Heralds of science as represented by two hundred epochal books and pamphlets selected from the Burndy Library. With notes by Bern Dibner. Presentation copy. Signed by Dibner. Fine.
Publisher Information: Norwalk, Connecticut: Burndy Library, 1955.
First Edition. Dibner, Bern (1897-1988). Heralds of science as represented by two hundred epochal books and pamphlets selected from the Dibner Library. (273 x 205 mm). xiii (1), 96 pp., illustrations. Original publisher's printed wrappers. Presentation copy: "For Dr. Eugene Bliss from Bern Dibner" signed in black pen opposite to title page. Fine.
Catalogue of 200 books deemed by the author to be “Heralds of Science”, because they “proclaimed new truths or hypotheses of science”.
"In 1955 Bern Dibner, the noted science book collector and founder of the Burndy Library, published Heralds of Science as Represented by Two Hundred Epochal Books and Pamphlets Selected from the Burndy Library. Two things combined to inspire him to prepare this list. The first was the 500th anniversary of the invention of printing from moveable type ascribed to Johannes Gutenberg dating from approximately 1455. The second was a small exhibition, “First Editions in the History of Science,” prepared at the Library of the University of California in 1934 for the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. One hundred and fourteen works were selected by the physiologist and book collector Herbert McLean Evans and the list was published in a small pamphlet, Exhibition of First Editions of Epochal Achievements in the History of Science (Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press, 1934). Evans exhibition included many of the great works of mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, botany, and zoology. In his introduction, Evans stated that, “by consulting the first form of a scientific achievement…one can hope to observe the origin and change of ideas. But, more than this, it may be maintained that one cannot adequately understand any scientific subject without knowledge of the manner in which our present conceptions were established.”
Bern Dibner had been collecting rare science works since the late 1930s and by 1955 he had amassed a collection of some forty thousand rare and modern works and housed them in a specially constructed library building in Norwalk, Connecticut, the Burndy Library. His collecting interests had expanded greatly from his earlier concentration on Leonardo da Vinci and electricity and magnetism to the full development of science and technology. In preparation for Heralds of Science, Dibner perused his collection and selected two hundred items he owned that “proclaimed new truths or hypotheses in science.” Two hundred titles, he felt, was an adequate number to represent the great achievements while not being too many to overwhelm the average layperson interested in science. Dibner also decided to extend the reach of his Heralds beyond that of Evans by including works in the fields of medicine and technology as well as those of “general science” and specific works related to electricity and magnetism.
In his introduction to Heralds, Bern Dibner acknowledged that his selection of great works in the history of science and technology was subjective and arbitrary and noted that other similar lists would have a number of differences. Perhaps the most arbitrary aspect of the 200 Heralds is that they were all contained in the Burndy Library and that very few were produced after 1900. Since the book was aimed primarily at non-historians, Dibner deliberately kept the bibliographic descriptions simple and followed by a short paragraph with a very basic story about each Herald. After many of the Heralds he also noted other important works of a similar nature at the Burndy Library. After the first appearance of Heralds of Science in 1955, a new printing with minor revisions was produced by the MIT Press in 1969.
In 1976 the Burndy Library donated some ten thousand of its rare books and manuscripts to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., to establish the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology in what is now the National Museum of American History, Behring Center. Included in this transfer were most of the two hundred Heralds except for those already held by the Smithsonian. A few years after the Dibner Library opened, a new 25th Anniversary edition of Heralds of Science was published jointly by the Burndy Library and the Smithsonian in 1980. It included a new preface by Bern Dibner and an introduction by the Smithsonian historian of science Robert P. Multhauf. Even though it is now out of print, Heralds of Science is no less valuable than when it first appeared in 1955 for highlighting the great works of science and technology and the new discoveries, laws, and hypotheses that they represent." (Smithsonian Libraries, "About the Heralds of Science." Accessed 19 Jan 2023).
Book Id: 50624Dr. Eugene Bliss (1918-2018) specialized in the chemistry of aggression and multiple personality disorder. (collections.lib.utah.edu, Bliss, Eugene L, M.D. {1970}. Accessed 19 Jan 2023).
Price: $30.00