Natural Philosophy Collection

Welcome to the Web Pages of the Natural Philosophy Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments belonging to the University of Aberdeen, Scotland

Our collection represents equipment used for over 250 years of teaching and research in Natural Philosophy, the name traditionally used in Scottish Universities for Physics. Areas of interest covered include mechanics, optics, electricity and magnetism, sound, heat, astronomy, meteorology, surveying, radiation, X-rays in medicine and crystallography, electronics, computing, properties of materials, precision instrumentation and related subjects. It is one of the best such collections kept by any Physics Department in Britain, both in respect of the range of subjects covered and the continuity over the past two hundred years.

Some items may be seen in our permanent public display accessible from the foyer of the Fraser Noble Building (building 14 on the campus map). This display is open on weekdays from 0830 to 1800. An additional adjacent case is used for displays of contemporaty relevance. Other items can be seen in the public gallery at the Marischal Museum but in all only a small fraction of our collection can be viewed. To compensate for this lack of gallery space, it is our intention to make more and more of the collection accessible in these pages over the next few years. You can explore our collection through the links shown in the table on the left-hand side of our pages.

Our logo, bottom left, is a symbolic figure of a 'balancing cube', a piece used by one of the pioneers of the University teaching of natural philosophy through the use of demonstration apparatus - Professor Patrick Copland (1748 - 1822) of Marischal College, Aberdeen. The London instrument maker T. Jones retailed this demonstration piece but Copland was both a Professor and a skilled scientific instrument maker who had little in the way of resources to buy commercial productions. Much of his equipment was made by his own hand in his own workshop to a very high standard of craftsmanship. Read more about Patrick Copland's instruments [pdf].

For other University collections go to the Aberdeen University Museum Gateway at the bottom of the left-hand menu.