Ancient (BCE-40 CE)

The Engines of Our Ingenuity is a radio program that tells the story of how our culture is formed by human creativity. Written and hosted by John Lienhard, it is heard nationally on Public Radio and produced by KUHF-FM Houston. Among other features, this web site houses the transcripts for every episode heard since the show's inception in 1988. Streaming audio is available on each of the posted episodes.

A listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar. All links have been tested for correctness and appropriateness. Those added or revised within the last thirty days or so are marked {New}. Please use this form or e-mail to add entries, provide corrections, or make comments on its utility. Acknowledgements to those who have recently submitted new and revised entries. Guidelines for the inclusion of sites on this list are available.

ROMAN GLASS: Reflections on Cultural Change is a traveling exhibition organized by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology that illustrates how the craft of glassmaking was influenced by historical events and changing social values in the Roman World

When Aristophanes' parodied fifth-century Athenian intellectuals, he envisioned a single wise-man teaching linguistics, poetry, math, astronomy, and ethics. The distinction beween science and other subjects only gradually took shape

Daniel I. Arnon and colleagues discovered photosynthetic phosphorylation.

The Museum's collections include millions of specimens, and their size and quality place the Museum among the best in the world. The collections provide the basis for the research carried out in the scientific departments, and, through loans and visits by guest researchers, are constantly used by scientists and institutions throughout the world. It is a crucial role of the Museum to keep these collections available for international research, and to preserve them for future generations. Parts of the collections, presented on the Museum's web pages, are also registered in searchable databases.

Approximately 49,000 volumes on the history of medicine, science and other health-related disciplines. Materials dating from 1700 B.C. to A.D. 1800 number approximately 32,000 volumes.

The history of women, science, and technology: a bibliograpahic guide to the professions and the disciplines.

~440 BC: Democritus proposed the concept of atom to describe the ultimate indivisible, indestructible particles that composed the substance of all things. Lucretius (95-55 BC) wrote De rerum natura inspired in the ideas of Democritus and Epicurus.

Hypatia was a mathematician, astronomer, and Platonic philosopher. According to the Byzantine encyclopedia The Suda, her father Theon was the last head of the Museum at Alexandria. Hypatia's prominence was accentuated by the fact that she was both female and pagan in an increasingly Christian environment. Shortly before her death, Cyril was made the Christian bishop of Alexandria, and a conflict arose between Cyril and the prefect Orestes. Orestes was disliked by some Christians and was a friend of Hypatia, and rumors started that Hypatia was to blame for the conflict. In the spring of 415 C.E., the situation reached a tragic conclusion when a band of Christian monks seized Hypatia on the street, beat her, and dragged her body to a church where they mutilated her flesh with sharp tiles and burned her remains.