: Re-Viewing the Seventeenth-Century Genre of Constcamer Paintings,” which will be published as a book by Brill in the series Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne and has been a member of the Scientific Instrument Commission since 2019. Her research focuses on the history and philosophy of art, science, and instrumentation.
Michael Korey
(ORCID: 0009-0009-7634-7872) When not tending to early-modern optics, including telescopes and burning lenses, Michael is busy making mischief with Renaissance planetary clocks and mathematical instruments as senior curator at the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon in Dresden, and was the Secretary of the Scientific Instrument Commission from 2013–2017. For his outreach and interpretation work he was awarded the Medienpreis of the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung in 2019.
Richard L. Kremer
(ORCID: 0000-0002-6235-7799) is Professor Emeritus of History at Dartmouth College where he taught the history of science and curated that institution’s collection of historic scientific instruments. He served as President of the SIC from 2018–2021; co-edited SICo4, Instruments on Display (2014); co-authored Study, Measure, Experiment: Stories of Instruments at Dartmouth College (2005); and has published extensively on medieval astronomical instruments and tables.
Phil Loring
(ORCID: 0009-0002-2185-9386) is curator of the history of medicine at Norway’s National Medical Museum, part of Norsk Teknisk Museum. In this role he was part of the team that delivered the major gallery “Life and Death” (2021) as well as the award-winning exhibition “FOLK – from Racial Types to DNA Sequences” (2018). He holds two master’s degrees, in medical anthropology and history of science. Before coming to Norway, he worked for three years at Harvard University’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, and for five years as BPS Curator of Psychology at the Science Museum, London, where he curated the exhibition “Mind Maps: Stories from Psychology” (2013).
A.D. Morrison-Low
(ORCID: 0000-0003-4184-3090) is a Research Associate at National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of Scientific Instruments and Collections since 2009, and General Editor since 2022. In retirement she has continued to write, publish and lecture in those subjects that engrossed her while still employed.
Jacqueline Marie Musacchio
(ORCID: 0009-0001-3209-0819) is Professor of Art History at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, United States. She publishes on Italian Renaissance domestic art and on Americans in nineteenth-century Italy, including most recently The Art and Life of Francesca Alexander 1837–1917 (2025).
Joshua Nall
(ORCID: 0009-0003-4942-2714) is Director of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge. His book, News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860–1910 won the History of Science Society’s 2020 Philip J. Pauly Prize for the best first book on the history of science in the Americas. Since 2021 he has been a member of the Editorial Board for the Scientific Instrument Commission’s series Scientific Instruments and Collections.
David Pantalony
(ORCID: 0009-0007-1786-7187) is Curator of Science and Medicine at Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation and Adjunct Professor in the Department of History at the University of Ottawa, where he teaches collection-based approaches in the history of science. He won the Bunge Prize in 2012 for his book Altered Sensations: Rudolph Koenig’s Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Through a partnership between Ingenium and the University of Ottawa, he is currently developing a national inventory of precision instrument makers, instruments, and collections in Canada.
Richard A. Paselk
Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, is the founder, author, web-designer, creator and Emeritus Curator of the university’s Scientific Instrument Museum. In addition to authoring numerous scholarly and educational articles during a four-decade teaching career, he is a maker of early scientific instrument recreations.
Pedro M.P. Raposo
(ORCID: 0000-0001-6724-2993), DPhil, is the Martha Hamilton and I. Wistar Morris III Executive Director of the Library and Archives at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. Raposo holds a doctorate in history of science from the University of Oxford, where he was awarded the Magellan Prize for his doctoral project on the history of astronomical observatories in nineteenth-century Europe. Before joining the Academy, Raposo was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the University of Lisbon, a visiting scholar at the Max Planck institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and Curator and Director of Collections at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, where he was responsible for the Planetarium’s renowned collections of rare books, scientific instruments, and archives. The exhibition “What is a Planet?”, in which he served as curatorial lead, was awarded the 2016 Great Exhibitions Prize of the British Society for the History of Science.
