You can get in touch through our live chat service or by email, and search our FAQs for answers to your questions.
Palace Green Library
Palace Green
DURHAM
DH1 3RN
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)191 334 2972
Email: pg.library@durham.ac.uk
Physics
The historical development of Physics as an academic subject, and the role of its ancillary discipline of Astronomy in the North East, can be researched in the extensive resources of Archives and Special Collections.
General
Resources for some specific areas are highlighted below, but resources for many more specific topics can be discovered by searching for the appropriate topic (such as Physics or Astronomy or Natural Philosophy) in Discover and by restricting the search to ‘Durham Archives’ or by searching the printed catalogue by selecting the topic as a subject or keyword and restricting the search to ‘Special Collections’ or ‘Ushaw College’.
Physics as an Academic Discipline
The university had been teaching Pure Science, including Physics, since the establishment of the College of Physical Science in Newcastle in 1871. It was however not until the establishment of the Science Site in 1922 with laboratories developed there that Pure Science was taught in Durham, with a professor (John Wagstaff) and lecturer in Physics being appointed in 1924. Physics became a department in Durham in 1939, with Applied Physics being established in 1959, with Electronics added to it in 1969. All this is reflected in the university’s own archive, in central, faculty and departmental files, in the records of the meetings of its various committees from Senate and Council down, in the exam papers, pass lists and mark sheets for the subject, and the university’s publications of such as the Gazette, Calendar, Journal, and Vice-Chancellor’s Reports, and newsletters and the like.
There are also papers of some academics which touch on physics, such as the Newcastle University philosopher Mary Midgley (1919-2018), looking into cosmology and metaphysics in discussion with such as Paul Davies, a Newcastle Theoretical Physicist. F.A. Paneth (1887-1958), professor of Chemistry at Durham, corresponded with a number of eminent physicists (Add.MS. 780), and the eminent Geologist and Geophysicist Arthur Holmes (1890-1965), started out as a Physics student. The papers of Vice-Chancellor Sir James Duff (1898-1970) include various American Physics exam papers of the 1930s.
Printed Books
The collections include a quantity of books on Physics, ‘Natural Philosophy’ and Astronomy, dating back to the 16th century, many of them from the libraries of Edward Collingwood and the University’s Observatory and now held in the SC Collection but identified as the History of Science Collection. They are supplemented by a number of similar works, especially from the 17th century in the books collected by the 18th century Sharp family and now known as the Bamburgh Library, and the Cosin Manuscripts also include a medieval text on Astronomy.
There are also some books on Astronomy in the library of the English College at Lisbon, held at Ushaw, and the Big Library at Ushaw also has a range of 19th century works on Physics and Astronomy.
Theologian and astrologer, under planetary orbits. Woodcut illustration from the treatise Concordantia astronomie cum theologia (1490) by Pierre d’Ailly (SA 0052).
Astronomy in the North East
The university early established an Observatory, appointing Temple Chevallier as the first Observer or Astronomer in 1840 and professor of Astronomy in 1841. The Observatory’s extensive archive c.1839-1953 includes also records of Thomas Backhouse's West Hendon House Observatory, Sunderland, 1858-1920, papers of the Rousdon Observatory of Sir Cuthbert Edgar Peek and his son Wilfrid, Lyme Regis, East Devon, c.1886-1921, and papers of Prof R.A. Sampson (1866-1939), professor of Astronomy and Mathematics in the university, relating to his work on the satellites of Jupiter. The records comprise astronomical records, meteorological loose papers up to c.1953 and some seismograph readings 1931-1939 and 1946-1957.
The collections also include the manuscripts of Thomas Wright (1711-1786), born at Byers Green, who achieved distinction not only as a mathematician, astronomer and instrument maker, but also as an architect and garden designer, and antiquary. In his best known and most influential work, An original theory or new hypothesis of the universe (London, 1750), Wright explained the appearance of the Milky Way as an optical effect due to our immersion in what locally approximates to a flat layer of stars. His manuscripts largely consists of cosmological, astronomical and meteorological drafts and notes, most, but not all of which are in the hand of Wright himself. The collection also includes works on comets, longitude, and the divine nature of visible creation. Among the meteorological material are weather diaries kept by Wright at Westerton, Hartlepool, and Bishop Auckland, Co. Durham, and tables of weather records for the Coventry area, 1724-1733, possibly based on observations of Henry Beighton. The University has also built up a background collection of 'Wrightiana' over many years, containing photographs, slides, researchers' working notes and correspondence, texts of lectures and talks, etc. giving information about Wright's life and work.
Additionally, the collections include (Add.MS. 1538) “Observations out of naturall philosophy”, a scientific commonplace book (English and Latin; 1660s) compiled by an unidentified author containing transcripts and observations on miscellaneous subjects, and (Add.MS. 318) a scrapbook miscellany (1809-1827) compiled by John William Smith of Barnard Castle, including notes on scientific experiments.
