Chemical Heritage Foundation - Collections

Collections

Chemical Heritage Foundation is home to many significant collections relevant to the history of chemistry.

• The Othmer Library : In 2004 the Othmer Library became the steward of the Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library, which represents one of the most comprehensive single deposits of books on the history of chemistry in the world. Roughly 6,000 titles in all, the Neville collection comprises materials that date from the late 15th century to the early 20th century and includes many of the most important works in the history of science and technology from this period.

• The Oral History Program : The Oral History Program at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, administered by CHF’s Center for Contemporary History and Policy, aims to create a collection of comprehensive, professionally edited interviews with leading figures in chemistry and related fields.

• Archives : The Chemical Heritage Foundation collects, preserves, describes, and makes available the unique, unpublished materials that document the past 200 years of our chemical history. CHF actively collects archival materials from outstanding scientists, industries, and professional organizations. Spanning over 5,000 linear shelf feet, these collections are a major attraction for scholars of the history of chemical and molecular sciences.

• Photographs : CHF’s Image Archive contains an extensive collection of photographic prints, negatives, and slides reflecting the chemical history of the past century. CHF currently holds more than 20,000 images of notable chemists, laboratories, industrial scenes, historic gatherings, and chemical artifacts. These images hold considerable interest for scholars, journalists, and publishers who are active in chemistry-related fields. Informal snapshots and personal photos capture notable scientists at work and at play, such as the polymer chemists Wallace Carothers and Carl Shipp Marvel on a fishing trip and chemical engineer Donald Othmer and his wife on their wedding day. Highlights include:
  • Williams Haynes Portrait Collection: nearly 1,000 formal portraits of important chemists from the early 1900s
  • Travis Hignett Collection: images from the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory (1920–1950)
  • Joseph Labovsky Collection: the history of nylon
  • Dow Historical Collection: 20th-century industrial images

• Fine Art : Strengths of CHF’s fine-art collection include the Fisher Scientific International Collection and the Roy Eddleman Collection, more than 90 paintings and 200 works on paper that unmask the fascinating world of the alchemists. In their pursuit of the elusive philosophers’ stone, alchemists created a body of knowledge about the material world through experiments and lab work, setting the stage for modern chemistry. Other highlights of the fine-art collection include oil paintings depicting such early modern chemical activities as distillation and metallurgy and watercolors showing the production process of the textile ramie.

• Artifacts : CHF collects three-dimensional artifacts to gain a representative group of material-culture objects that can be used as resources for both research and exhibition. CHF holds a variety of historical artifacts related to chemistry and chemical education, including instrumentation. It has one of the best public collections of chemistry sets, with approximately 100 different sets from all over the world, including Australia and Germany. Other special artifact collections include The Beauty of Bakelite and Chemistry and Fashion. Highlights include the Beckman IR-1 spectrophotometer, John Fenn’s electrospray mass spectrometer and Bruce Merrifield’s solid-phase peptide synthesizer.