Elisabetta Rossi
(ORCID: 0000-0002-8975-6917) is a Research Fellow at the Department of Physics and Astronomy “A. Righi” (DIFA) and the University Museum Network (SMA), University of Bologna. She earned a PhD in Historical Studies from the University of Milan in 2025 and holds a degree in Astrophysics and Cosmology (2021). Her current research focuses on the invention of multi-mirror telescope technology pioneered in the mid‑twentieth century. She also has experience in museum exhibition design, with a strong interest in scientific instruments and the material history of science.
Sara J. Schechner
(ORCID: 0000-0002-6335-1399) is Curator Emerita of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University, retiring in 2024 after twenty-four years of service. She is past Secretary of the Scientific Instrument Commission (2003–2013) and currently serves on the Editorial Board for the Scientific Instrument Commission’s series Scientific Instruments and Collections. A founding member of the American Astronomical Society’s Working Group for the Preservation of Astronomical Heritage, she is responsible for issues related to historical instruments. Her recent books include Tangible Things: Making History through Objects (2015, with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich et al.) and Time of Our Lives: Sundials of the Adler Planetarium (2019). Current research focuses on sundials, science, and social change; the representation of astronomers and their instruments in works of art and advertising; and the Pope Orrery, an enormous mechanical model of the solar system made in Boston during the American Revolution.
Robert W. Smith
(ORCID: 0009-0005-0759-6809) is a Professor of History at the University of Alberta. He has been awarded the History of Science Society’s Watson-Davis Prize, the American Astronomical Society’s Doggett Prize, and won the Bunge Prize in 2023. Robert’s main research interests are in the history of astronomy and cosmology, particularly the material culture of space astronomy. Among his writings is a scholarly monograph, as well as three coauthored-popular books, on the history of the Hubble Space Telescope. Currently he is at work on a history of the James Webb Space Telescope.
Giorgio Strano
(ORCID: 0000-0002-7587-0495) holds a PhD (2003) in History of Science, University of Florence, and is Head of the Collections at the Museo Galileo – Institute and Museum of the History of Science of Florence. He is actively involved in the study and popular dissemination of the history of astronomy. He has published extensively on the topic, and curated or collaborated in permanent and temporary exhibitions. He is a member of the Scientific Instrument Society and, from 2007 to 2020, has been the general editor of the series Scientific Instruments and Collections, published by Brill.
Sylvia Sumira
is an independent conservator specialising in globes. She worked in globe conservation at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, for several years before setting up her own studio. An accredited member of the UK Institute of Conservation, her clients include museums, libraries and other institutions in Britain and abroad, and also private owners of globes. Her book, The Art and History of Globes, was published by the British Library a few years ago.
Sofia Talas
(ORCID: 0000-0003-1971-8680) is the Curator of the Giovanni Poleni Museum, at the University of Padua. She carries out researches on the history of scientific instruments and the history of physics. From 2011 to 2017, she was President of Universeum, the European network aiming at the preservation, study, access, and promotion of academic heritage.
Simon Werrett
(ORCID: 0000-0002-4074-5264) is Professor of the History of Science in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London. He is the author of Fireworks: Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History (Chicago, 2010) and Thrifty Science: Making the Most of Materials in the History of Experiment (Chicago, 2019) and co-editor, with Lissa Roberts, of Compound Histories: Materials, Production, and Governance, 1760–1840 (Brill, 2017).
Ewa Wyka
(ORCID: 0000-0003-3822-7377) is a historian of science, with research interests in the history of mathematical and natural sciences, the evolution of scientific instruments, aristocratic and academic scientific collections, making of scientific instruments, museology of science and technology, and the popularisation of science. Her latest book is: Artefakty nauki: Historyczne przyrządy naukowe w zbiorach polskich muzeów [Artifacts of Science: Historical Scientific Instruments in the Collections of Polish Museums] (Warsaw: PWN, 2023).
Zhao Ke
(ORCID: 0000-0002-7884-2879) is the director of the Electronic Science and Technology Museum and an associate professor in the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. He earned his PhD in microelectronics and solid-state electronics. His research interests include the history of electronic science and technology and university museums. He currently serves as the Vice-Chair of Chinese Committee on the History of Scientific Instruments.